Advances in Organization Psychology PDF

Advances in Organisational Psychology
Editors A. Ian Glendon Briony M. Thompson Brett Myors
Editors A. Ian Glendon Briony M. Thompson Brett Myors
First published in 2007 from a completed manuscript presented to Australian Academic Press 32 Jeays Street Bowen Hills Qld 4006 Australia www.australianacademicpress.com.au 2007. Copyright for each contribution in the book rests with the listed authors. All responsibility for editorial matter rests with the authors. Any views or opinions expressed are therefore not necessarily those of Australian Academic Press. Reproduction and communication for educational purposes The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10% of the pages of this work, whichever is the greater, to be reproduced and/or communicated by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or the body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. For details of the CAL licence for educational institutions contact: Copyright Agency Limited Level 19, 157 Liverpool Street Sydney NSW 2000 Australia Telephone: (02) 9394 7600 Facsimile: (02) 9394 7601 E-mail: info@copyright.com.au Reproduction and communication for other purposes Except as permitted under the Act (for example, a fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review) no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, communicated or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All inquiries should be made to the publisher at the address above. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data: Advances in organisational psychology. 1st ed. Bibliography. Includes index. eBook ISBN 9781875378951 1. Organizational behavior. 2. Psychology, Industrial. 3. Organizational sociology. I. Glendon, A. Ian, 1945- . 658.0019 Editing and typesetting by Australian Academic Press, Brisbane.
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Contents
Foreword ..............................................................................................vii
Beryl Hesketh
Preface ..................................................................................................vii Acknowledgments ................................................................................vii

Section I: Overview
CHAPTER 1:
A Perspective on the Current State of Organisational Psychology ....................................................................3

A. Ian Glendon, Brett Myors and Briony M. Thompson
CHAPTER 2:
Organisational Psychologys Greatest Hits and Misses: A Personal View ......................................................................11

Kevin R. Murphy
Section II: Perspectives on Workplace Health: Wellbeing, Safety, Stress and Support Introduction to Section II ....................................................................37
CHAPTER 3:
Employability and Unemployment: A Literature Review and Presentation of a new Conceptual Model ......................................39
Sarah McArdle and Lea Waters
CHAPTER 4:
WorkFamily Conflict and Facilitation: Achieving WorkFamily Balance ..........................................................73

Paula Brough, Michael P. ODriscoll and Thomas J. Kalliath
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Contents
(CONTINUED) CHAPTER 5:
The Bullied Boss: A Conceptual Exploration of Upwards Bullying ............................................................................93

Sara Branch, Sheryl Ramsay and Michelle Barker
CHAPTER 6:
Wellbeing at Work: A Multivariate Analysis of Warrs Vitamin Model ..................................................................................113

Feliciano Donatelli and Peter Sevastos
CHAPTER 7:
Perceptions of School Administration Trustworthiness, Teacher Burnout/job Stress and Trust: The Contribution of Morale and Participative Decision-Making ............................................................135
Carolyn Timms, Deborah Graham and Marie Caltabiano
CHAPTER 8:
The Impact of Organisational Citizenship Behaviour and Non-Material Rewards on Dimensions of Employee Burnout: Evidence from the Teaching Profession ..............................................153
Rachel L. Hannam and Nerina L. Jimmieson
CHAPTER 9:
Safety Climate and Work-Related Driving in Australian Organisations ....................................................................175

Andrew R. Wills, Barry Watson and Herbert C. Biggs
Section III: Organisational Structures and Processes: Leadership, Teams, Justice and Change Introduction to Section III ..................................................................199
CHAPTER 10:
Whatever Happened to Bureaucracy? And why does it Matter? ........209

Bob Dick
CHAPTER 11:
Making Sense of an Organisational Crisis: The Experiences of Hospital Employees Working During the SARS Outbreak ................................221
Stewart Arnold
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Contents
(CONTINUED)
CHAPTER 12:
Measuring Perceived LMX Variability Within Teams and its Impact on Procedural Justice Climate ....................................249
Danica T. Hooper and Robin Martin
CHAPTER 13:
Developing Models for Analysing Team Mental Model Data ............269

Janice Langan-Fox, Meei Ng and James M. Canty
CHAPTER 14:
Sense of Community: A Vital Link Between Leadership and Wellbeing in the Workplace ........................................................281
Roslyn B. Purkiss and Robert J. Rossi
CHAPTER 15:
The Psychology of Migration and Talent flow: A New Zealand Perspective ..........................................................................................301
Kerr Inkson, Stuart C. Carr, Nicola Allfree, Margot F. Edwards, Jill J. Hooks, Duncan J. R. Jackson and Kaye J. Thorn
CHAPTER 16:
The Top Ten Reasons why Everyone Should Know About and Study Organisational Justice....................................323
Jerald Greenberg
Section IV: Work Performance: Individual and Organisational Factors Introduction to Section IV ..................................................................347
CHAPTER 17:
Emotional Intelligence at Work: A Review of Research ....................355

Peter J. Jordan
CHAPTER 18:
One Big Happy Family: Understanding the role of Workplace Familism in the Psychological Contract Dynamics ............................371
Simon Lloyd D. Restubog and Prashant Bordia
Contents
(CONTINUED) CHAPTER 19:
A Qualitative Study of the Motivators and Suppressors of Counterproductive and Productive Workplace Behaviours ............389
Ruby Man-wa Lau, Wing-tung Au and Jane Ming-chun Ho
CHAPTER 20:
Experience Sampling Methodology in Organisational Psychology ................................................................403

Cynthia D. Fisher
CHAPTER 21:
Referee Reports: Applying Best Practice Principles ............................427

Julie A. West, Philippa White and Hanna Thomas
CHAPTER 22:
Open Plan Office Environments: The Rhetoric and the Reality..........443

George Mylonas and Jane Carstairs
Section V: Conclusions Introduction to Section V ..................................................................461

CHAPTER 23:
Organisational Psychology in Australia and New Zealand: Reflections on the Recent Past and Issues for Future Research and Practice ........................................................................465
Michael P. ODriscoll
CHAPTER 24:
Future Directions for Organisational Psychology ..............................483

Briony M. Thompson, A. Ian Glendon and Brett Myors
Author Biographies ............................................................................491 Glossary of Acronyms ........................................................................509 Index ..................................................................................................515
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Foreword
It is a pleasure to write the foreword for this book. Early in the 1990s, a number of organisational psychologists in Australia developed the idea of a regular conference that would service the interests of the organisational psychology community, not just in Australia, but also across the wider Asia-Pacific region and beyond. Under the auspices of the Australian Psychological Society (APS), the first outcome of this venture was the inaugural APS Industrial and Organisational Psychology Conference held in Sydney in 1995. I was privileged to be the chair and main organiser of this conference, assisted by Brett Myors and Elizabeth Allworth who were completing the doctoral program with me. Since then, this biennial conference has gone from strength to strength and has been held in venues in Melbourne and Brisbane, as well as Sydney and the Gold Coast. As the sixth in the series, the Gold Coast Conference marked the 10year anniversary of this successful event. For the first time, a small group from the 2005 APS Industrial and Organisational Psychology Conference organising committee has taken the initiative of going beyond merely reproducing conference abstracts to edit a volume of readings based upon selected papers, including a number of the keynote addresses. The conference was highly successful, and the chapters in this book demonstrate the quality of the contributions. The contents of this book speak well both to the strength of organisational psychology within Australia and New Zealand, and also to the growing regional contributions to this conference made by organisational psychologists based in Hong Kong, Singapore and elsewhere. It is exciting to relate that this Asia-Pacific theme is to be continued at the 7th APS
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Industrial and Organisational Psychology Conference to be held in Adelaide in 2007 in conjunction with the 1st Asia-Pacific Congress on Work and Organisational Psychology. The quality and variety of the contributions in this book are testimony to the innovation, health and breadth of organisational psychology within Australia and across the region. I am sure that, like me, you will find many topics of interest within this fine collection.
Beryl Hesketh Sydney January 2007
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Preface
Like any science-based discipline, organisational psychology is international, while retaining distinct flavours to represent specific concerns and orientations of particular regions. Our view is that an Asia-Pacific perspective on organisational psychology has so far been absent from the literature and one of the aims of this book is to begin to fill that gap. This book includes reports studies carried out in China (Lau, Au, & Ho, section IV), Singapore (Arnold, section III), the Philippines (Restubog & Bordia, section IV) and New Zealand (Inkson et al., ODriscoll, sections III & IV) as well as in North America and Australia. Whatever their country of origin, there is likely to be near worldwide application for most, if not all, the topics represented in this collection. All the substantive chapters in this book were sourced from original presentations to the Sixth Australian Industrial and Organisational Psychology Conference, held at Queenslands Gold Coast in 2005. While a majority of presentations at this conference came from Australia and New Zealand, we consider that an Asia-Pacific identification presages a forthcoming regional enrichment of the field of organisational psychology to augment the high quality and quantity of research from these two countries. As members of the conference scientific and organising committee, we were especially involved in reviewing papers, which provided us with the opportunity to read the host of submissions very closely. Impressed with their quality, we lamented that there might be no enduring record of this important material. We therefore developed the idea of sourcing a book from the conference hence this book.
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This collection represents current conceptualisation and research in the Asia-Pacific region, and serves as a guide to contemporary themes and issues within organisational psychology. It was generated from the highest rated conference papers, and represents a prime selection of the topics presented in that arena. We do not claim that this collection is either representative or comprehensive; rather our aim is to showcase the best current research, practice and thinking presented at this conference. Within such a broad field it would be presumptuous to claim a definitive overview. We are most grateful to our authors for their contributions. Given the high quality of the papers in this collection, we look forward to the next (2007) conference to extend this work.
A. Ian Glendon Briony M. Thompson Brett Myors Queensland, Australia January 2007
Acknowledgments
The editors wish to thank their respective families and colleagues for their support throughout the process of preparing this volume for publication. We very much appreciate the help and patience shown by our publisher. We acknowledge that without the considerable amount of work required by all our authors to produce such outstanding chapters, there would be no book to produce. Our hope is that this volume does justice to their high quality contributions.
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SECTION
I
Overview
CHAPTER
1
A Perspective on the Current State of Organisational Psychology
A. Ian Glendon, Brett Myors, and Briony M. Thompson
I/O psychology is about understanding behaviour at work (Tharenou, 2001, p. 201). The aim of this book is to present a collection of contemporary topics in industrial and organisational (I/O) psychology, mainly from an AsiaPacific perspective. One of us recalls a few years ago overhearing an enlightening exchange between two students before the start of one of our organisational psychology lectures. It went something like this: I cant see the relevance of this stuff; why would anyone want to study organisational psychology? Her friend replied:
Well, it depends on whether you want to work in a place that employs people or not. If you want to work somewhere that doesnt employ anyone, then this stuff is completely useless; but if you want to work somewhere where there are lots of people, then organisational psychology is totally relevant
It is interesting to note that both these students passed the course, went on to enrol in a Master of Organisational Psychology program and have never looked back. They now work for organisations that do indeed employ lots of people and have since told us that they draw on their psychological skills every day. In many ways, this book represents the long answer to the question of relevance raised by the first student.
The ScientistPractitioner Perspective
Tracing the history of the scientistpractitioner model to a meeting in the United States in 1949, OGorman (2001) reviewed some of the debates that have helped to form this model. Noting that, even the most effective scientistpractitioners probably rarely, if ever, apply research findings directly to their practice (p. 167), OGorman concluded that, it is not the content of psychological science that is immediately applicable but rather the construct system that it gives rise to (p. 168). A debate about the future direction of organisational psychology has been engaged in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology (JOOP). Its focus is whether the academic and practitioner arms of the discipline will drift further apart, or whether the strength of the scientistpractitioner concept will be sufficient to maintain the coherence of this body of knowledge and practice that we call organisational psychology (see subheading below for a comment on nomenclature). While by no means the first publication to enter this discussion, the paper by Anderson, Herriott and Hodgkinson (2001) was instrumental in kick-starting the contemporary, and arguably the most intense version of this intradisciplinary debate. After developing a quadrant model with dimensions of methodological rigour and practical relevance Anderson et al. (2001) described the pressures that tend to move research from the high rigour/high relevance quadrant, which they term pragmatic science, to either high rigour/low relevance (pedantic science) on the one hand, or to low rigour/high relevance (populist science) on the other. The two possible future scenarios that they described involve either continuing fragmentation of the discipline, or a greater convergence of work in the three critical quadrants. Their conclusion was that appropriate political activity by the profession, particularly in respect of engagement with stakeholders, is the prime way in which the profession can retain sufficient unity to maintain the scientistpractitioner as a reality, rather than a past myth. This argument is revisited in the final chapter of this book. As newly appointed editor of JOOP, Arnold (2004) entered the debate, adding to the two offered by Anderson et al. (2001), a third dimension of theoretical/conceptual content, with contributions scoring highly on all three dimensions being dubbed potent. His stated aim as editor was to require all submissions to score highly on at least two of the three critical dimensions in order to be published in JOOP. Arnolds position is that demonstrated practical relevance is a requirement for many papers published in JOOP.
The Current State of Organisational Psychology
The debate has been continued in a series of papers in JOOP, in which Gelade (2006) noted that tending to be problem-oriented and seeking material that can help them to find solutions and to improve the way in which they work, practitioners rarely read academic journals, such as JOOP. It is interesting to note that of Gelades list of topics that he claimed were most likely to be of interest to practitioners (reward, recruitment, retention, assessment, teams, performance management, morale, productivity, health and safety, leadership, training and development, stress, bullying, diversity, worklife balance, employee engagement, and the ageing workforce, as well as intervention studies), nearly all appear in one or more chapters in this book, along with practical implications. Perhaps practitioners are more likely to read books than academic journals? In any event, this book is directed at practitioners every bit as much as researchers. Continuing the debate, Wall (2006) considered it useful to distinguish between substance (or content) and presentation, and that both are important to practitioners. Symon (2006) questioned whether the academicpractitioner divide is as deep or as important as is often made out, considering that it can be talked up. In the final commentary in this stage of the debate, Hodgkinson (2006) reminded us of the central importance of the scientistpractitioner model essentially the need for scientific rigour and practical relevance. Hodgkinson considered that organisational psychologys unique and vital selling point is that scientific rigour, including methodology, is essential. Without this, he observes, there can be little or no confidence in the measures and instruments used by practitioners to address problems. As editors, we align ourselves completely and unambiguously with the scientistpractitioner model for organisational psychology. As active researchers, we always seek to address issues that combine conceptual depth, methodological rigour and that have practical implications in some domain (although we have deliberately eschewed presenting examples of our own research in this book). Our consulting work has involved extensive use of scientifically validated instruments and well-established methodologies (qualitative as well as quantitative), and has led to published work. Our teaching and administrative responsibilities over a lengthy period have witnessed us all committed to actively assisting the learning of postgraduate organisational psychology students whose professional ambition is the practice of organisational psychology including practicum supervision as well as practically oriented class teaching and research engagement. Our approach to presenting the material in this
book is entirely consistent with this orientation we view the link between sound research and good practice as a sine qua non. Whatever methodology is adopted, all the contributions in this book are characterised by their rigour of approach, with most highlighting the relevance of their particular contribution for the scientistpractitioner organisational psychologist. The ever-changing role of the organisational psychologist, inter alia, is likely to involve increasing complexity and variety of issues to confront for example, including greater cross-cultural awareness, a broader appreciation of theoretical and conceptual positions and an ability to employ a wide variety of methods and forms of analysis. Future organisational psychologists are also bound to require wider knowledge across different areas of the discipline, as well as greater depth in their selected areas of study and practice.
Organisation and Content of the Book
To help guide the reader through this collection, we have arranged the chapters under broad section headings. A brief introductory chapter prefaces each section the current chapter also serves as the introduction to Section I. The introductory paragraphs about each individual chapter are written, first, to provide an overview of key aspects of the chapter aimed more particularly at the researcher end of the scientist practitioner continuum. We have selected all the contributions to this volume as being well-grounded within the conceptual strata of relevant prior research, while the empirical papers all exhibit robust methodology. Second, following Walls (2006) excellent suggestion of providing a commentary of practical relevance to research papers, the introductions to every section also identify those elements of each contribution that are likely to be of most significance to those who identify themselves at the practitioner end of the scientistpractitioner spectrum. These paragraphs also clearly demonstrate that all the organisational psychology contributions in this volume have practical implications in most cases direct workplace (or occasionally, wider) applications. These sections highlight the fact that this is very much a book for practitioners, not just those who are organisational psychologists, but also human resources (HR) specialists and management consultants, as well as for researchers and students of organisational psychology and cognate disciplines. Thus, the volume has the ambitious aim of straddling research, professional and learning domains within organisational psychology. The contributions comprising this book represent something of the great variety of conceptual, methodological and analytical approaches to the broad vista of organisational psychology. The breadth of
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contemporary organisational psychology is represented here by conceptual approaches that range from macro (e.g., national cultural migrations and the Diaspora, bureaucracy) through meso (e.g., leadership and teams in organisations) to the micro (e.g., office environments, individual differences). The considerable variety in the range and scope of topics is reflected in the broad section themes and individual chapter headings. Presenting a balanced combination of review and empirical contributions, this book offers a state-of-the-art perspective on organisational psychology. With almost 1300 references (averaging 57 per substantive chapter), the book also serves as a source of reference material on the topics it addresses. While research approaches represented here are predominantly quantitative, showcasing a variety of methodologies and types of multivariate statistical analyses, qualitative approaches are also represented. We have sought to render the final product acceptable to the broad church of organisational psychology, as well as being highly relevant to organisational practitioners and comprehensible to researchers from cognate disciplines, such as management, human resources, and organisational behaviour. Several of the contributions reflect both the history and the projected future of their particular aspect of the disciplinary field. While a variety of organisational settings is represented in the empirical chapters, reflecting contemporary employment patterns, there is a bias towards organisations and samples drawn from public service sectors, for example education and government workers. Together the chapters of this book represent a mosaic of interlinked themes, concepts, methodologies, topics and forms of statistical and qualitative analysis. Like a series of courses at a Chinese banquet, we invite you to sample from all of them and to return and read more about your favourites.
A Brief Note on Nomenclature
As noted by ODriscoll (section V), the field of industrial/organisational psychology goes by various names across different regions. The term I/O psychology is used extensively in North America, although in Australia and New Zealand (despite the title of our conference) the name has become organisational psychology. In Europe, additional reference to occupational or work psychology predominates. To all intents these terms are interchangeable and indicate the same discipline, that is, application and research of psychological principles to the world of work. For consistency within this volume, we use organisational psychology as the reference in most instances, although in some cases we have opted to allow individual authors preferences to stand.
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Organisational Psychology Hits and Misses
We considered Kevin Murphys opening salvo to be an entirely appropriate way to begin the substantive chapters from our host of talented contributors. Admitting that his list of hits and misses in I/O psychology is personal and subjective, Murphy nevertheless employs a combination of selected high profile publications and sound arguments to substantiate his listings. The community of organisational psychologists might scan his lists with a combination of pleasure and angst as they seek their own particular field among those identified by Murphy. As a greatly respected researcher and commentator, Murphys lists will be taken seriously and, most importantly, are likely to be used by future generations of organisational psychologists either to support their chosen research endeavours (if they are amongst the hits) or as motivation to discover new methods, approaches and samples that could drive one of the misses at least into neutral territory, and perhaps eventually into a revised hit list 10 to 20 years hence. However, Murphy cleverly begins his list of hits with two that every organisational psychologist is highly likely to agree with the growth of the I/O field and the scientistpractitioner model. This book represents, at the very least, modest evidence of the first hit, in that it is the first publication of its genre within the Asia-Pacific region, while its orientation is firmly within the scientistpractitioner mould. Thus, Murphys chapter is entirely apposite in its capacity as the mainstay of the first section of this book. Similarly, Murphys third hit measurement and statistical expertise, is reflected in all the empirical quantitative chapters within this section. Murphys fourth hit job performance, is the topic of a complete section of this book. Only a few of Murphys hits do not find expression somewhere within this book, although a couple the employment interview and biodata, are complemented by a review chapter on referee reports (West et al., section IV). Of Murphys other hits, the psychological contract resurfaces in the chapter by Restubog and Bordia (section IV), while misbehaviour in organisations is reflected in the contributions by Branch et al. (section II), and Lau et al. (section IV). Murphys first miss, organisational psychologists as servants of power, is briefly revisited by us in the final chapter as are some of the other features at the wrong end of our disciplinary community. At one level, all of Murphys list of misses represent challenges either to change our focus, to redouble our efforts, or to improve the
conceptual grounding of key aspects of our discipline and its content matter. One of Murphys misses emotional intelligence is dealt with in much greater detail in a review chapter by Jordan (section IV), while organisational climate appears in a specific guise in the contribution by Wills et al. (section II). For practitioners, there are vital lessons to be learned from Murphys lists. In the final section of his chapter, Murphy notes that the substantive hits are all characterised by robust theory, sound empirical support and demonstrated applications. In other words, these are all areas that support the primacy of the scientistpractitioner approach. The empirical chapters within this book (qualitative as well as quantitative) have been selected with these features to the fore, and while their topics do not all match those identified by Murphy, they do reflect this philosophy. Practitioners should also heed a key warning implicit in Murphys list of misses that not all organisational applications are equally valid or robust an insight that goes to the heart of the scientistpractitioner model. Those who see themselves as residing at the scientific pole of the continuum should adhere to a strong commitment to produce sound research, while those aligning themselves with the practitioner end have a responsibility to differentiate between research that provides a sound basis for applications and that which does not. Murphys final upbeat message, which resounds throughout all the contributions in this book, is that the list of hits will surely continue to grow. We invite you to share in the excitement generated by the chapters that follow.
References
Anderson, N., Herriott, P., & Hodgkinson, G. P. (2001). The practitioner-researcher divide in Industrial, Work and Organizational (IWO) psychology: Where are we now, and where do we go from here? Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 74, 391411. Arnold, J. (2004). Editorial. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 77, 110. Gelade, G. A. (2006). But what does it mean in practice? The Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology from a practitioner perspective. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 79, 153160. Hodgkinson, G. P. (2006). The role of JOOP (and other scientific journals) in bridging the practitioner-researcher divide in industrial, work and organizational (IWO) psychology. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 79, 173178. OGorman, J. G. (2001). The scientistpractitioner model and its critics. Australian Psychologist, 36, 164169.
Symon, G. (2006). Academics, practitioners and the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology: Reflecting on the issues. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 79, 167171. Tharenou, P. (2001). The relevance of industrial and organisational psychology to contemporary organisations: How far have we come and what needs to be done post-2000? Australian Psychologist, 36, 200210. Wall, T. (2006). Is JOOP of only academic interest? Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 79, 161165.
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CHAPTER
2
Organisational Psychologys Greatest Hits and Misses: A Personal View
Kevin R. Murphy
Like most fields, the recent history of industrial/organisational (I/O) psychology can be characterised in several ways. One way to think about our field is to attempt to delineate the most notable successes and the most notable failures of the last decade or two. As with most scientific fields, focusing on the greatest hits and most spectacular misses might lead one to ignore the slow but steady progress that is made in most fields as more research accumulates. Nevertheless, I think a good deal can be learned about the current state of I/O psychology by considering the high and low points of our recent history. I define I/O psychologys greatest hits as those topics, areas and approaches that have shown particularly strong evidence of progress, and that have led to noteworthy developments that are relevant to both science and practice. The field of I/O psychology is, by definition, one that puts good science into practice and, as a result, it would be hard to judge the most ingenious theory as a hit if it had no relevance to application, or to judge the most clever innovation in practice as a hit if it did not have a strong link to the underlying science. Misses, in turn, are those topics, areas and approaches in which the payoff has been much smaller than the investment, and in which there is a history of lots of work and little to show for it. In compiling a list of I/O psychologys greatest hits and misses, I started by polling a number of colleagues whose opinions I respect, and I incorporated many of their suggestions. However, compiling any such list is
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TABLE 1 Organisational Psychologys Greatest Hits and Misses Hits The growth of the field The scientistpractitioner model Measurement and statistical expertise Better understanding of job performance Meta-analysis of cognitive ability tests The employment interview Biodata Goal setting theory The psychological contract Misbehaviour in organisations Misses Servants of power Focus on management and large organisations Content validity Organisational effectiveness Meta-analysis of most non-ability constructs Emotional intelligence 360-degree feedback Pay for performance Maslows need hierarchy Organisational climate
necessarily a subjective process, and in reading this chapter you might learn more about my biases and preferences than you will about the field of I/O psychology. My list of hits and misses is not only personal and subjective; it is also parochial. With the exception of a sabbatical and a few projects, virtually my entire experience in the field of I/O psychology has been based on American models, American literature and American organisations. So, with the proviso that you might find the list laid out below arbitrary, parochial and possibly irrelevant to some of the most important concerns within the context of a more global I/O psychology, let me lay out my understanding of the most notable successes and failures in our field over the last 10 to 20 years. Table 1 summarises what I believe are I/O psychologys greatest hits and misses. There is a large literature dealing with each of the areas in Table 1, and even a cursory review of this literature would be beyond the scope of this chapter. Instead, I have cited a small number of exemplary citations in each area that will give an interested reader an overview of research in that area. Table 1 identifies ten hits and ten misses. Unlike many other top ten lists, these are not necessarily listed by rank order or relative importance. However, I do start each of the lists with issues that I believe are relevant to the entire field of I/O psychology before moving on to more specific successes or failures.
Hits
The Growth of the Field
There are two success stories at the top of Table 1 that I think clearly qualify as greatest hits. First, there is visible success of the field itself. The growth and development of I/O psychology over the last 10 to 20
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Organisational Psychology's Hits and Misses
years is little short of phenomenal. When I began my career in I/O psychology in the early 1980s there was a handful of places, mainly in the United States, where it was possible to be trained in this field. Now, the website for the Society for Industrial and Organisational Psychology (SIOP) lists more than 60 PhD programs in United States and Canada that offer training in I/O, organisational behaviour, or in closely-related fields (http://www.siop.org/GTP/). Similarly, the website for the Australian Psychological Society (http://www.psychology.org.au/study/studying/11.1_4.asp) lists a dozen colleges and universities that provide graduate training in I/O psychology. This growth in supply seems to reflect a concomitant growth in demand. Unlike many other subfields of psychology, I/O psychologists rarely have trouble landing good jobs. Rather, the biggest challenge graduate programs in I/O psychology often face involves convincing graduate students to complete their dissertations before accepting a job offer. I/O psychology is not only characterised by a strong job market, but also by a robust and sizable literature. For example, Journal of Applied Psychology, one of the flagship journals of the field, has one of the highest submission rates and the lowest acceptance rates of all journals published by the American Psychological Association (American Psychological Association, 2005). In recent years, a number of handbooks covering the field of I/O psychology (Anderson, Ones, Singangil, & Viswesvaran, 2002a, 2002b), as well as I/O research methods (Rogelberg, 2002) have appeared. Numerous volumes in I/O-related series, including the SIOP Organizational frontiers and Professional practice series and the Research in organizational behavior and Research in personnel and human resource management series, have appeared discussing advances in I/O research and practice. Whether measured in terms of the number of places that train I/O psychologists, the number of practising I/O psychologists worldwide, or the size and quality of its literature, it is clear that the field of I/O psychology is thriving.
The ScientistPractitioner Model
A second clear hit is the implementation of the scientistpractitioner model in I/O psychology (see Jex, 2002; Murphy & Saal, 1990). This model was originally developed in the context of clinical psychology, where its application has not been completely successful (Dawes, 1996; OGorman, 2001). I believe that this model has been applied with some real conviction and success in the field of I/O psychology. In some areas of psychology, there are significant debates over the notion that practice should be based solidly on empirically-supported interventions. In I/O
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psychology, this idea is accepted as a matter of course. Furthermore, a good proportion of I/O psychologists are engaged in both research and practice. For example, two of the last five presidents of the Society for Industrial and Organisational Psychology have been practitioners (Nancy Tippins, William Macey), both of whom have also published regularly in the scientific literature. The other three have been academics (Ann Marie Ryan, Mike Burke, Fritz Drasgow), all of whom have worked extensively with private and public sector organisations, applying psychology to help solve important organisational problems.
Measurement and Statistical Expertise
A third noteworthy success story is the relative sophistication of I/O psychologists in applying quantitative constructs, modern measurement methods and the ability to analyse data and draw reasonable conclusions in the course of their day-to-day work. It is important to note the qualifier relative, because many I/O psychologists are far from expert in their understanding and application of quantitative methods. However, in comparison to most other subdisciplines of psychology, I/O psychologists tend to do a very good job at making sense of data. Rogelbergs (2002) Handbook of research methods in industrial and organizational psychology captures the range and depth of quantitative expertise that is characteristic of our field. Few I/O psychologists would regard themselves (or would be regarded by others) as methodologists and, on the whole, I think this is a good thing. Even a quick scan of the methodological literature will probably convince you that many methodologists are living in a different world than the rest of us, spending much of their time developing complex solutions to problems that few nonmethodologists really care about; or developing complex, unwieldy, and impractical solutions to problems that we do care about. Because I/O psychologists get out of their ivory towers from time to time and interact with nonpsychologists, they tend not to go too far overboard in their quantitative and methodological work, but rather are likely to pay close attention to the real-world relevance and practicality of each new statistical method or measurement model. Most psychologists are uncomfortable with advanced quantitative topics, something that leads to any number of recurring problems in the analysis and interpretation of data (e.g., bad measures, misunderstanding of hypothesis testing, or designing studies in ways that limit the likelihood of success see Cohen, 1994; Lecoutre, Poitevineau, & Lecoutre, 2003). Other psychologists are so deeply steeped in advanced methods that they have a hard time working sensibly with simple problems. The balance
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between rigour and practicality that is characteristic of I/O psychologists seems about right to me.
Better Understanding of Job Performance
Our understanding of the nature, causes and consequences of good versus poor job performance has advanced considerably in the last 20 years. At one time, it was common to define job performance in terms of how well a person did on some number of key tasks. One of the most important advances in our definition of job performance is the recognition that task performance and job performance are not the same thing. Rather, job performance is defined in terms of at least two distinct constructs, core task performance and contextual performance (Borman, 2004; Borman & Motowidlo, 1997; Organ, 1988). Contextual performance refers to behaviours that create and maintain the social framework within which people accomplish their core job tasks. A variety of names and labels has been applied to this set of behaviours, including organisational citizenship and discretionary performance, but the central idea is that in order to be effective members of an organisation, people must do two things: (a) perform their own main tasks well and (b) create and maintain an environment in which their co-workers can also perform their tasks well. One way to get a sense of the importance of contextual performance is to think about a worker who does his or her own task well, but who does not help out when co-workers are swamped, does not carry out any tasks not specified in his or her job description, does not communicate with others (except when needed to perform his or her task), and makes no effort to represent the organisation in a favourable light. It is hard to imagine that this individual would be thought of as a very valuable employee; but if his or her performance was judged solely in terms of performance on core job tasks, we would have to think of him or her as a success. There is clear evidence that supervisors and managers do (and should) consider contextual performance when evaluating their subordinates (Murphy & Cleveland, 1995), and the failure of earlier I/O psychologists to incorporate non-task behaviours into their definitions of the performance domain was a potentially serious one. Broadening our definition of the performance domain has a variety of consequences for I/O psychology. First, it is likely to lead to a more sophisticated understanding of what you can and cannot learn from job descriptions and job analyses. Job analysis is useful and, for some purposes, is absolutely critical; but an analysis that pays attention to individual job-specific tasks and ignores the effect of a workers behaviour on his or her co-workers will give a deficient picture of the job. Second, it is likely
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to lead to a more sophisticated understanding of the antecedents of job performance. If each individual does his or her tasks in isolation, it might be feasible to explain job performance largely in terms of ability, knowledge and motivation. If individuals depend on others when performing their jobs, social skills and personality factors are likely to become increasingly important as explanations for good and bad performance (Murphy & Shiarella, 1997).
Meta-Analysis of Cognitive Ability Tests
One of the most important advances in personnel selection has come as a result of the application of meta-analytic methods, particularly the methods of validity generalisation, to the substantial body of research on the validity of ability tests as predictors of job performance (Hunter & Schmidt, 1990; Salgado, Anderson, Moscoso, Bertua, & de Fruyt, 2003; Schmidt & Hunter, 1998). Consider the following example. You have a test that measures mechanical ability. You want to use it to predict the performance of machine operators in a large organisation. You have used this test before in other similar jobs and usually have found solid evidence of validity. Other people have used similar tests in a wide range of jobs and have also usually reported solid correlations between test scores and measures of performance. What should you do? Prior to the advent of meta-analytic methods, the answer would have been conduct another validity study, at least in part because you could never be scientifically confident that a test that had worked before in similar situations would also work in this particular situation. Rather, it was assumed that all selection systems were unique and that new validation research was needed in just about every new application of a particular test or assessment method. There was also an implicit assumption that the body of previous work on this test might not be relevant for making judgments about the validity of that test in this particular application, especially if prior validity studies had been conducted with different job titles, in different organisations. It is now recognised that existing validity studies provide important evidence, especially when it can be shown that a particular class of tests shows consistent validity across some range of settings and jobs. Metaanalyses suggest that the relationships between cognitive ability tests and measures of job performance in most jobs are both stronger and more consistent than once assumed. In particular, it is now widely accepted that reliable measures of cognitive abilities will yield scores that are positively correlated with measures of performance in virtually all jobs (Ree &
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Carretta, 2002; Ree & Earles, 1992; Ree, Earles, & Teachout, 1994; Salgado et al., 2003; Schmidt & Hunter, 1998). Implications of the finding that scores on cognitive ability tests are correlated with measures of performance in virtually any job are revolutionary. First, this means that we do not need complex job analyses, local validity studies, or detailed literature reviews to support the conclusion that cognitive ability tests will be valid predictors of performance in a particular job. Regardless of the content of the job, the weight of the available evidence leans very strongly in favour of the conclusion that cognitive tests will have at least some value as predictors of performance. More generally, this finding suggests that any adequate model of why people perform well or poorly in their jobs is likely to include cognitive ability as one of the key determinants of performance. Indeed, meta-analytic research results suggest that cognitive ability is virtually unique in terms of the consistency and level of validity it shows as a predictor of job performance (Schmidt & Hunter, 1998).
The Employment Interview
Twenty-five to 30 years ago, most I/O psychologists would have been certain of two things: (a) a new validation study is needed every time a test is used in some new context or job and (b) employment interviews are virtually worthless as predictors of job performance. Both of these statements have turned out to be wrong. For many years, reviews of the literature on the validity of employment interviews did indeed paint a discouraging picture (Arvey & Campion, 1982; Reilly & Chao, 1982). These reviews painted a depressing picture of low validity, low reliability and high levels of bias. However, it now appears that the fault was not with the interview per se but rather with the type of interview that is too often encountered in practice that is, poorly planned and haphazardly structured. Adding structure to the employment interview changes everything, usually for the better (Campion, Palmer, & Campion, 1998; Posthuma, Morgeson, & Campion, 2002). There are many ways to add structure to an employment interview, virtually all of which seem to improve the reliability, validity and fairness of outcomes. First, it is easy to standardise interviews by developing uniform scripts or questions. If we gave every student in a class a completely different exam, we would not expect to obtain scores that fairly reflected their knowledge. If we want to conduct interviews that tell us something useful about the applicant, a good starting point is to make sure that we ask similar questions of each applicant. Second, one might use a panel of interviewers rather than relying on the judgment of a single
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interviewer. If one person gives you a poor score, that might tell us more about that person than it tells us about you. If three people all give you a poor score, we can have more confidence that the score reflects the person being interviewed and not the individual biases of the interviewers. Third, a number of methods might be used to provide more consistency in scoring interviews, ranging from checklists and templates to frame of reference training (Schleicher & Day, 1998). There are many ways to add structure to employment interviews; the critical question is probably not how structure was imposed, but rather whether structure was imposed. Add structure and you will improve the employment interview.
Biodata
I/O psychologists have a long history of using biographical information to make decisions about people or to predict their future behaviour and performance (Stokes, Mumford, & Owens, 1994). For a long time, this literature was dominated by dustbowl empiricism, that is empirical demonstrations that biodata works without any clear explanation of when, where or why biodata should predict performance. Biodata scales have long been known to show relatively high levels of validity (Reilly & Chao, 1982; Schmidt & Hunter, 1998), but for much of the history of I/O psychology, biodata research was difficult to interpret because of the lack of underlying theories or models of what biodata really represents. In the last 10 to 20 years, a number of construct-oriented models have emerged that provide considerable order and coherence to biodata research (Mael, 1991; Mumford, Uhlman, & Kilcullen, 1992). Different papers stress somewhat different sets of constructs, but there is consensus that biographical data tells you about a number of constructs, including stability (e.g., how long have you been at your current address, number of job moves) and achievement (e.g., number of leadership positions and non-required activities in the past). Ecological models linking past experiences and behaviour with future behaviour also represent an advance in our thinking about biodata (Mumford, Stokes, & Owens, 1990). The empirical record of biodata is admirable, but I think the real story in the last 10 to 20 years has been the progress in understanding what biodata mean and why they help you to predict performance.
Goal-Setting Theory
Locke and his colleagues (see Locke & Latham, 1990, 2002) have conducted a sustained and productive program of research on motivation. The goalsetting theory that has emerged from this program of research provides the
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best of both worlds from the perspective of the scientistpractitioner model. That is, it provides clear guidelines for practice (e.g., it is best to set goals that are concrete, challenging and achievable; these produce more effort and persistence than goals that are either too easy or too difficult) combined with well-articulated theories and a great deal of empirical support. Goal-setting theory has provided important insights into dysfunctional outcomes of assigning unrealistic goals, as well as problems caused by relying on goals that are laudable but vague (e.g., do your best). It has also provided insight into factors that influence goal acceptance. More generally, it provides a vivid reminder of the key principle that you cannot motivate another person. No matter what the incentives, and no matter what goals an organisation or manager offers, motivation is ultimately a matter of what goals the individual sets or accepts. Leaders can and should influence goal-setting behaviours of their subordinates, but motivation depends strongly on decisions that recipients of incentives, directives, or suggestions make, and the leader who wishes to influence the motivation of his or her subordinates will ultimately have to consider ways of getting subordinates to accept and internalise goals.
The Psychological Contract
When you join an organisation, club, or group, you come into the situation with some understanding of what you can expect from the group and what the group can expect from you. These contracts may be formal, detailed, written documents, but most often there are psychological contracts in addition to the formal legal documents that we typically think of as contracts. Psychological contracts represent implicit agreements between people and organisations, and they can be a very powerful mechanism for explaining the relationships among organisation members (Eisenberger, Cummings, Armeli, & Lynch, 1997; Morrison & Robinson, 1997; Robinson, 1996). Psychological contracts turn out to be important constructs for understanding a wide range of phenomena, including assessments of justice, fairness and equity, organisational citizenship, counter-productivity and theft. They can be at the heart of conflicts, office politics and backstabbing, but they can also be the glue that binds members of an organisation together. Perhaps their most important feature is that they are often implicit and unspoken. Thus, workers might enter organisations expecting things like respect, support, job security or consideration, believing that the organisation has implicitly promised these things. Organisations might expect their employees to show loyalty, to make sacrifices for the organisations interest, to internalise organisational values and believe that
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employees owe these things to the organisation. Many conflicts and a good deal of dissatisfaction by both employers and employees may be traced to implicit understandings that are not fulfilled for example, an employee expects job security while an employer expects loyalty, and even though neither side actually requested or promised these things, both sides will be disappointed if they are not delivered. Psychological contracts have become increasingly important as the nature of the commitments that employees make to organisations and that organisations make to employees change. A generation ago, the American economy was one of the few in the world that was booming, and organisations made implicit (and sometimes explicit) promises of lifetime employment, excellent benefits and generous retirement packages. It is clear that implicit promises of this sort (often offered on the expectation that this security and these benefits should pretty much guarantee employee loyalty and commitment) are no longer the norm, but it is not yet clear exactly what has taken their place. As a result, it is likely that employees are entering organisations with a fairly wide range of expectations and, if these are not made explicit, it is almost certain that some employees will end up happy and some will end up dissatisfied as a result of the organisations ability and willingness to live up to their idea of its obligations. Similarly, workers are likely to have some range of views about the amount of support, longevity and help that their organisations will provide, again with some people ending up happy and others ending up bitterly disappointed by what they perceive to be an organisations violations of their implicit contracts.
Misbehaviour in Organisations
The main concerns of I/O psychology have often revolved around issues such as performance and productivity, which can be thought of as an analysis of why people do what they are supposed to do in the workplace well or poorly. It is important to understand why people do what they are supposed to do, but equally important to understand why they sometimes break rules or laws or violate norms. A number of researchers have devoted attention to understanding why (sometimes) good people do bad things at work (e.g., Hogan, 1994; Murphy, 1993; Robinson & Bennett, 1995; Sackett, 2002; Sackett & DeVore, 2002). This research has helped shed light on the dimensions, antecedents and consequences of counterproductive behaviour; on the causes and consequences of conscientiousness and integrity; on dysfunctional leadership; and on incivility, harassment, bullying, and violence. Research on misbehaviour in organisations is important for a number
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of reasons. First, organisational misbehaviour has consequences that often go far beyond specific violations. Violence, dishonesty, incivility and antisocial norms are all likely to have a corrosive effect on the workgroup, and are likely to contribute to work stress, negative perceptions of organisations, unfavourable work attitudes, turnover and a host of other negative consequences for individuals and organisations. Second, these are outcomes that are correctly viewed as very important to organisations. It is often difficult for I/O psychologists to convince organisational decision makers of the value of their services (Latham & Whyte, 1994), in part because it is difficult for managers and executives to visualise what would be different if performance were to improve by a small amount, or if turnover could be slightly reduced. Managers and executives are likely to have less difficulty believing that their organisations will benefit if we can design interventions that reduce counterproductive behaviour, dishonesty, or violations of laws, rules and policies.
Misses
As with my list of hits, I start with two issues that I think are pertinent to the field of I/O psychology as a whole, and then move on to more specific content areas in which I think I/O psychology has been less successful.
Servants of Power
I/O psychologists have long been criticised as servants of power, devoting a great deal of time and energy to helping corporations increase profitability and little time to workers concerns or those of the broader society in which corporations exist (Lefkowitz, 2003; Zickar, 2004). I think that this criticism is on target. I/O psychologists are generally more interested, for example, in whether workers are productive than whether they are happy or healthy. Even when we do show concern for the welfare of workers, this concern often seems to be motivated more by benefits that accrue to organisations. For example, if I can develop an intervention that makes workers happier, it might also make them less likely to be absent or to leave. I served as editor of Journal of Applied Psychology from 1996 until 2002. During that period, we used the taxonomy presented in Table 2 to classify the great majority of manuscripts we received (about 3,000 manuscripts during my tenure as editor). It is striking that most of these categories refer to strategies used by organisations to improve their performance and profitability (e.g., Job analysis, Recruitment, Personnel selection, Training, Motivation, Organisational socialisation, Leadership). Even in the area of personality, most papers during this
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TABLE 2 Most Common Topics for Submissions to Journal of Applied Psychology 19962002 Topic
Job analysis Personnel selection Motivation Organisational socialisation
Topic
Recruitment Training Leadership Work attitudes
Careers
Personality
period were concerned with the use of personality measures to predict and improve job performance There is nothing surprising or sinister about our relatively strong focus on the concerns of management; it is management that usually makes decisions about giving us access to data, paying the bills, or implementing our suggestions. Nevertheless, I do think that our relative lack of concern for the experience of work, the meaning of work or the impact of work on families is a shortcoming. All these topics have received some attention within I/O psychology, and some (e.g., workfamily interactions) are becoming increasingly important. Nevertheless, our field is still myopically focused on concerns of managers and shareholders; we would be better off with a broader set of perspectives.
Focus on Management and Large Organisations
I/O psychologists are in the unfortunate position of knowing a lot about a little. In particular, I/O research tends to focus on large organisations, on managers and supervisors and on private-sector (and a handful of publicsector) organisations. This is an important slice of the world, but only a slice. Many people work in small businesses; according to the 2000 Census, 38% of US employers had 1 to 4 employees, 71% had fewer than 20 employees, and more than 35% of all employees worked in firms employing fewer than 100 workers. Most workers are not (and never will be) managers. Some of the largest employers are public-sector organisations (including the military) and non-profit organisations, which are typically undersampled in I/O research. Therefore, much of what we know about behaviour in organisations may not apply as broadly as we think. The type of large, stable, bureaucratic organisations that I/O psychologists understand so well may be a dying breed (Landy & Conte, 2004). We know little about the great majority of workplaces, especially very small businesses. Why, then, do we focus our attention on such a narrow segment of the workforce? First, it is very hard to get access to the sorts
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of workplaces where so much of the population is employed. Small businesses rarely have the time or the resources to hire consultants, send representatives to conferences, or send their employees off for graduate degrees, and thus have few opportunities to ever come into contact with I/O psychologists. Second, the payoff for forming a working relationship with a small organisation is likely to be small, in part because there are not enough divisions, job titles or participants to allow for the sort of large-scale data collection that is common in larger organisations. Third, the sort of motivation (e.g., opportunities to maximise profit or minimise losses) that often pushes managers in large private-sector organisations to consider the services of I/O psychologists might not be relevant in many workplaces (e.g., the military). It is not surprising that small businesses, not-for-profit enterprises and jobs in the military are underrepresented in I/O research, but it is still a cause for concern.
Content Validity
Since the 1950s, the practice of evaluating the validity of tests by examining their content has been recognised as a potentially useful approach. In the field of I/O psychology, content validity has taken on a specific meaning that is both unique and important. In particular, I/O psychologists have used examinations of the content of tests to draw inferences about the validity of those tests as predictors of performance or effectiveness in a particular job. In essence, this strategy for validating selection tests rests on the argument that if the content of tests overlaps in some way with the content of jobs, then those tests should be valid predictors of job performance. The practice of estimating the predictive validity of selection tests by comparing the content of tests with the content of jobs has long been controversial (Guion, 1977, 1978), and for good reason. There are at least two important problems with the content validation strategy. First, there is little real evidence that assessments of content validity are useful for determining whether test scores are related to important criteria (Carrier, Dalessio, & Brown, 1990). It is well-known that similarity between the content of a test and the content of a job is not necessary; many cognitive tests that show consistent evidence of validity as predictors of job performance are based on content that is abstract, generalised and often far removed from job tasks. What is not known is whether similarity between the job and the test is sufficient to guarantee validity. For decades, we have proceeded on the assumption that judgments about matched job and test content have some value as evidence of predictive validity, but this assumption has little empirical support.
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Second, there are no consistent rules or standards for assessing content validity (Burns, 1996). Content validity judgments typically rely on subjective assessments of linkages or similarities between the manifest content of test items and the surface features of the job, and there is little real science to support the validity of these judgments or even to tell us how experts make them. Perhaps the most distressing aspect of content validity studies is that their outcomes are sometimes easiest to predict by knowing who is paying the I/O psychologists bills. I have come across content validity most frequently in the context of employment litigation, and my experience in every case has been that the plaintiffs I/O psychologist will doubt the content validity of a test and that the defendants expert will uphold the content validity of the same test. I dont think that this is because of dishonesty or corruption on the part of competing experts. Rather, it is the natural outcome when completely unstructured and subjective judgments are required. Like the referee who tends to make calls in favour of the home team, I/O psychologists asked to make subjective judgments about content validity tend to show biases in favour of their particular side of the argument.
Organisational Effectiveness
In 2001, Enron was ranked #7 in the Fortune 500 and was widely regarded as one of the most successful, effective organisations in the world. It is now clear that the financial success of Enron was at times more apparent than real, but if effectiveness was defined solely in terms of variables like growth in stock price or profits it would be hard to argue with the proposition that Enron was a highly effective organisation, at least until some of its senior executives got caught. It is clear that any adequate definition of organisational effectiveness should include measures of financial performance, but that it should not be limited to those measures (Freeman, 1984; Huselid, Jackson, & Schuler, 1997). Unfortunately, very little else is clear in discussions of organisational effectiveness. Despite decades of discussion of the construct of organisational effectiveness, it is still not very clear what an effective organisation would look like. There is, at best, incomplete agreement about the criteria that should define organisational effectiveness; performance and productivity criteria are on everyones list, but beyond that almost anything goes. There is even less agreement regarding the time frame over which effectiveness should be evaluated. Consider, for example, your evaluation of the effectiveness of NASA. From the 1960s through to the 1980s, NASA was viewed as a highly effective organisation (the movie Apollo 13 captured what was arguably the high point of NASAs reputation), but since the
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1990s, the agency has failed in ways that are both tragic (loss of life on two space shuttle flights) and comic (a Mars orbiter crashed because of a failure to use the metric system consistently). Is NASA effective? It probably depends strongly on ones timeframe. The most important shortcoming of measures and definitions of organisational effectiveness is the general failure to consider the perspective of all relevant stakeholders. Stockholders and executives might have very different visions of what defines effectiveness than workers and their families do, and members of the community in which the organisation functions might use different criteria than those of stockholders, executives or employees. Customers will emphasise different criteria to suppliers. The point is that many stakeholders have a valid interest in determining the definition of an effective organisation, and it is unlikely that any definition of organisational effectiveness will be satisfactory to everyone.
Meta-Analyses of Most Non-ability Constructs
Meta-analyses of cognitive ability tests have had a profound effect on both research and practice. These analyses have led to a substantial reassessment of the validity of these tests, and seem to provide solid support for the conclusion that these tests are valid for virtually all jobs. Meta-analyses of measures of most other constructs that are important to I/O psychologists have not yielded the same obvious benefits. Perhaps this is a function of setting the bar too high; meta-analysis virtually revolutionised thinking about the validity and value of cognitive ability tests (Murphy, 2003). Nevertheless, in comparison with its effects on our thinking about cognitive ability, it is hard to point to other domains within I/O psychology in which meta-analysis made a comparable difference. Consider, for example, meta-analyses of the validity of personality inventories as predictors of job performance. In one sense, these have led to a renaissance in personality testing in the workplace, because these analyses do suggest that personality measures have some validity as predictors (Barrick & Mount, 1991; Barrick, Mount, & Judge, 2001). However, meta-analysis has also made it clear that the sort of broad personality traits that were the focus of meta-analytic research in the 1990s and beyond generally show quite low levels of predictive validity, and that they look good only in comparison with previous assumptions that they showed no validity whatsoever (Murphy & Dzieweczynski, 2005). There is a more serious problem that occurs in meta-analyses of nonability constructs, which involves aggregating findings across studies
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using measures that are not interchangeable. Most ability tests use similar items to measure overlapping constructs (all tests in this domain measure the same general ability); but in other domains, different indices often measure different constructs, even though they might use similar labels. This makes it difficult to interpret the results of meta-analyses (many of which tend to produce murky results in any case). It also leads to serious missing data problems that would not loom so large if more easily interchangeable tests were used. Suppose, for example, that you are interested in the relationship between job satisfaction and job performance, and that you review literature that includes five measures of job satisfaction and seven measures of performance. Within each of these domains, there is certainly shared variance, but it is unlikely that you would consider seven different performance measures or five different satisfaction measures as interchangeable. One implication is that if you want to estimate the relationship between the constructs of satisfaction and performance, you will need to know, or at least estimate 66 different correlations (i.e., the 5 5 matrix of correlations among satisfaction measures, the 7 7 matrix of correlations among performance measures, and the 5 7 matrix of correlations between satisfaction and performance measures). It is unlikely that your meta-analysis will allow you to fill in this matrix with any confidence. There are methods for estimating elements of meta-analytic correlation matrices with missing values (Furlow & Beretvas, 2005), but they require assumptions that are rarely met in practice. My conclusion is that even meta-analyses of non-ability constructs that seem to produce clear results actually rarely include the sort of data needed to support conclusions about relationships among constructs that are measured in different ways in different studies.
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence (EI) is one of the hottest topics in the current organisational literature (see Matthews, Zeidner, & Roberts, 2003; Murphy, 2006). It is claimed that emotional intelligence is an important determinant of success in school, in the workplace and in social settings, and that it may be more critical to success than cognitive ability (Goleman, 1995, 1998). As a result, emotional intelligence has become a buzzword in many organisations, and EI consultants seem to be doing a booming business. It seems clear that most of the attention-grabbing claims regarding EI are either exaggerated or completely wrong (Matthews et al., 2003; Murphy, 2006). There is little credible evidence that emotional intelligence is an important or unique predictor of performance, or that it is
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more important than cognitive ability in predicting any broad criteria (Murphy, 2006). While there are some potentially interesting ideas in the EI literature, the concept has not lived up to the hype. One of the key problems in this literature is that there are several fundamentally different conceptions and definitions of emotional intelligence. Mayer and Salovey (1997) developed a model of emotional intelligence that is clearly defined and empirically grounded; this version defines EI in terms of a relatively small set of specific abilities that involve dealing with social and emotional information. Golemans (1995) model is considerably more expansive, defining EI as a broad set of more than 20 competencies that span a tremendous range of abilities, preferences and personality traits. Scientific support for this broader model is much less impressive. Managers and consultants are enthralled with broad models similar to Golemans (1995), which sometimes promise much and deliver little. Researchers prefer ability-based models (Mayer & Salovey, 1997) that are better supported, but that lead to much more modest predictions. Scientistpractitioners find EI especially frustrating because the version of EI that is most likely to appeal to organisations is based on shaky science, while the scientifically respectable version of EI has relatively little to offer in terms of applications.
360-Degree Feedback
Another hot topic in the research and business press is the idea that multiple sources should be involved in providing people feedback about their performance and effectiveness (Harris & Schaubroeck, 1988; London, Smither, & Adsit, 1997; Murphy, Cleveland, & Mohler, 2001). A variety of approaches fall under the heading of 360-degree feedback, all of which incorporate some mix of performance ratings and feedback from supervisors, subordinates, peers and customers, as well as self-ratings. On the surface, the idea of seeking multiple sources of information makes perfect sense. However, there are serious problems inherent in most 360-degree systems. Most important, performance ratings from different sources almost always disagree (Murphy et al., 2001). Supervisors see and know about different aspects of your performance than subordinates and peers do; external evaluators (e.g., customers) are likely to have different standards and frames of reference for evaluating performance than will be found within an organisation. Disagreement is likely to be the norm, and people who receive different evaluations and feedback from different sources will almost certainly discount some, and perhaps much of what they hear. Second, recipients of inconsistent feedback are likely to be selective in what they accept and reject. Negative feedback is general27
ly perceived by recipients as less useful and less accurate than is positive feedback; the fact that recipients are likely to receive more positive evaluations from at least one source provides a built-in excuse to discount and ignore negative feedback they receive from other sources. While the concept behind 360-degree feedback (i.e., multiple sources of information) seems very reasonable, these systems seem to be built for failure. They will typically produce discrepant feedback and will provide users with solid reasons to ignore much of the negative feedback they receive.
Pay for Performance
The assumption that rewards should be linked to performance, and that establishing clear links between performance and rewards will motivate workers and improve performance is widely accepted. This assumption is arguably one of the foundations of the capitalist system, and variations of this assumption are implicit in the reward systems of organisations throughout history. However, empirical assessments of pay for performance systems rarely show much evidence of the supposed effects on workers levels of motivation and performance (Milkovich & Wigdor, 1991). These systems can work under some circumstances, but they rarely do work. There are several explanations for the frequent failure of pay for performance systems. First, they rely on the assumption that performance can be measured with reasonable precision. In most organisations, performance appraisal systems are unlikely to achieve the level of precision and accuracy that these systems seem to require and, more to the point, employees rarely believe that performance appraisals provide accurate, unbiased assessments of their performance (Milkovich & Wigdor, 1991; Murphy & Cleveland, 1995). As a result, any system that claims to link pay with performance is likely to be suspect. Second, the assumption that increasing pay will lead to increases in motivation, effort or performance, is not necessarily correct. Money is not a particularly powerful reward, especially in cases where reward levels are already high (e.g., offering a professional baseball player a $10,000 raise will often be interpreted as an insult). Kahneman and Tverskys (1979) prospect theory provides one explanation for the nonlinear function linking money and satisfaction. Third, linking pay to performance probably serves to lower the already questionable validity and accuracy of performance ratings, because supervisors must consider the possible effects of pay increases and decreases on the ability of their workgroups to function when assigning ratings (Murphy & Cleveland, 1995) and it probably also increases dissatisfaction with performance appraisals.
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Maslows Need Hierarchy
Virtually every textbook and every survey course in Industrial and Organisational Psychology that I have encountered includes a discussion of Maslows need hierarchy theory. This widely taught theory proposes that the rewards and outcomes that motivate behaviour change as people progress through a fixed hierarchy of needs. In particular, the theory suggests that people are first driven by their physiological needs (e.g., food and water), and as long as these remain unfulfilled, they will not be motivated to fulfil other needs. Once physiological needs are met, people are assumed to focus on safety needs (e.g., shelter, safety from harm), then progress to social needs, self-esteem needs and finally self-actualisation needs (i.e., needs to become a complete and authentic person). This theory assumes that some people never move up to the level of higher-order needs, and it carries the clear implication that people who are pursuing higher-order needs are better, more advanced and more mature than those fixated on lower-order needs. In one sense, the theory is almost certainly correct. If you are inside a burning house, you probably dont spend much time working on your self-esteem. However, the test of a scientific theory of motivation is not whether it says some things that are obviously true, but rather whether it accounts for the data and advances our understanding of peoples behaviour. It has long been known that empirical support for Maslows theory is weak (Wahba & Bridwell, 1976). None of the key ideas in this theory (e.g., that people are motivated by one set of needs at a time, that these needs are hierarchically organised, that frustration of a lower-order need will cause people to abandon pursuit of higher-order needs, that people pursuing higher-order needs are healthier, better adjusted, or more mature than people pursuing lower-order needs) has received much empirical support, nor is it likely that such support will be forthcoming in future research. Weaknesses of the Maslow model have been well known for over 40 years, but the model will not go away. Like creationism and intelligent design theories (alternatives suggested by sceptics of Darwinian evolution), Maslows model seems to be sustained mainly on the basis of peoples assumptions about what should be true, not by the evidence. It is well past time to drop this relic from I/O psychology textbooks.
Organisational Climate
Organisational climate is an important construct referring to a phenomenon that almost anyone who has worked in a number of organisations will recognise that different workplaces have different rules and norms and that it
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just feels different to do similar work in different organisations. Organisational climate is one of the more common topics in I/O research, and there is undoubtedly value in trying to understand, measure and explain organisational climates (Denison, 1996; Moran & Volkwein, 1992). The main problem with the organisational climate construct is that its referent is often unclear. Is climate a property of the organisation or the perceivers? Do organisations have climates, or do people merely act as if there are climates? What is the right level of analysis for defining and making sense of climates? For example, if I want to talk about the climate of the organisation in which I work, should I focus on the Pennsylvania State University, the College of the Liberal Arts, the Department of Psychology, the I/O psychology area, or the group of faculty, staff and students I most regularly interact with? In my view, organisational climate is in some ways similar to emotional intelligence. There is almost certainly something there and it is probably important, but it is very hard to get a concrete handle on what organisational climate really means. As a result, the causes and consequences of variations in organisational climate are also unclear. The debate over the meaning of organisational climate does not seem to be moving any closer to closure over the last 20 years, and it is possible that this concept is one that simply will never work out.
Lessons Learned
I think that there are two key lessons to be learned from this enumeration of hits and misses. First, hits represent areas in which there has usually been progress on three separate fronts theory, empirical support and application. Noteworthy examples include developments in our understanding of job performance, improvements in the employment interview, advances in biodata and goal setting. Many of the misses, in turn, seem to result from weaknesses in underlying theories and models (e.g., emotional intelligence, organisational effectiveness), weakness in the empirical support for an apparently reasonable idea (e.g., 360-degree feedback, pay for performance), or both (e.g., Maslows need hierarchy). Psychologists are fond of saying There is nothing so practical as a good theory (this quote is usually attributed to Kurt Lewin, but has also been attributed to William James, James C Maxwell, and Henri Poincar), but considered alone, strong data or a strong theory does not make for a hit. Rather, theory and data need to work together, and they should all work in the service of application, broadly conceived. I/O psychology has been successful, in part because it has mostly managed to avoid two tendencies that have bedevilled other fields: (a) Dustbowl
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empiricism and (b) Lawnmower worship. Dustbowl empiricism is a familiar term, and while some areas of I/O psychology have been characterised by lots of data and little theory (e.g., the early history of biodata was dominated by empirically-based and largely atheoretical models), this is not the dominant strategy in our field. I coined the term Lawnmower worship to represent the opposite tendency in research, a tendency to treat the theory as the main focus. Theories are extremely useful tools (like lawnmowers), but someone who cares more about the tool than the task those tools were designed to accomplish is in danger of creating empty and pointless structures. To illustrate this point, let me pick on an allied discipline, management. The two leading journals in this field, Academy of Management Review (AMR) and Academy of Management Journal (AMJ), share an interesting characteristic a requirement that all articles advance theory. AMR is dedicated to papers that develop and advance theory, and it does not consider empirical research for publication. AMJ considers empirical papers, but there is a requirement (sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit, depending on the editor) that all papers submitted to the journal advance theory as well as presenting data. Advancing theory is certainly a good thing, but making a fetish of theory leads to the paradoxical situation in which theories become increasingly complex and convoluted as each new paper is presented. The net result is a proliferation of theories and the detailed elaboration of each new theory to the point where it starts to teeter and fall. I think the requirement that every piece of research must advance theory leads to bad theory, and I also think that this overemphasis on theory means that the field misses out on important findings. A paper that presents important data, that shows how knowledge could be used to solve important problems, but that does not advance theory will not even be considered in these fine journals, and this strikes me as counterproductive. The balance between theory and data is important. So is the balance between rigour and practicality. I/O psychology is a field in which both science and practice is important, and this requires balanced rigour. Rigour without applicability leads to science without practice. Application without rigour leads to practice without science. I/O psychology is most successful when there is a good mix of theory, data, rigour and applicability. As long as we pay attention to this mix, I think that the list of hits is likely to grow.
References
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Anderson, N., Ones, D. S., Singangil, H. K., & Viswesvaran, C. (2002b). Handbook of industrial, work and organizational psychology, Vol. 2. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Arvey, R. D., & Campion, J. E. (1982). The employment interview: A summary and review of recent research. Personnel Psychology, 35, 281322. Barrick, M. R., & Mount, M. K. (1991). The Big Five personality dimensions and job performance: A meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 44, 126. Barrick, M. R., Mount, M. K., & Judge, T. A. (2001). Personality and performance at the beginning of the new millennium: What do we know and where do we go next? International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 9, 930 Borman, W. C. (2004). The concept of organizational citizenship. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13, 238241. Borman, W. C., & Motowidlo, S. J. (1997). Task performance and contextual performance: Their meaning for personnel selection research. Human Performance, 10, 99109. Burns, W. C. (1996). Content validity, face validity, and quantitative face validity. In R. Barrett (Ed.), Fair employment strategies in human resource management (pp. 3846). Westport, CT: Quorum Books. Campion, M. A., Palmer, D. K., & Campion, J. E. (1998). Structuring employment interviews to improve reliability, validity and users reactions. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 7, 7782. Carrier, M. R., Dalessio, A. T., & Brown, S. H. (1990). Correspondence between estimates of content and criterion-related validity values. Personnel Psychology, 43, 85100. Cohen, J. (1994). The earth is round (p < .05). American Psychologist, 49, 9971003. Dawes, R. (1996). House of cards: Psychology and psychotherapy built on myth. New York: Free Press. Denison, R. (1996). Organizational climate? A natives point of view on a decade of paradigm wars. Academy of Management Review, 21, 619654. Eisenberger, R., Cummings, J., Armeli, S., & Lynch, P. (1997). Perceived organizational support, treatment, and job satisfaction. Journal of Applied Psychology, 82, 812820. Freeman, R. E. (1984). Strategic management: A stakeholder approach. Boston: Pitman. Furlow, C. F., & Beretvas, S. N. (2005). Meta-analytic methods of pooling correlation matrices for structural equation modeling under different patterns of missing data. Psychological Methods, 10, 227254. Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam. Goleman, D. (1998). Working with emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam. Guion, R. M. (1977). Content validity: The source of my discontent. Applied Psychological Measurement, 1, 110. Guion, R. M. (1978). Content validity in moderation. Personnel Psychology, 31, 205213. Harris, M. H., & Schaubroeck, J. (1988). A meta-analysis of self-supervisory, self-peer, and peer-supervisory ratings. Personnel Psychology, 41, 4362. Hogan, R. J. (1994). Trouble at the top: Causes and consequences of managerial incompetence. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research. Special Issue: Issues in the assessment of managerial and executive leadership, 46, 915.
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Murphy, K. R. (1993). Honesty in the workplace. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole. Murphy, K. R. (2003). Validity generalization: A critical review. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Murphy, K. R. (2006). A critique of emotional intelligence: What are the problems and how can they be fixed? Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Murphy, K. R., & Cleveland, J. N. (1995). Understanding performance appraisal: Social, organizational and goal-oriented perspectives. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Murphy, K. R, Cleveland, J. N., & Mohler, C. (2001). Reliability, validity and meaningfulness of multisource ratings. In D. Bracken, C. Timmreck, & A. Church (Eds). Handbook of multisource feedback (pp. 130148). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Murphy, K. R., & Dzieweczynski, J. L. (2005). Why dont measures of broad dimensions of personality perform better as predictors of job performance? Human Performance, 18, 343357. Murphy, K. R., & Saal, F. E. (1990). Psychology in organizations: Integrating science and practice. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Murphy, K. R., & Shiarella, A. (1997). Implications of the multidimensional nature of job performance for the validity of selection tests: Multivariate frameworks for studying test validity. Personnel Psychology, 50, 823854. OGorman, J. G. (2001). The scientistpractitioner model and its critics. Australian Psychologist. Special Issue: Training in clinical and counseling psychology, 36, 164169. Organ, D. W. (1988). Organizational citizenship behavior: The good soldier syndrome. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. Posthuma, R. A., Morgeson, F. P., & Campion, M. A. (2002). Beyond employment interview validity: A comprehensive narrative review of recent research and trends over time. Personnel Psychology, 55, 181. Ree, M. J., & Carretta, T. R. (2002). G2K. Human Performance, 15, 223. Ree, M. J., & Earles, J. A. (1992). Intelligence is the best predictor of job performance. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 1, 8689. Ree, M. J., Earles, J. A., & Teachout, M. S. (1994). Predicting job performance: Not much more than g. Journal of Applied Psychology, 79, 518524. Reilly, R. R., & Chao, G. T. (1982). Validity and fairness of some alternate employee selection procedures. Personnel Psychology, 35, 167. Robinson, S. (1996). Trust and breach of the psychological contract. Administrative Science Quarterly, 41, 574599. Robinson, S. L., & Bennett, R. J. (1995). A typology of deviant workplace behaviors: A multidimensional scaling study. Academy of Management Journal, 38, 555572. Rogelberg, S. (2002). Handbook of research methods in industrial and organizational psychology. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Sackett, P. R. (2002). The structure of counterproductive work behaviors: Dimensionality and relationships with facets of job performance. International Journal of Selection and Assessment. Special Issue: Counterproductive behaviors at work, 10, 511. Sackett, P. R., & DeVore, C. J. (2002). The structure of counterproductive work behaviors: Dimensionality and relationships with facets of job performance. In N. Anderson, D. Ones, H. Sinangil, & C. Viswesvaran (Eds.), Handbook of industrial,
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work and organizational psychology (Vol 1: Personnel psychology, pp. 145164). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Salgado, J. F., Anderson, N., Moscoso, S., Bertua, C., & de Fruyt, F. (2003). International validity generalization of GMA and cognitive abilities: A European Community meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 56, 573605. Schmidt, F. L., & Hunter, J. E. (1998). The validity and utility of selection methods in personnel psychology: Practical and theoretical implications of 85 years of research findings. Psychological Bulletin, 124, 262274. Schleicher, D. J., & Day, D. V. (1998). A cognitive evaluation of frame-of-reference rater training: Content and process issues. Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Processes, 73, 76101. Stokes, G. S., Mumford, M. D., & Owens, W. A. (1994). Biodata handbook: Theory, research, and use of biographical information in selection and performance prediction. Palo Alto, CA: CPP Books. Wahba, M. A., & Bridwell, L. G. (1976). Maslow reconsidered: A review of research on the need hierarchy theory. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 15, 212240. Zickar, M. J. (2004). An analysis of industrialorganizational psychologys indifference to labor unions in the United States. Human Relations, 57, 145167.
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SECTION
II
Perspectives on Workplace Health: Wellbeing, Safety, Stress and Support
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Introduction to Section II
The seven chapters in this section all relate to various aspects of workplace health a testimony to the growing importance of this topic within workplaces, as well as the high level of research activity that characterises this broad field. The section opens with three chapters that deliver strong conceptual reviews of their respective fields (McArdle & Waters; Brough et al.; Branch et al.), which are complemented by four sound empirical studies (Donatelli & Sevastos; Timms et al.; Hannam & Jimmieson; Wills et al.). McArdle and Waters opening chapter to this section is an excellent example of carefully crafted scholarship that examines relevant literature in a field to develop a conceptual model that can generate not only research hypotheses, but also useful practical outcomes in this case in the area of employability. Brough et al.s important contribution explores a topic that is increasingly a challenge for workers at all levels in organisations in many parts of the world that of conflicts between work and family responsibilities and how to resolve them. In their interesting review chapter, Branch et al. address an important social as well as workplace issue that of bullying, in this case taking the less commonly adopted perspective of upwards bullying. In the first empirical chapter of this book, Donatelli and Sevastos deliver an excellent example of how to address the complex set of variables that are associated with wellbeing at work. The chapter by Timms, Graham, and Caltabiano is a fine illustration of the care that should be exercised when developing appropriate measures and analyses for a study, based upon sound concepts. While also based upon a teacher sample, the empirical study described by
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Hannam and Jimmieson provides a valuable contrast with that of Timms et al., using a moderated rather than a mediated form of multiple regression. Together these two chapters are an excellent example of the appropriate use of these forms of statistical analysis. Another form of regression analysis logistic regression, is among the techniques used by Wills, Watson, and Biggs in their important contribution on organisational safety climate and the behaviour of workers who drive as a major aspect of their work.
Unemployment and Employability
In this chapter, McArdle and Waters use an employability model comprising three antecedents adaptability, career identity, and human/social capital, to explore the important social issue of unemployment. After a broad-ranging literature review, the authors address employability in respect of self-esteem and job search during unemployment, and the nature and quality of re-employment. The model used by McArdle and Waters treats employability as a psychosocial construct. For example, the psychological adaptability factor comprises: optimism, learning propensity, openness, internal locus of control and generalised self-efficacy components. The human/social capital factor is concerned with an individuals social networks and social support, as well as their career-related knowledge and skills. The model is an elegant example of one that can be tested using an SEM approach, and links the three antecedents through the latent variable of employability through moderator/mediator variables (self-esteem, job search) to re-employment and re-employment quality outcomes. It is a fine illustration of how to set about developing a model for testing and, in the latter part of their chapter, the authors describe how the model can lead to further empirical work. There is also important information in this chapter for practitioners involved in helping unemployed individuals to improve their likelihood of obtaining (re)employment. For example, attention could usefully be paid to enhancing generic factors known to be associated with a higher likelihood of obtaining (re)employment, including self-esteem and self-efficacy, as well as more directly influencing individuals proactive behaviours particularly job search. Other factors that practitioners could usefully address in respect of helping unemployed individuals to identify suitable employment include career anchors, career identity and career goals. By reviewing much of the relevant literature to develop a model that incorporates key variables, the chapter can provide helpful guidance for practitioners in focusing upon factors that are likely to be most critical for unemployed people seeking employment.
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Achieving WorkFamily Balance
The workfamily balance topic of Brough et al.s chapter is important not only to the millions of working individuals who experience problems in this area, but also for employing organisations. After a wellstructured literature review that addresses key issues associated with the operationalisation and measurement of the most important constructs in this field, the authors conclude that it is individuals perceptions of satisfaction and facilitation that are particularly important. Usefully, the authors adopt a comparative approach to their review of organisations family-friendly policy and practices. Brough et al. also explore moderator effects of individual level variables, including gender, social support, trust in management, degree of involvement, time management, and career stage, upon interference between work and family arenas in both directions. The chapter provides an extensive review of this important field. The ubiquity of workfamily balance conflicts in organisations means that this chapter has some potentially important pointers for practitioners. By reviewing a number of initiatives that have been employed by organisations to address workfamily balance problems for workers including part-time work, shorter shifts, job sharing and other flexible work options, the authors review provides practitioners whose work leads them into the workfamily balance area with a number of possible options for clients. As the dwindling supply of skilled labour in a number of countries becomes an increasing problem for many organisations, employers will need sound advice on which particular family-friendly policies are most appropriate for their circumstances in respect of recruiting and retaining the skills that they need to maintain levels of effectiveness and competitiveness. Practitioners can also take heed of the range of potential family-friendly strategies available for organisations, including: telecommuting, workplace childcare and supportive supervision. While the extent of family-friendly workplace legislation differs considerably between countries, this need not be a barrier to organisations being proactive in respect of making arrangements to suit their particular circumstances.
Upwards Bullying
Arguably the most important conceptual contribution made by Branch et al. in their chapter on upwards bullying is that to attain a comprehensive understanding of organisational processes underlying bullying, it is essential to appreciate its full possible extent. Thus, this chapter provides a useful complement to the already substantial literature on downwards and
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horizontal bullying. A critical contribution of this chapter is the development of a viable conceptual framework for studying this phenomenon. In this case, the authors use a combination of power and dependency concepts along with social identity theory (SIT) to develop a greater understanding of bullying. Thus, differentiating between various sources of power can help to unpack the nature of the relationships that permit bullying to occur in different directions. Also relevant are group-based effects, as elucidated through SIT, as potential antecedents to bullying. These effects can be triggered by episodes or events that characterise organisational uncertainty for example, during times of change. As with workfamily balance issues, bullying is of concern not only to those individuals directly affected, but also to co-workers and to organisations in which the phenomenon is rife. Organisations affected by bullying can be impacted, inter alia, by reduced productivity and by greater absenteeism and staff turnover the annual estimated cost is immense. Therefore, it is axiomatic that this is a topic of concern to a great many practitioners. The authors point out that diagnosing the nature and extent of bullying within an organisation is an essential initial step in developing effective strategies to address the problem. For example, practitioners need to be sensitive to how perceptions of illegitimate power can interact with gender issues to affect bullying in instances of a female boss of a male subordinate. Practitioners also need to be aware that organisational change can trigger bullying, as the uncertainty produced can lead to bullying as one of a range of possible negative reactions. Practitioners who can reduce uncertainty for individuals and organisations can have important effects on this and other counterproductive work phenomena.
Analysing Warrs Vitamin Model
A review of the psychological literature emerged with the ratio of 375:1 of research focusing on peoples negative:positive aspects or capabilities (Luthans, 2002). As the positive psychology movement continues to gain strength and momentum as a result of the work of Martin Seligman and others, it is appropriate to be reminded that a handful of psychologists, including some notable organisational psychologists Peter Warr being prime among them have adopted this orientation for their research activity for over three decades. It is therefore highly appropriate that this book should include a chapter that focuses upon a positive aspect of work behaviour in this case wellbeing. After reviewing earlier wellbeing models, Donatelli and Sevastos consider Warrs unique contribution to this field with a focus on affective wellbeing and its three key dimensions: pleasure/displeasure, comfort/anxiety, and enthusiasm/depression. Based on
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findings from Warr and other researchers, that differential relationships exist between certain job features and the various dimensions and components of wellbeing (which also comprises competence, aspiration, autonomy and integrated functioning), Donatelli and Sevastos skilfully unpack the nature of the possible relationships within Warrs vitamin model framework. After critiquing previous limited methodological approaches to the complex relationships between variables, the authors explain the methodology of their simultaneous exploration of all components of Warrs model as an attempt to resolve previous inconsistencies in the research literature. The approach used canonical correlation relates a set of explanatory (e.g., workplace features) to a set of response (e.g., job outcomes) variables within a single multivariate analysis, and is supplemented in this case with two types of multiple regression. The study is an outstanding example of research that is soundly conceptually-based, develops an appropriate theoretical stance and uses sophisticated multivariate analyses to deliver a parsimonious account of relationships between complex sets of variables. Such research can truly assist practitioners in their work. Implications for practitioners of being conversant with the benefits of seeking to improve worker wellbeing are another example of how generic strategic initiatives to improve wellbeing at work can result in a variety of downstream benefits, including improved job performance and organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) likelihood on the one hand, and reduced absenteeism and resignation intentions on the other. Factors that Donatelli and Sevastos indicate are appropriate to address to make improvements to worker wellbeing include skill use and variety, supportive supervision and opportunity for personal control. An example of a strategic approach taken by a large pharmaceutical company is given by Glendon, Clarke, and Mckenna (2006), who described this organisations established program to promote workforce resilience. The company freely admits that the bottom line business success is the key driver for the program, rather than this being a humanistic initiative. Practitioners should also note that the complex relationships that are being shown to exist between different components of worker wellbeing and workplace features, while they might include similar variables to earlier models such as that of Maslow, they take us well beyond these simplistic approaches, as admirably critiqued by Murphy (section I).
Job Stress, Burnout and Trust
The chapter by Timms et al. reverses the polarity of the previous contribution by considering a constellation of variables relevant to burnout and stress in this case among a sample of teachers. After reviewing selected literature in the field, the authors address some key organisational
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variables that can impact stress and burnout among teachers or indeed among almost any group of staff within a large organisation with a heavy administrative load. Echoing a topic raised by Branch et al. (this volume) on various forms of power and bullying, Timms et al. examine trust as an important variable. Their empirical study focuses upon teacher perceptions of administrative (i.e., managerial) trustworthiness and how these relate to trust and burnout, as well as the potential mediating variables of morale and participation in decision-making. The authors presentation of the classic Baron and Kenny multiple regression procedure to test for mediation is an excellent illustration of its application. Trust/perceptions of trustworthiness is revealed to be an important variable in accounting for morale and participation in decision-making. The authors also demonstrate another desirable feature of research reporting, with a section describing limitations of their study. Timms et al. also have a section explicitly directed at identifying implications of their work for practitioners, which include appropriate leadership training for managers selected on the basis of their predisposition to trustworthy and ethical behaviours presaging later contributions on organisational justice (Greenberg, section III; Hooper & Martin, section III) as well as revisiting the workfamily balance feature discussed by Brough et al. (this section). However, the authors stress that only trusted senior managers should be allowed to coach or mentor junior staff. More generally, as with other contributions to this book, Timms et al. draw attention to key factors that can impact upon both positive and negative aspects of work behaviour, and that are therefore likely to be of interest to practitioners in their work. In this contribution, the critical variables focus upon the importance of trust between managers and other workers, including the asymmetrical nature of trust generally being slow and difficult to build, but which can be instantaneously shattered an illustration of the negative weighting bias. The authors report research showing that lack of trust within an organisation can result in unwillingness to take risks, demands for greater protection and for mechanisms to defend parties interests. Conversely, high levels of trust in an organisation can make facilitating change much easier and can act as a buffer when workload is high trust being another example of a strategic level organisational variable that can have multiple downstream effects both positive and negative. As worker efficacy is of key concern to practitioners and their clients, the critical role played by an organisations central administrative function and how
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these factors might be addressed, are certain to be of interest to these parties. Also of interest to practitioners could be an awareness that broader environmental factors (e.g., legal, political or economic) can also play an important role, and that they need to be able to identify outcomes that result from such factors as possibly being outside their sphere of competence to be able to address.
Organisational Citizenship Behaviours
Hannam and Jimmiesons empirical chapter continues the theme of teachers at work, in this case focusing upon behaviours that can either assist an organisation in its endeavours, or whose absence can make an organisations functioning more viscous organisational citizenship behaviours (OCBs). Echoing themes from the two previous contributions, these authors particular interest is in the relationship between OCB and personal accomplishment on the one hand, and emotional exhaustion on the other, as well as on the role of praise and recognition upon these relationships. Two separate studies confirm that while praise and recognition in general did not moderate the relation between OCB and the outcome variables, when identified as being from specific parties, praise and recognition from powerful parties in a teachers role set (principal, students parents) did interact with certain OCBs to predict both positive and negative outcomes. An important departure made by Hannam and Jimmieson from much of the traditional OCB literature is that this variable is treated here as a moderator or explanatory variable, rather than as an outcome or response variable. In their well-compiled literature review the authors explore the evidence on relationships between OCB and the moderating and outcome variables to develop a series of hypotheses. The studies described by these authors provide an excellent example of the care exercised by organisational psychology researchers in generating valid instruments and subjecting the resultant data to appropriate analyses in this case moderated multiple regression. These authors also outline limitations of their study as well as devoting a final brief section to some implications. Implications for practitioners include addressing appropriate organisational variables in the search for increased productivity and customer satisfaction for organisational clients, as well as obtaining useful outcomes for individuals. Of particular interest to practitioners is likely to be the important finding that rewarding behaviours such as praise and recognition are particularly likely to impact OCBs and other positive work behaviours if they emanate from significant others that is, from parties with high authority and credibility, as well as some degree of
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power over the individual or group concerned. Among implications identified by Hannam and Jimmieson is that work should be structured (e.g., through training, organisational activities and support) so as to maximise opportunities for workers to engage in OCBs. Organisational development initiatives could usefully be targeted towards encouraging a culture that incorporates recognition from powerful parties (e.g., senior managers). Leadership training should include demonstrating effective feedback techniques. This chapter is another impressive example of how a strong conceptual basis and well-structured statistical analysis can result in sound practical guidance.
Safety Climate and Driving
The chapter by Wills et al., at the interface between organisational and traffic psychology, serves as a valuable reminder that many peoples workplaces are not static entities. From another perspective, it is also worth remembering that for a great majority of workers, the skills that are required for their daily commute exceed those that they require to do their jobs. For many workers, driving is either a central or otherwise important component of their daily work. While it could be argued that insufficient attention has hitherto been paid to this vital element of peoples working lives, we are beginning to witness a greater appreciation of the relevance of studying driving behaviour as an important field within organisational psychology. Using safety climate as a conceptual framework for their empirical study, Wills et al. point to the shortcomings of using driver-based approaches to fleet safety, emphasising organisationlevel variables in this often critical aspect of occupational health and safety(OHS). Using established and modified measures, the authors use factor analysis and multiple regression to reveal important aspects of safety climate, driving attitudes and exposure and experience, upon driver behaviour. The organisational factor of safety climate had the greatest association with driver behaviour. Wills et al. extend their contribution by considering some alternative theoretical frameworks for the study of safety climate, as well as the relative paucity of adequate statistical models to describe the relationship between safety climate and attitudinal or behavioural outcomes. Another area requiring further work is that of revealing more about antecedents to safety climate the organisational and other factors that give rise to this feature. As noted by Murphy (section I), as a concept, organisational climate has yet to fully deliver. Wills et al. also explore the possible impact of some other factors upon safety climate, notably occupational stress, group level climate and motivation.
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Wills et al.s valuable contribution has clear implications for practitioners whose work involves OHS or any aspect of workplace risk. With organisations increasingly recognising the considerable financial benefits of effectively managing risks associated with fleet safety, it is incumbent upon the organisational psychology research community to ensure that advice and interventions take appropriate account of driver behaviour variables and the impact of organisational variables upon driver behaviour. Examples include work scheduling and work pressure, as well as meeting legal, social and community expectations. In a section on implications, the authors draw attention to a key practical consideration arising from their research that it is important to identify the behaviour/s to be targeted and to identify organisational features that are most strongly associated with those behaviours. Other relevant advice from Wills et al. includes the limitations of some more traditional approaches to driver safety, for example those based purely on loss prevention or skills training, without addressing relevant organisational factors. Together the chapters comprising this section reveal something of the richness of conceptual and analytical approaches to the study of a variety of workplace health-related behaviours and antecedents.
References
Glendon, A. I., Clarke, S. G., & McKenna, E. F. (2006). Human safety and risk management (2nd ed.). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press/Taylor & Francis. Luthans, F. (2002). The need for and meaning of positive organizational behavior. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 23, 695706.
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48
CHAPTER
3
Employability and Unemployment: A Literature Review and Presentation of a New Conceptual Model
Sarah McArdle and Lea Waters
This chapter aims to explore the salience of the concept of employability during the event of unemployment. Employability has been posited as a new key to success in todays career environment (Bagshaw, 1997; Fugate, Kinicki, & Ashforth, 2004; Garavan, 1999; Hall, 1996b; Rousseau, 1997). Fugate et al.s (2004) model of employability consisted of three distinct, yet interrelated, dimensions: adaptability, career identity and human and social capital. This theoretical chapter aims to outline the way in which Fugate et al.s employability construct may be related to unemployment. The chapter is constructed as a literature review, bringing together previous work on both employability and unemployment. The review will cover literature from countries such as Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, with particular attention to Australian research. It is important to note that the review is not exhaustive and, therefore, preference is given to unemployment research relevant to employability, and vice versa. The chapter begins by outlining the unemployment situation and careers context in Australia. Following this, the discussion takes a closer look at Fugate et al.s model of employability and the effect that it may have on four aspects of unemployment: (a) self-esteem during unemployment, (b) job search
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during unemployment, (c) re-employment and (d) the quality of reemployment. A series of research propositions will be presented throughout the discussion that will then be used to develop a conceptual model, illustrating interrelationships between employability and the aforementioned aspects. The chapter will then reflect on the implications of this model for future research and practice.
Unemployment in Australia
Unemployment is a persistent social problem in Australia (Albion, Fernie, & Burton, 2005). The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS, 2005) defined an individual as unemployed if they have not worked, but have been available for, and are actively looking for work, during the ABS survey week. At the time of writing, some 5% of Australians are unemployed (ABS, 2005). Although this rate is lower than in recent times (ABS, 2005), it is higher than in other Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries and still sees in excess of 529,000 Australians without a job (ABS, 2005; OECD, 2005). Moreover, the official unemployment rate fails to consider hidden unemployment and underemployment, thereby underestimating the true extent of unemployment. Underemployment refers to workers who are currently employed but who are working fewer hours than they would like to (Healy, 2004). The ABS (2005) considered an individual to be employed if they have worked a minimum of one hour during the survey week. Such an inclusive definition of employment leaves much scope for underemployment. A lack of growth in full-time work in Australia also suggests substantial underemployment. According to Selby Smith (2002), part-time and casual work has disproportionately increased in Australia compared with full-time work in the prior decade. In September 2005, the ABS (2006) reported that there were approximately 566,600 underemployed people in the Australian workforce. Given increasing part-time, casual and contractual work (Selby Smith, 2002) this figure is likely to increase in the near future. Official statistics also fail to consider the hidden unemployed. Hidden unemployment is described as the number of persons who would be in the labour force if the conditions characteristic of full employment were obtained (Stricker & Streehan, 1981, p. 54). The hidden unemployed may include: professionals who have been made redundant but who do not register as unemployed, early retirees, people pursuing further education and housewives. Weber (2002) found that decreases in the unemployment level could be associated with returns to education, supporting
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Employability and Unemployment
the notion of hidden unemployment. Older people who are out of work are also often classified (statistically and socially) as retired rather than unemployed despite a willingness to participate in the labour force should appropriate conditions arise (Brewington & Nassar-McMillan, 2000). In September 2004, the ABS (2005) found that over one million Australians (1,188,700) wanted to work but were not considered part of the labour force. These individuals constitute the hidden unemployed. Clearly, when underemployment and hidden unemployment figures are taken into consideration, it is evident that unemployment affects many more people then the official rate suggests. Undoubtedly, unemployment is a considerable social problem in Australia. This is particularly disturbing given the well-documented physical, economic and psychological consequences of joblessness for individuals (Albion et al., 2005; Wanberg, Kammeyer-Mueller, & Shi, 2001; Waters & Moore, 2002). In a recent meta-analysis, McKee-Ryan, Song, Wanberg, and Kinicki (2005) found a significant relationship between unemployment and lowered mental health indices, such as increased anxiety and depression. This relationship has also been reported by Australian researchers such as Creed and Evans (2002), Creed, Muller, and Machin (2001), Muller, Hicks, and Winocur (1993), and Winefield et al. (2002). The negative effect of unemployment for the individual has led researchers to consider ways in which psychological distress can be ameliorated. To this end, research has shown that building factors such as problem-focused coping (Waters & Moore, 2002), mastery (Vinokur & Schul, 1997) and self-efficacy (Machin & Creed, 2003) can help to promote positive psychological health during unemployment. Hence, we have amassed a considerable amount of information that can be used to help people to cope with unemployment. A small number of researchers have used this information to design programs and interventions specifically to help unemployed people to cope with unemployment and to find quality re-employment. For example, see Mullers (1992) personal development training program and Creed, Machin, and Hicks (1999) use of cognitive behavioural therapy with unemployed youth. This chapter follows the above trend in that it is interested in conceptually exploring the way in which the new construct of employability may be used to help people cope with unemployment and to find quality reemployment. Each of the propositions presented will outline ways in which employability potentially helps people to maintain positive self-esteem, engage in proactive job search, and obtain high quality re-employment. After presenting our conceptual model, we will discuss ways in which the
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construct of employability may be used to design specifically tailored programs that help unemployed individuals to become more aware of their career identity, to increase their adaptability and to develop their human and social capital.
The Changing Career Environment

The increasing incidence of unemployment is but one consequence of broader changes currently taking place in the career environment across many Asian and western countries. According to Raelin (1997) and Winefield et al. (2002) todays career landscape is characterised by uncertainty, turbulence and radical change. Due to technological innovation, increasing competition, globalisation and the importance of knowledge to the economy, organisations across the world have undergone (and continue to undergo) major structural and functional changes (Altman & Post, 1996; Atkinson, 2002; Bagshaw, 1997). According to Selby Smith (2002) there is a trend in Australia towards more skill-intensive, knowledge-based industries. Given that such industries rely on innovation and responsiveness, Australian firms are being obliged to become more flexible and responsive. To achieve this, companies are devolving and delayering, a process that Bird (1994) and Hall (1996a) suggested has resulted in and will continue to result in significant periods of downsizing. Organisational transformations have also affected the way careers are experienced. According to Arthur and Rousseau (1996) careers were traditionally hierarchical in nature, conducted within a single organisation and, hence, within an internal labour market (ILM). In an ILM, career progression occurred through promotion and was, therefore, the responsibility of the firm. The move to flexibility has involved the breakdown of the ILM and the hierarchical structure that characterised it (Hall, 1996b). Organisations now seek to maintain a smaller number of permanent, core employees and a larger number of peripheral, contingent workers who can be acquired and shed as the situation demands (Dabbs & Lovatt, 2002; Handy, 1990). Employability, in the broadest sense of the term, can be defined as the ability to gain and maintain employment, both within and across organisations (Finn, 2000). The erosion of job security and its replacement with employability means that many Australians are now more vulnerable to unemployment, resulting in what Raelin (1997) terms the democratisation of insecurity. As Bagshaw (1997) stated, The negativity of unemployment goes hand in hand with accepting employability as a substitute for job security (p. 188). Therefore, given the rising importance of employability in the career context, understanding what the concept really means is imperative.
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Employability
Early discussions of employability focused on uni-dimensional, outcomebased definitions, defining an individual as employable retrospectively, based on their ability to gain employment. For instance, Finn (2000) concluded that early definitions of employability typically encompassed the ability to: (a) gain employment, (b) maintain employment within an organisation and (c) obtain new employment if required. However, such tautological and retrospective definitions fail to indicate the personal factors that contribute to an individuals employability. This is further evident in research by Van der Heijden (2002), who defined employability simply as the capability of being employed in a job (p. 44). Van der Heijden measured employability by asking individuals to assess their ability to move to various other positions (both internally and externally). Again, this provided no insight into factors that facilitate mobility and employability in general. The consequent vagueness of such definitions of employability has hindered both its empirical measurement and any practical application. Despite the number of articles discussing the concept, very few offer useable, tested definitions of employability. Many authors employ the term implicitly, offering no explicit definition at all, assuming that meaning is self-evident. Others fail to delve beyond the broad, retrospective definitions outlined above (for example see: Aberg, 2001; Le & Miller, 2000; Ritchie, 2000). If career practitioners, government bodies, researchers, organisations and individuals are to use the concept of employability effectively (in both research and in practice), a model and definition of the construct must be identified that recognises the complexity of employability. It is primarily for this reason that the current chapter adopts Fugate et al.s (2004) psychosocial definition of employability. The next section will outline the model further. Following this, we will apply Fugate et al.s model to the situation of unemployment.
The Psychosocial Construct of Employability

As mentioned earlier, Fugate et al. (2004) defined employability as a person-centred, psychosocial construct that embodies individual characteristics that foster adaptive cognition, behaviour and affect, and enhance the individualwork interface (p. 17). By situating employability within the individual, ones employability is separated from external determinants of employment. Given that individuals in the labour market are unable to control many external factors (such as economic conditions, job availability and organisational downsizing), Fugate et al.s person-centred construct provides an opportunity for individuals to identify their
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strengths and weaknesses in terms of personal factors that may help or hinder their employability. Furthermore, the psychosocial employability construct is not determined by ones employment status. As such, one can be employable without being in employment. This assumption is supported by Brown, Hesketh, and Williams (2003) and by Le and Miller (2000). Fugate et al.s operationalisation of employability may, therefore, be highly useful in helping unemployed individuals to cope with unemployment and periods of career transition, and to recognise that their employability can be selfaltered. This will be especially important as job security and job loss increase. According to Fugate et al. (2004), employability is a synergistic combination of three separate, yet interrelated, dimensions: (a) adaptability, (b) career identity and (c) human and social capital. The model includes cognitive, affective, conative and market-interactive variables. Furthermore, employability is explicitly related to the career and employment context, providing specificity. Like other authors (e.g., Brown et al., 2003; Le & Miller, 2000), Fugate et al. asserted that employability does not guarantee employment; rather it increases the relative chances of gaining employment. The three aspects of employability (adaptability, career identity, social and human capital) are discussed in detail below.
Adaptability
An individuals adaptability refers to their willingness and ability to change their behaviours, feelings and thoughts in response to environmental demands (Fugate et al., 2004). The importance of adaptability and flexibility for career success in an era of high job insecurity is recognised by numerous authors, including Allred, Snow, and Miles (1996), Garavan (1999), Hall (1996a), and Arthur and Rousseau (1996). According to Savickas (1997) adaptability involves planfulness, anticipation, decision-making and a willingness to explore oneself and ones environment. Adaptable individuals are proposed to be future-oriented and able to look ahead to anticipate changes and transitions. Consequently, adaptable people have a readiness to cope with unpredictability (Savickas, 1997). Pulakos, Arad, Donovan, and Plamondon (2000) suggested that adaptability promotes self-management and a tolerance for uncertainty. Adaptability is also highlighted by Hall (1996a, 2004) and proposed to be essential to career success in an era of insecurity. Foundational to Fugate et al.s (2004) model of employability, and encompassed in the dimension of adaptability, is the construct of proactive personality. According to Seibert, Crant, and Kraimer (1999) and Bateman and Crant (1993), proactive individuals are able to effect environmental change, remaining relatively unimpeded by situational con54
straints. Individuals with a proactive personality are, therefore, inherently adaptable. Proactive personality has been linked with identifying and acting on opportunities, feelings of control, career initiative, perseverance, self-efficacy, self-direction, coping, information-seeking, and effective career management (Bateman & Crant, 1993; Crant, 2000; Seibert et al., 1999; Seibert, Kraimer, & Crant, 2001; Thompson, 2005). Furthermore, Seibert et al. (2001) found that proactive personality was indirectly linked with career satisfaction and career progression, via career initiative and innovation. Thompson (2005) also found that proactive personality was associated with network-building, enabling individuals to effectively leverage support from others. Fugate et al. (2004) identified five key components of adaptability: (a) optimism, (b) a propensity to learn, (c) openness, (d) an internal locus of control (i.e., the belief that circumstances are within the control and influence of the individual) and (e) generalised self-efficacy (the belief that one has the capacity to succeed in a variety of situations: Eden & Aviram, 1993; Judge, Erez, & Bono, 1998). Being adaptable and proactive allows an individual to continually change in times of uncertainty and flux, facilitating exploration of multiple career paths. Lindsay (2002) has also demonstrated that a lack of adaptability can hinder an individuals employment prospects by leaving them unwilling to investigate new, alternative sources of work.
Career Identity
Career identity represents the way in which individuals define themselves in the career context (Fugate et al., 2004). Spanning ones past, present and future, career identity integrates the individuals myriad career experiences into a coherent whole. Career identity is proposed to act as a cognitive compass used to navigate available career opportunities. The concept of career identity reflects Halls (1996a, 2004) discussion of self-awareness (or identity awareness). Hall (1996a, 2004) and Hall and Moss (1998) argued that self-awareness is crucial in guiding the unfolding of an individuals career, supporting Fugate et al.s notion of career identity as a cognitive compass. Career identity also echoes the knowing-why competencies identified by Defillippi and Arthur (1994). Knowing-why competencies encompass attributes such as career motivation, personal meaning and individual values. In a study of 458 university alumni, Eby, Butts, and Lockwood (2003) found that knowing-why was especially important in determining an individuals career satisfaction. Fugate et al.s notion of career identity incorporates knowingwhy competencies, but goes further by integrating career experiences, motivations and aspirations into coherent identity narratives.
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Given that career trajectories are less externally defined in the new career environment (McGreevy, 2003), and are less likely to be mapped out by a paternalistic employer, the use of an internal career compass has become critically important in providing the direction needed to achieve career success. This will be especially important when the individual finds him/herself outside the boundaries of an employing organisation or hierarchical structure. In support of this contention, Hall, Briscoe, and Kram (1997) suggested that, in contemporary turbulent career environments, identity change is essential and should be separated from a specific job or organisation, instead representing an individuals personal knowledge and broader career interests. Hall et al. (1997) suggested that adopting a career identity decoupled from particular organisations or positions will enhance success in such uncertain conditions. In support of this, Anakwe, Hall, and Schor (2000) found that teaching MBA students to reflect on their career-related values, needs and motivations (assisting the formation or consolidation of career identity) facilitated effective career management, goal-setting and decision-making. Career identity allows an individual to define who they are, or want to be, in the work domain (Fugate et al., 2004).
Human and Social Capital
Human capital refers to the personal variables that may affect ones career advancement, including age, education, work experience, training, skills and knowledge. For instance, education often works as a key to certain levels of employment, and has been found to increase the chances of gaining employment (Wanberg, Hough, & Song, 2002). Prussia, Fugate, and Kinicki (2001) suggested that youth may also facilitate employability, while old age may serve as a barrier. According to Nielsen (1999) employability may inadvertently discriminate against older workers, who may not have the competencies required by the current labour environment. Furthermore, stereotypes surrounding older workers tend to be in opposition to characteristics desired by employers (Ainsworth, 2003; Bennington & Tharenou, 1996; Mirvis & Hall, 1996). Human capital also encompasses knowing-how competencies, as discussed by Defillippi and Arthur (1994). Knowing-how competencies refer to career-related knowledge and skills. The significance of human capital is reflected in the weight given to knowledge in the current world economy. According to Truch (2001) knowledge is a source of competitive advantage for both individuals (in gaining employment) and organisations (for differentiation and innovation). By engaging in continuous learning, individuals can build on their knowledge stores and enhance
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their human capital, fostering the development of employability (Brown et al., 2003; Hall et al., 1997). Social capital reflects the interpersonal aspect of employability (Fugate et al., 2004). Essentially, this component centres on an individuals social networks, incorporating Defillippi and Arthurs (1994) knowing-whom competencies concerning career-related networks. The quality of social networks can be discussed in terms of size, diversity and strength (solidarity and reciprocity). Networks may be formal (e.g., government organisations) or informal (e.g., friends, family, acquaintances). The social capital aspect of employability reflects the emphasis on interdependence, mutuality and reciprocity that has been associated with success in the new career environment (Hall et al., 1997; Kram, 1996). Reid (1972) suggested that social capital is often an underestimated source of job opportunities. Moreover, empirical work also offers support for the importance of social capital to career success, suggesting that interpersonal connections (who one knows) are crucial in shaping individuals self-perceptions (Eby et al., 2003), fostering effective career management (Anakwe et al., 2000), and providing access to information, resources and career sponsorship (Seibert, Kraimer, & Liden, 2001). A particularly important aspect of social capital during unemployment is social support. McIntosh (1991) defined social support as the resources available from one or more others to assist the focal person in the management of stressful experiences and to increase the experience of wellbeing (p. 202). Social support may be instrumental, informational or emotional and may be derived from ones family, friends and/or work colleagues (McIntosh, 1991). Lazarus and Folkman (1984) suggested that social support can serve to buffer stress and the destructive consequences of stressful events, such as unemployment. In their meta-analysis, McKee-Ryan et al. (2005) found that higher levels of social support were consistently linked with increased mental health and life satisfaction during unemployment. Fugate et al. (2004) asserted that each of the employability aspects (as outlined above) has value in its own right. However, they argued that it is only in concert that employability is manifested. Fugate et al. suggested that unemployment may be one area in which the psychosocial construct of employability is particularly applicable. This assertion is investigated below.

Given the likelihood of periods of unemployment for many workers, an effective definition of employability must encompass attributes that assist individuals both in and out of employment. Fugate et al. (2004) suggested
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that the psychosocial definition of employability serves just such a function. They proposed that employable individuals are less likely to be psychologically harmed by job loss, and be more likely to engage in greater job search and to gain high quality re-employment. Whilst Fugate et al. made these suggestions, their paper did not go into detail about how employability may influence important unemployment-related outcomes, such as self-esteem, job search, re-employment and re-employment quality. The following subsection fleshes out the potential relationships between employability and each of the aforementioned outcomes in turn.
Self-Esteem During Unemployment
Self-esteem expresses an attitude of approval or disapproval toward oneself (Rosenberg, 1965, p. 5) and can be defined as ones evaluation of ones worth as a person, based on an assessment of the qualities that make up the self-concept (Shaffer, 2002, p. 428). Self-esteem is determined by judging the importance of each aspect of ones self-concept and comparing this with ones success in relation to this aspect (Harter, 1990). Many researchers have identified a link between lowered self-esteem and unemployment (e.g., Jahoda, 1982; Muller et al., 1993; Waters & Moore, 2002; Winefield, Tiggeman, & Winefield, 1992; Winegardner, Simonetti, & Nykodym, 1984). In a literature review by Hanisch (1999), self-esteem was recognised as a key psychological factor that may be negatively affected by unemployment. Shamir (1986) suggested, however, that it is also useful to look at the role of self-esteem as a moderator of the experience of unemployment, as well as an outcome. Shamir (1986) argued that high self-esteem is connected to more effective coping during times of stress, as well as increased psychological health (in terms of anxiety and depression), initiative and assertiveness. Individuals with low self-esteem are also more likely to accept less-than-ideal jobs, when compared with individuals with high self-esteem (Shamir, 1986). Given its dual role as an outcome and moderator of unemployment, self-esteem is a particularly attractive and interesting candidate for academic attention, within the context of employability during unemployment. The current chapter proposes that employable individuals are less likely to suffer from low self-esteem during unemployment. First, an adaptable and proactive personality should help to prevent loss of selfesteem, due to an individuals associated planfulness and readiness to cope (Savickas, 1997). Presumably, being adaptable lessens the shock of unemployment, allowing individuals to be prepared for change and, hence, not diminishing a persons self-evaluation. Furthermore, the opti58
mism, openness, self-efficacy, internal locus of control, self-direction, initiative and perseverance associated with adaptability (Fugate et al., 2004) are likely to allow individuals a more positive outlook during unemployment, thereby reducing potential damage to self-esteem. Crant (2000) also suggested that proactive personality is linked with positive self-assessment and, consequently, increased self-esteem during unemployment. Career identity may be a particularly important factor in determining ones self-esteem during unemployment. According to Eden and Aviram (1993) unemployment can be a significant blow to an individuals selfconcept. This is likely to be especially so if the individual has invested much of his/her identity in a particular job or organisation. As self-esteem is determined by an individuals evaluation of the salient aspects of his/her self-concept (Harter, 1990; Rosenberg, 1965; Shaffer, 2002), individuals who have defined themselves in relation to a specific job or firm may be more likely to suffer decreases in self-esteem. However, the self-esteem of those individuals who define themselves more broadly in terms of their career, rather than specifically through their current job, may not suffer such a devastating blow. This is because an identity that is centred on career may be more easily decoupled from a particular firm or position. As such, when the person loses his/her job they do not lose their identity, because their career (a more long-term and stable notion) still remains. By defining themselves independently of organisations or jobs, employable individuals can protect their self-concept and self-esteem from the impact of unemployment and use their career identity as a guide in times of uncertainty (Hall et al., 1997). Various elements of social capital and human capital may also serve to buffer the self-esteem of employable individuals from the impact of unemployment. As Lazarus and Folkman (1984) argued, social capital (and social support in particular) can help individuals to cope with stressful situations. According to McIntosh (1991) individuals who have strong social support are more likely to feel valued and, as a result, have higher self-esteem. Furthermore, the possession of human capital and social resources can provide important sources of identity consolidation (Shaffer, 2002), leading to minimal damage to the self-concept and selfesteem. In accordance with the above contentions, the first research proposition presented in this chapter is: Research Proposition 1: An individuals employability (adaptability, career identity, human and social capital) will be positively related to self-esteem during unemployment.
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Job Search
When faced with stressful events, such as unemployment, individuals cope in different ways. Latack, Kinicki, and Prussia (1995) suggested that the cognitive appraisal of unemployment is important in determining how an individual copes during unemployment. Commonly, individuals appraise unemployment in terms of harm or loss and as a threat (Latack et al., 1995). However, Lazarus and Folkman (1984) suggested that stressful situations, such as unemployment, can be cognitively reframed and appraised as a challenge. Eby and Buch (1995), Hall et al. (1997), and Latack and Dozier (1986) offered support for this perspective, suggesting that unemployment can be a positive event for certain individuals. For instance, Eby and Buch and Hall et al. suggested that unemployment may be used as an opportunity for reflection, identity consolidation and career growth. Due to their adaptability, career identity and the foundations of human and social capital, employable individuals may be more likely to take a positive approach to unemployment, appraising it as a challenge. The appraisal of stressful situations affects the type of coping strategies used by an individual (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). DeFrank and Ivancevich (1986), among others, suggested that there are two broad types of coping strategy used in times of stress: problem-focused and emotion-focused. Problem-focused strategies seek to tackle the problem directly, for example, an individual pursuing re-employment via job search following job loss. Emotion-focused strategies are more indirect and treat the symptoms of the problem. For instance, an individual who has recently lost their job and is experiencing anxiety may seek counselling as an emotion-focused coping strategy (Latack et al., 1995). Each type of strategy is related to different coping goals. The coping goal of particular interest in the current context, due to its relationship with job search, is the re-employment coping goal (Prussia et al., 2001). Pursuing a re-employment coping goal via job search may be facilitated by career identity, adaptability and social capital. Career identity provides the individual with direction and may help to structure job search activity. This can facilitate focus, preventing the individual from becoming overwhelmed (Hall & Chandler, 2005). Adaptability and proactive personality are associated with active engagement in the labour market, feelings of control, information-seeking, initiative and self-efficacy, all of which are relevant to the job search process (Crant, 2000; Eden & Aviram, 1993; Kanfer, Wanberg, & Kantrowitz, 2001). Furthermore, social capital may enhance job search by providing access to networks,
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informational resources and social support. According to Kanfer et al. (2001) social support can influence individuals to see job search as a worthwhile pursuit. Furthermore, social support is an important source of encouragement and reassurance when an individual is rejected (Vinokur & Caplan, 1987), and can provide advice and practical assistance in the job search process (Kanfer et al., 2001). Taking the above into account, employable individuals are hypothesised to demonstrate high levels of job search. Research Proposition 2: An individuals employability will be directly, positively related to job search during unemployment. Self-esteem has also been linked to job search in the research literature. For instance, Kanfer et al. (2001) found that higher self-esteem was linked to increased job search intensity in an unemployed sample. Furthermore, Shamir (1986) found that individuals with high selfesteem were more likely to show initiative and assertiveness during unemployment, obtaining greater information from their environment. This, too, indicates that individuals with higher self-esteem will engage in greater job search. Hence, employability may be indirectly related to job search, via self-esteem. Research Proposition 3: An individuals employability will be indirectly, positively related to job search during unemployment, via its positive effect on self-esteem.
Re-Employment
By virtue of pursuing a re-employment coping goal, employable individuals may also be more successful than their low employability counterparts at achieving re-employment (Kanfer et al., 2001). Certainly, empirical research by Eby et al. (2003), Prussia et al. (2001), and Wanberg et al. (2001, 2002) shows that human capital, networking (social capital) and job search intensity are all positively associated with re-employment. Career identity may facilitate re-employment by giving individuals much needed direction and focus during periods of transition (Hall, 1996a). Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, adaptability encompasses proactivity, optimism, openness, an internal locus of control, self-efficacy, a willingness to explore and a tolerance for uncertainty (Crant, 2000; Fugate et al., 2004; Savickas, 1997). Such characteristics may prevent feelings of paralysis during times of turbulence, which may lead to the goal of re-employment being pursued. The high levels of human and social capital, adaptability and career identity that characterise employability may, therefore, enhance the ability of employable individuals to regain employment.
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Research Proposition 4: An individuals employability will be positively related to obtaining re-employment. According to Kasl (1982) self-esteem may also play a role in re-employment. Kasls reverse-causation hypothesis proposed that positive psychological health (in general) and high self-esteem (in particular) facilitated re-employment. As previously mentioned, unemployment is associated with low self-esteem, however, Kasl proposed that having low self-esteem may inhibit ones ability to gain re-employment. Kasls reverse-causation hypothesis has been supported by authors such as Winefield and Tiggeman (1985) and Vinokur and Schul (1997). The current chapter adopts Kasls hypothesis, proposing an indirect, positive relationship between employability and re-employment, via self-esteem. Research Proposition 5: An individuals self-esteem will be positively related to obtaining re-employment. Wanberg (1997), Wanberg et al. (2001), and Kanfer et al. (2001) have also identified direct, positive relationships between job search and reemployment in their research. Accordingly, (in addition to employability and self-esteem) job search is also theoretically associated with reemployment. Research Proposition 6: An individuals job search intensity will be positively related to obtaining re-employment.
Re-employment Quality
Whilst re-employment is an important outcome for unemployed individuals and has been consistently linked with improvements in psychological health and financial status, research suggests that it is the quality of reemployment that is most important in alleviating the negative consequences of unemployment (McKee-Ryan et al., 2005; Wanberg, Kanfer, & Rotundo, 1999). Re-employment quality can be measured according to job satisfaction, job improvement, intention to turnover, personjob fit (Wanberg et al., 1999), psychological success or salary (Hall, 1996b). High levels of employability, as manifested via clear career identities, may enable an individual to have a strong internal career anchor that allows them pursue opportunities that are consistent with their values and objectives (Hall, 1996b). Hence, they are more likely to obtain work that is congruent with their career identity, achieving a high degree of reemployment quality, as assessed via personjob fit (PJ fit), and psychological success (Fugate et al., 2004; Prussia et al., 2001). Adaptability may also help people to obtain quality re-employment by allowing them to explore and adjust their career goals and to remain open to new career
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pathways. Self-reflection during unemployment may provide individuals with insight into new areas of work that may suit them better than previous employment areas. The self-direction associated with proactivity (Crant, 2000) may also facilitate identification of more optimal employment options. Human capital and social capital have also been linked with re-employment quality (Wanberg, 1997). Human capital, such as education, can provide individuals with greater access to suitable career opportunities. Social capital may also open doors to high quality positions and provide support for career exploration. Consequently, employability may assist individuals in obtaining high quality re-employment. Research Proposition 7: An individuals employability will be positively related to re-employment quality. As highlighted earlier, Savickas (1997) suggested that individuals who are lower in self-esteem are more likely to accept less-than-ideal re-employment, while those higher in self-esteem are more discerning. Consequently, employable individuals, high in self-esteem may demonstrate more discernment, choosing more optimal re-employment options. Research Proposition 8: An individuals employability will be indirectly, positively related to re-employment quality via self-esteem. Research by Wanberg (1997) and Wanberg et al. (1999) has also found a positive relationship between job search intensity and re-employment quality. This may be because individuals who engage in more job search activities necessarily undertake greater investigation. Consequently, they become aware of the different options available and can make a more informed choice (Wanberg et al., 1999). Therefore, in addition to employability and self-esteem, job search intensity may also be associated with higher quality re-employment. Research Proposition 9: An individuals employability will be indirectly, positively related to re-employment quality via job search intensity.
The Conceptual Model

In accordance with the preceding discussion, the relationships between employability, self-esteem, job search, re-employment and re-employment quality are illustrated in the conceptual model shown in Figure 1. The model in Figure 1 consists of the direct and indirect relationships between employability and each of the outcome variables, as discussed in-depth earlier in the chapter. Research implications of this model are presented below.
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RP4
Human and Social Capital

RP1
Self-Esteem
RP5
Re-employment
RP8
Career Identity
Employab ility
RP3 RP6
RP2
Re-employment Job Search Intensity Quality

RP9
Adaptability
RP7
FIGURE 1 A model of the relationships between employability, self-esteem, re-employment and re-employment quality.
Note: RP = Research proposition.
Implications of the Conceptual Model
The development of the above model opens the door for empirical work in the area. First and foremost, it is necessary for future researchers to empirically investigate the construct of employability and the relationships illustrated in the above model. Fugate et al. (2004) conceptualised employability as an aggregate multidimensional construct (MDC), proposing that the three dimensions cause a higher-order factor, known as employability. Their proposal of an aggregate MDC is presented in contrast to a latent MDC (in which the dimensions reflect an underlying factor of employability). Consequently, in further investigations employability needs to be explored via both aggregate and latent MDC structures. If, as Fugate et al. argued, it is only in concert that employability is manifested, this remains to be seen. Furthermore, in investigating the conceptual model presented in this chapter, it is also important to explore the individual (direct) relationships between each of the employability dimensions (adaptability, career identity, and human and social capital) and the outcome variables, as some dimensions may be more important than others depending on the outcome of interest. By investigating a global structure, in conjunction with micro-level analysis, a more detailed understanding of employability can be achieved. A further challenge for future researchers is in operationalising the employability dimensions. The development of multidimensional measures of each of the dimensions is advised, in order to build a more comprehensive picture of the construct. The operationalisation of human capital may
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prove especially challenging. For instance, assessing an individuals skills could be very difficult. Researchers will need to decide whether to measure skill level in absolute terms, or whether to take employer demand into account. An individual may possess a high level of firm-specific skills that ultimately prove redundant in the wider labour market. Classifying this individual as high or low on human capital would depend on the way in which skill level was coded. Qualitative research could be valuable in uncovering personal variables that facilitate an individuals career advancement. Interviews with human resource (HR) professionals, recruitment consultants, employers and successful individuals could provide information on the human capital factors associated with career success (both objective and subjective). Indeed, triangulating techniques in future research could be effective in assessing all of the employability dimensions, thereby providing a richer view of the factors that contribute to an individuals employability. Creating a series of valid and reliable employability scales for each dimension would prove extremely useful in the future, ensuring that authors are speaking the same language and measuring the same constructs in their research. Future research could further contribute to the literature by examining the malleability of employability and the ways in which it can be built within individuals and groups. A persons employability can change over time as a consequence of many factors, including education, training, skill obsolescence, meeting new people (contacts) and engaging in self-reflection (to build career identity). Consequently, employability is open to development. In support of this, Eby et al. (2003) found that individuals could be taught the knowing-whom, knowing-how and knowing-why competencies introduced by Defillippi and Arthur (1994). Anakwe et al. (2000) were also able to teach individuals skills, such as self-, interpersonal- and environmental-knowledge, all of which are relevant to career identity, adaptability and social capital. While Anakwe et al. and Eby et al.s (2003) work was conducted in student and professional samples (MBA students and university alumni respectively), it is likely that such instruction would also be useful for the unemployed. As discussed earlier, Australian researchers such as Creed et al. (1999), Machin and Creed (2003) and Muller et al. (1993) have recognised the utility of training and counselling interventions in assisting the unemployed. Their research has demonstrated the positive effects that such interventions can have on the wellbeing of unemployed people. The conceptual model presented in this chapter may prove useful in designing interventions to target the specific areas of employability that unem-
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ployed individuals can cultivate. For example, to build career identity, individuals could be encouraged to engage in self-reflection, in order to better understand their career-related experiences, values and desires. Daudelin (1996) and Seibert and Daudelin (1999) suggested that reflection is an important learning tool, and have empirically demonstrated the utility of reflective learning in an organisational context. It may, however, also be highly useful during unemployment. Engaging in reflective learning activities, such as journal writing, counselling, group therapy or meditation (Daudelin), may help unemployed individuals to consolidate their identity and to learn from unemployment, making the experience an opportunity for positive growth. Specific interventions focusing on adaptability, human and social capital could also be designed and empirically investigated in order to provide greater assistance to the unemployed. Furthermore, the conceptual model could be used as a diagnostic tool to pinpoint particular aspects of employability that individuals may be lacking.
Conclusion
This chapter explored the role that Fugate et al.s (2004) model of employability could play during unemployment. Specifically, the chapter focused on self-esteem, job search, re-employment, and re-employment quality. Overall, employability was demonstrated to be highly applicable to the unemployment context. Given increasing labour market insecurity in Australia and many other countries, and the likelihood that many individuals will experience periods of unemployment during their career, research into factors that help people to cope with and manage unemployment is essential. Further investigation into employability may benefit both individuals, and career practitioners, in developing new and improved methods of coping with, and alleviating the experience of unemployment. The conceptual model presented in this chapter provides a blueprint for future research, which, in time, will provide us with a more complete understanding of employability and its relevance to unemployment.
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CHAPTER
4
WorkFamily Conflict and Facilitation: Achieving WorkFamily Balance
Paula Brough, Michael P. ODriscoll, and Thomas J. Kalliath
This chapter explores current thinking in workfamily conflict and facilitation of research by focusing on how we can accurately define and measure workfamily balance and what actually helps working individuals to achieve workfamily balance. The chapter begins by reviewing common definitions of workfamily balance. We then briefly examine family-friendly workplace initiatives and their outcomes. We also discuss the impact of recognised moderators (buffers) of conflict, focusing especially on gender and social support. As well as describing research on workfamily conflict and facilitation within the Asia-Pacific region, the chapter draws upon major international contributions within this field. Achieving a balance between work and family life has become a challenge for many workers. Changing societal demographics, recent technological developments, increasing globalisation and international business competitiveness have contributed to a blurring of boundaries between job and family domains (ODriscoll, 1996). Recent research findings consistently illustrate the potentially serious dysfunctional outcomes of workfamily conflict, including reduced satisfaction with both work and family life, a reduction in positive mood states, lowered family and workrelated wellbeing, and psychological burnout (Perrewe, Hochwater, & Kiewitz, 1999). In sum, the evidence indicates that a high level of conflict or interference between work and family commitments can be disadvantageous for both individuals and for the organisations that employ them
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(Konrad & Mangel, 2000). Effective management of workfamily balance is therefore a pertinent focus for research by organisational psychologists. Workfamily conflict is represented within a rapidly expanding research literature, including both international investigations (Allen, Herst, Bruck, & Sutton, 2000; Kanter, 1977; MacEwen & Barling, 1994; Major, Klein, & Ehrhart, 2002) and investigations within the Asia-Pacific region (Brough & Kelling, 2002; Kim & Ling, 2001; Noor, 2002; ODriscoll, 1996). This chapter reviews this research, beginning with an examination of the recent focus of interest upon workfamily balance.
A Review of the WorkFamily Balance Construct

In the past 15 years, there has been increasing interest in workfamily balance in both the popular press and scholarly journals (Byron, 2005; Pocock, 2005). This increase in interest is partly driven by concerns that unbalanced workfamily relationships can result in adverse outcomes for individuals, families, and organisations (ODriscoll, Brough, & Kalliath, 2004). While the term workfamily balance has become widely used, a commonly agreed definition of this term has proved elusive. Although a number of conceptualisations of workfamily balance can be found in the literature, there is as yet no direct measure of this specific balance construct, which constrains our ability to investigate the phenomenon fully. A review of the literature indicates that currently there are three theoretical conceptualisations of the term workfamily balance drawing on somewhat different definitions: (a) balance through low-conflict and high facilitation (Grzywacz & Marks, 2000); (b) balance in terms of time, involvement and satisfaction (Greenhaus, Collins, & Shaw, 2003); and (c) balance as a composite of five facets including work satisfaction, home satisfaction, work functioning, family functioning, and role conflict (Clark, 2000). Other studies have investigated workfamily balance by including single or multiple items to measure the construct, often without articulating any theoretical basis for these item(s) or adequately demonstrating their reliability or validity (Hill, Hawkins, Ferris, & Weitzman, 2001; Lyness & Kropf, 2005). We briefly review these three conceptualisations of workfamily balance below.
Low-Conflict, High Facilitation
The most widely accepted conceptualisation of workfamily balance in the literature is that given by Frone (2003, p. 145), who defined workfamily balance as low levels of interrole conflict (i.e., work to family and family to work), and high levels of inter-role facilitation (work to family and family to work). Based on this definition, Frone suggested
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WorkFamily Conflict and Facilitation
that workfamily balance consisted of two primary dimensions of influence (work-to-family versus family-to-work) and two effects (conflict and facilitation), thereby producing a four-fold taxonomy of workfamily balance (i.e., workfamily conflict, workfamily facilitation, familywork conflict, and familywork facilitation). Researchers have developed scales to measure each component of this four-fold taxonomy of workfamily balance (e.g., Kirchmeyer, 1995). The primary difficulty with these measures is that they were developed to measure conflict and facilitation, but not workfamily balance per se. These scales often do not contain the phrase workfamily balance in their items. A second problem is that the dimensionality of these measures has not been clearly demonstrated (Aryee, Srinivas, & Tan, 2005). The fourfold taxonomy also presents difficulties from an applied perspective because it does not provide organisational stakeholders with a simple answer to two questions: What is the current level of workfamily balance reported by workers in our organisation? How does the level of workfamily balance reported by our workers compare with levels reported by workers in other similar organisations?
Time, Involvement and Satisfaction
Greenhaus et al. (2003) defined workfamily balance as the extent to which an individual is equally engaged in, and equally satisfied with, his or her work role and family role (p. 513). These authors proposed that workfamily balance is a sum of: (a) time balance, (b) involvement balance and (c) satisfaction balance. The study compared: (a) the amount of time spent at work with the amount of time spent on home and family activities, (b) involvement in work with involvement in family and (c) satisfaction with work with satisfaction with family. According to Greenhaus et al. workfamily balance is maximised when the individual spends exactly the same amount of time (involvement and satisfaction) between work and family. A complex mathematical formula was used to objectively compute balance in the amount of time, involvement, and satisfaction, making it an objective measure of work family balance. There are several problems with the conceptualisation of work family balance proposed by Greenhaus et al. (2003). First, the authors did not demonstrate the dimensionality of their balance measure, that is, that time balance, involvement balance, and satisfaction balance are indeed separate dimensions of workfamily balance. Second, Greenhaus et al. assumed that balance only occurred when a person spends an equal amount of time on their job and on family activities. However, just because a person spends more time at work (for example) does not
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necessarily mean that there is imbalance between that persons work and family life. Greenhaus et al. alluded to this and suggested that subjective balance also needs to be considered. Third, it can be argued that involvement or engagement in work and family life might be a predictor of balance, rather than a component of balance. That is, high engagement in work (or family) and low engagement in family (or work) could lead to less balance rather than more. Fourth, it could be argued that the perception of balance, and satisfaction with this amount of balance, are two separate (albeit interrelated) constructs, and that satisfaction is an outcome of having reduced workfamily conflict and increased workfamily facilitation, rather than being a component of balance.
Composite Measure of WorkFamily balance
Clark (2001) argued that progressive organisations go beyond instituting programmatic changes in the workplace (e.g., assistance with childcare, flex-time, job sharing) to actually change their work culture. Bailyn (1997) suggested that family-friendly work cultures exhibited higher levels of temporal flexibility, operational flexibility and supervisor support. Using Bailyns formulation, Clark examined the impact of various types of work cultures on workfamily balance, which was defined as satisfaction and good functioning at work and at home with a minimum of role conflict (p. 349). Clark suggested that workfamily balance is a multifaceted construct consisting of work satisfaction, home satisfaction, work functioning, family functioning and role conflict. However, Clarks (2001) formulation of workfamily balance is deficient in a number of areas. For example, the fundamental argument that workfamily balance is a five-factor model consisting of work satisfaction, home satisfaction, work functioning, family functioning and role conflict, has not been empirically demonstrated. From an applied perspective, Clarks formulation of workfamily balance is of little value as the use of this scale cannot inform practitioners of the levels of workfamily balance, or be used to compare levels of workfamily balance across organisations. It is clear from this brief review that there has been no systematic effort to develop a specific measure of workfamily balance per se. Such a measure is critical for validating the theoretical models developed to explain the relationship between antecedents, moderators, and outcome variables of workfamily balance. A specific balance measure would also serve as an index of the level of perceived workfamily balance among workers in an organisation. Aggregate ratings on the measure could be used to compare the levels of perceived workfamily balance among subunits within an
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organisation or for comparisons between organisations. We therefore recommend that work be undertaken to develop an empirically sound workfamily balance measure. As a starting point, we propose the following working definition of workfamily balance that integrates all three conceptualisations currently accepted in the literature:
Workfamily balance is the perception that ones work and family life are balanced, with respondents reporting high levels of satisfaction and facilitation and low levels of conflict between the two domains.
Family-Friendly Workplace Initiatives

The implementation of numerous family-friendly workplace initiatives has arisen primarily through necessity. In particular, employers of mothers have a history of offering part-time working hours, truncated working days, job sharing and other flexible work options in order to accommodate these parents needs to work around school hours. Thus family-friendly initiatives are not a new development in workplaces. In fact, Wolf (2001) described an unusually comprehensive response to working mothers needs by the United States (US) Government and business organisations during World War II, when mothers were urgently needed to work in munitions factories:
In ten months time, this privatepublic partnership established clean, bright, well-staffed twenty-four hour neighbourhood-based childcare centres for children aged six months to six years and raised womens productivity far above comparable factories without such childcare. These attractive community childcare centres, based in the womens own neighbourhoods, where teachers would dress and feed a hot breakfast to a sleepy child whose mom had to work the early shift, allowed women to feel secure leaving their kids with familiar care-givers, even at irregular hours. Nurses monitored kids health with preventive care the centres were seen as a community resource, with staff willing to take in children when parents had to shop or attend a meeting. Staff also welcomed older siblings to join their brothers and sisters on sleeping shifts. There was even a mending service for the kids torn clothing and, most revolutionary of all, on the way home, the tired mother could even pick up a nourishing hot meal, prepared and packed for her at the centre, to bring back home along with her children! (p. 232)
Childcare arrangements that offer only a small fraction of the facilities described in the above example are commonly available to most working parents today. What has changed in the last 2 decades or so is the movement of a large proportion of women with dependants into full-time employment, and especially the decision to return to employment before a child is of formal school age hence a recent increase in the number of organised childcare services. Over the past 20 years, both individuals
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and employers have had to adapt to this change in worker demographics and to recognise that occasionally dependant demands (such as a sick child) will interfere with the working day. However, Lo (2003) raised the valid point that any adaptations that employers make for working parents rarely occur within non-western countries, due to the traditional static sex roles that typically prevail. Lo provides a pertinent example: Married managerial women in Hong Kong have to face the triple responsibilities of childcare, housework and a demanding career (p. 378). The extent to which employers adopt formal and informal work family balance policies and attitudes is commonly seen as an indicator of how family-friendly they are. Employers who desire to recruit and retain workers often actively promote their family-friendly policies as evidence that they are a good employer. In this section we review three of the common family-friendly organisational strategies (part-time work, flexible work hours and parental leave) and we discuss their impact on workers experiences of workfamily balance.
Part-Time and Flexible Working Arrangements
It is intuitive to assume that flexible working arrangements provide workers with an ability to juggle their work and family demands and to move closer to achieving a state of workfamily balance. A substantial volume of research suggests that this is indeed the case. Flexible working arrangements, including regular shift systems, have been found to significantly lower the perceived experiences of work and family conflict (Kropf, 2002; Kushner & Harrison, 2002; Thomas & Ganster, 1995). Nordenmark (2002), for example, found not surprisingly that more women (31%) than men (19%) considered reducing their work hours to increase their time for family responsibilities. This was especially the case for women with both children and a cohabiting partner, and for women in the higher ranks of an organisation. A longitudinal study of 691 New Zealand managers (Brough, ODriscoll, & Kalliath, 2005) demonstrated that the use of flexible working hours was the most frequently employed workplace option, whilst only a minority of respondents had access to a workplace crche. Importantly, Brough et al. demonstrated that the use of family-friendly workplace practices predicted levels of both job and family satisfaction over time. Brough et al. concluded that Providing employees with supportive workplace practices therefore appears to improve psychological outcomes over time within both work and non-work domains. These results strongly substantiate the introduction of supportive workplace policies and practices by New Zealand employers (p. 232).
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Equivalent published investigations with Australian workers are rare. Baxter (2000), for example, reported results from the 19951996 Australian National Social Science Survey (Kelley, Evans, & Bean, 1995). Based on the responses from 1,344 workers, Baxter reported that 76% of men and 79% of women would choose to adopt flexible working hours if this practice was available to them, whilst fewer respondents (40% of men and 46% of women) would prefer to work shorter hours. However, in terms of the actual use of these flexible working practices, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS, 2003) reported that 21.7% of working fathers and 38.8% of working mothers used flexible working hours. Furthermore, this usage had increased compared with the 2000 data (15.6 % and 29.8% for males and females respectively). The results reported by both Baxter (2000) and the ABS (2003) suggested a discrepancy between the proportion of workers who would prefer to access flexible and/or reduced working hours and the number of workers who are actually able to use these working arrangements. Such a discrepancy has also been noted elsewhere. Galinsky, Bond, and Friedman (1996), for example, reported that 11% of US-employed parents would change jobs to gain access to increased flexitime job benefits. Similarly, Kropf (2002) reported that US workers rated flexible working arrangements as the most preferred strategy to address worklife balance. In qualitative interviews with working mothers in Hong Kong, Lo (2003) also reported that flexibility of work hours and the ability to work shorter hours were two of the three most highly rated job characteristics of women-friendly work arrangements. Overall, the success of flexible working arrangements, both for the organisation through performance measures and for individuals in terms of satisfaction levels, has been acknowledged (Kropf, 2002). Lo (2003) for example, recommended that women in Hong Kong should try to work for an organisation that best accommodates their family obligations (p. 379). Permanent part-time work is a common option chosen by working parents in an attempt to achieve some balance between home and work/financial demands. Although the number of women in part-time positions continues to exceed the number of men, it is recognised that demands for part-time work have recently increased from both male and female workers. The ABS (2003) for example, reported that Australian employed mothers in permanent part-time work had increased from 28.2% in 2000 to 34.9% in 2002, while the figures for employed fathers were 0.7% and 2.9%, respectively. Kropf (2002) noted that a substantial number of workers were likely to use both full- and part-time working
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options at different points in their career and life stages. This contradicts the more popular perception that employees can be wholly categorised as either full- or part-time workers. However, part-time work is still heavily associated with lower wages and/or reductions in other employment benefits such as pensions and health entitlements and this is especially the case for non-professional workers and women (Carr, 2002). Indeed, it is suggested that adverse consequences associated with part-time work, such as financial and career disadvantages, may outweigh any advantages gained, such as more family time (Tausig & Fenwick, 2001). Adverse consequences of parttime work may therefore actually increase rather than reduce perceived levels of workfamily conflict for some working parents.
Parental Leave
Employer-sponsored paid parental leave is one of the more contentious family-friendly options. Some governments and organisations consider a workers non-work life, including dependant responsibilities, to be external to their primary interest in the worker and therefore solely the responsibility of the individual. The United States and Australia are two western countries that do not offer national policies on paid parental leave. Other countries and organisations consider worker performance within a more holistic framework and perceive a number of advantages in assisting workers with their non-work responsibilities. These advantages include internal benefits such as attracting and retaining staff with dependants, aiming to enhance the health and wellbeing of these workers (to ultimately enhance levels of attendance and performance) and external benefits such as contributing to a shared society-level responsibility for child raising, elder-care and other dependant responsibilities. Countries with generous parental leave policies are often cited as extreme examples of good practice. Sweden, for example, is considered to have the most generous parental leave policies and most progressive equal opportunities of any country (Hyde, Essex, Clark, Klein, & Byrd, 1996). Paid parental leave for all Swedish workers was introduced in 1974 (unpaid maternity leave has been available since the end of World War II) and entitles new parents to a total of 480 days leave, of which 390 days are paid at 80% of salary (at sick pay rates). Each parent has a legal right to take 50% of this leave and may also transfer some leave entitlement to the other parent. However, 60 days of leave is not transferable. These 60 days are referred to as mother months and father months and exist to encourage the sharing of childcare between both parents (Berg, 2004). Norway is also recognised as having a generous parental leave policy; paid
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leave constitutes 52 weeks with 80% of salary or 42 weeks with 100% of salary, plus 1 year of unpaid parental leave for each parent. Norway also strongly encourages paternal leave based on the expectation that fathers are obliged to take leave from work to care for the child (Brandth & Kvande, 2002, p. 191). Approximately 92% of Norwegian working fathers use some form of paternal leave entitlement. In 2002, the United Kingdom revised its maternity leave policy to 26 weeks paid leave plus an additional 26 weeks of unpaid leave (totalling 1 year of maternity leave). Paid paternal leave of 2 weeks was also introduced. These parental leave provisions apply to children produced by either childbirth or adoption. The United Kingdom justified these provisions by recognising the importance of worklife balance, which aims to benefit working parents, employers, and children: the Governments Work-Life Balance Campaign actively encourages businesses to adopt best-practice and to offer worklife balance opportunities across the workforce (Department of Trade and Industry [DTI], 2003, p. 1). New Zealand has recently introduced national paid parental leave of 14 weeks (New Zealand Department of Labour [NZDL], 2004). While Australia has no such national policy, under individual work agreements paid parental leave of between 1 to 24 weeks duration is accessible to approximately 38% of Australian workers (Australian Council of Trade Unions [ACTU], 2003). In an evaluation of the social, physical, and psychological outcomes of parental leave among US working mothers and fathers, Hyde et al. (1996) demonstrated that the number of hours worked per week, rather than the duration of leave taken by new working mothers, was associated with high levels of anxiety. However, short periods of maternity leave (6 weeks or less) together with relationship problems were risk factors for depression amongst these women. Short maternity leave was also associated with negative maternalinfant interactions and with a greater occurrence of physical health problems for biological mothers. Hyde et al. identified financial consequences as the primary reason for the length of leave taken, but recommended that longer maternity leave (12 weeks minimum) provides a buffering effect against adverse physical and psychological outcomes (Feldman, Sussman, & Zigler, 2004). Hyde et al. also observed that most new fathers (91%) took leave with an average of 5 days duration. However, this leave was classified as recreational or sick leave, rather than paternal leave per se. The stigma associated with taking parental leave remains much stronger for men than for women. For example, Allen and Russell (1999) noted that US
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fathers taking paternal leave were less likely to be recommended for rewards than were males who had not taken a leave of absence (p. 166). In Los (2003) qualitative investigation with Hong Kong working mothers, paid parental leave was identified as the most appropriate human resources option to reduce levels of workfamily conflict. Lo concluded that enabling workers to have a greater control over their work hours (time flexibility) was overall the most important factor for reducing levels of workfamily conflict. Individual control could be increased by a variety of techniques such as flexitime, paid and unpaid parental leave, job sharing, working shorter hours and longer annual leave. Lo suggested that [Hong Kong] organisations seeking to obtain the family-friendly label adopt these human resources practices and benefit from recruiting and retaining female workers especially. In Australia, Baxters (2000) review of attitudes to family-friendly organisational policies demonstrated strong support (7483% of respondents) for a workers right to unpaid parental leave and for maternity leave. However, the support for paid parental leave, even to cover childbirth, was much weaker (approximately 33% of the 1,280 respondents). However, 75% of female respondents and 68% of males indicated that they would take paid parental leave if it was available to them, whilst slightly more respondents in each case would take unpaid parental leave. In Baxters investigation, it was clear that more women than men supported the provision of family-friendly organisational policies, as did more parents of young children. However, support for paid parental leave amongst this Australian sample was weak, suggesting that unlike some European countries Australians have less interest in this specific worklife balance strategy.
Other Family-Friendly Strategies
A number of other family-friendly organisational strategies exist, such as telecommuting, workplace child-care provisions, job sharing, and supportive supervisor arrangements (Brough & ODriscoll, 2005). The literature commonly demonstrates that the use of such family-friendly strategies reduces levels of workfamily conflict, stress, absenteeism and turnover and increases worker health and satisfaction outcomes (Allen et al., 2000; Brough et al., 2005; Kossek, Lautsch, & Eaton, 2006; Voydanoff, 2002). Successful implementation of family-friendly strategies largely depends on the prevailing corporate and national culture, as discussed above. An encouragement to workers to use such practices, without the implication of any (informal) disadvantages, should obviously occur. This level of encouragement, of course, differs across organisations,
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which is why some organisational practices are enforced by legislation. Most organisational structures and cultures continue to reward continuous, full-time employment and long working hours. It will be of considerable interest to see whether employment practices over the next few years will change in response to pertinent social issues such as the continual increase in female workers, the decreasing birth rate, and increasing individual demands for workfamily balance.
Moderators of WorkFamily Relationships

To this point we have focused predominantly on organisational factors, such as organisational policies and practices, that may have an impact on worker experiences of workfamily balance, particularly conflict between the two domains. In addition to these organisational variables, it is also important to consider individual-level variables that can influence relationships between the work and family domains, especially variables that can either alleviate or exacerbate workfamily conflict. These individual differences are typically investigated as moderators or buffers of the workfamily nexus. A moderator or buffering effect is obtained when the relationship between two variables varies for different levels of some third variable (referred to as the moderator variable). For instance, it has been suggested that the relationship between work-related demands and work-to-family interference (WFI) and that between family demands and family-to-work interference (FWI) may be different for males and females. Hence, gender may be a possible moderator of the relationship between demands (work or family) and workfamily conflict (WFI or FWI). However, compared with research examining antecedents and consequences of both workfamily conflict and workfamily facilitation, less attention has been given to moderator effects. Studies examining moderator effects have focused predominantly on two variables gender and social support although other possible moderating variables will also be mentioned here. A moderator may operate in two distinct ways: (a) affecting the relationship between antecedents and conflict or facilitation and (b) affecting the relationship between conflict or facilitation and potential outcomes. For simplicity, we discuss both forms of moderation together. The aim is not to offer an exhaustive review of the literature but rather to illustrate patterns of findings.
Gender
Differences between males and females in both levels of workfamily conflict and the relationship between the experience of conflict and
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other variables (especially work-related attitudes) have been frequently researched. For instance, Duxbury and Higgins (1991) explored the moderating role of gender in relationships between workfamily conflict and levels of work involvement. The gender role hypothesis predicts that workfamily conflict would be more strongly linked with work involvement for women, whereas for men workfamily conflict would be more strongly related to their level of family involvement. Duxbury and Higgins also examined whether gender moderated the relationship between workfamily conflict and both quality of work life and quality of family life. While involvement in non-traditional roles may be problematic for both men and women, conflict between work and family had a more negative impact on womens quality of work life and on mens quality of family life, as might be expected from a gender roles perspective. Time devoted to a specific domain (whether work or family) was closely connected with the degree of interference between that domain and the other, and the relationships were uniformly stronger for women than for men. Gutek, Searle, and Klepa (1991) found that time devoted to a domain (e.g., work) was linked with the degree of interference between that domain and the other (e.g., family), and that these relationships were stronger for women than for men. Martins, Eddleston, and Veiga (2002) reported gender differences in the relationship between work-to-family interference (WFI) and career satisfaction (their study did not focus on FWI). Consistent with the gender-role perspective, WFI was found to be significantly negatively correlated with career satisfaction for women, but not for men. Martins et al. suggested that men and women may prioritise their work and family roles differently: Whereas womens career satisfaction was negatively affected by workfamily conflict throughout their lives, men showed such adverse effects only in later career, when they were 40 or older (p. 406). Butler and Skattebo (2004) conducted a laboratory study where family-to-work interference had an effect on job performance ratings for men but not for women. The authors argued that traditionally-based gender roles created differential expectations about the impact of FWI for men versus women, and that typically women are expected to experience more FWI and hence to be more accustomed to dealing with this stressor. In one of the few studies to simultaneously examine both conflict and facilitation, Aryee et al. (2005) found that gender moderated the relationship of both optimism and job involvement with family-to-work facilitation, such
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that these relationships were stronger for men than for women. Gender also moderated the effects of neuroticism and parental work overload on workto-family interference. Aryee and colleagues noted that these findings may reflect cultural expectations concerning gender roles in India. Further, they suggested that family-to-work facilitation may be more susceptible to traditional role expectations, whereas work-to-family facilitation is more influenced by egalitarian norms and values. The above studies illustrate that, when assessing the moderating influence of gender, it is important to consider the direction of conflict (that is, WFI versus FWI) and facilitation. For example, contrary to the gender role perspective, Grzywacz and Marks (2000) observed no differences between men and women in the linkage between family demands and family-to-work interference, but low levels of work support were more closely linked with WFI for women than for men. Social support may operate in different ways for males and females, especially in respect of its influence on workfamily conflict. Overall, it would appear that, while there is no consistent evidence that men and women experience significantly different levels of workfamily conflict and facilitation, gender may play a role in moderating the relationships of conflict, and perhaps also facilitation, with other variables.
Social Support
The moderating effects of support from work colleagues, friends, or family members have been investigated in several studies, although again the focus has been predominantly on workfamily conflict rather than facilitation. For example, Carlson and Perrewe (1999) examined social support as a moderator of the relationship between various stressors and levels of workfamily conflict. While there is considerable evidence that social support is directly related to reductions in workfamily conflict, findings on the buffering role of support are far from conclusive, with some studies reporting a significant buffering role for this variable (Ganster, Fusilier, & Mayes, 1986), but others finding either limited or no evidence of a buffering effect (e.g., Frone, Russell, & Cooper, 1995; Parasuraman, Greenhaus, & Granrose, 1992). Carlson and Perrewe found no significant moderating effects of work-related social support on the relationship between work demands and WFI, or of social support from family on the relationship between family demands and FWI. They concluded that social support may have a direct (rather than buffering) role in reducing workfamily conflict. Other studies have looked at family support as a moderator. Matsui, Ohsawa, and Onglatco (1995) and Aryee, Luk, Leung, and Lo (1999) found that social support from ones
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spouse reduced the association between role overload and FWI. However, Matsui et al. did not explore the relationship between work overload and WFI, and in the Aryee et al. study spousal support did not moderate the relationship between work overload and WFI. A series of studies in Australia have been conducted by Elloy and colleagues over recent years. For example, Elloy and Mackie (2002) explored whether the amount of social support that dual-career couples received from their supervisors, co-workers and friends had a buffering effect on relationships between work overload and workfamily conflict. No moderating effects were found for social support, illustrating the importance of considering whether the kinds and forms of support available to individuals actually meet their needs. Another type of support that has received attention recently is perceived support from the organisation itself for work-life balance initiatives. Again, however, evidence on the impact of this kind of support is mixed. For instance, an investigation in New Zealand by Haar (2004) found that perceived support from the organisation did not buffer the impact of workfamily conflict on turnover intentions among workers in a local government organisation. In this study, it is possible that the initiatives provided by the organisation were incongruent with the felt needs of individual workers or that they were unable to effectively use these initiatives. Overall, research findings have not been entirely consistent, but there are indications that support from others can function as a buffer between job or family demands (stressors) and levels of workfamily conflict. However, more exploration is needed of: (a) the importance of social support for different individuals, (b) the types of support that are most beneficial and (c) the frequency and intensity of support provided by family members, work colleagues, and others. More attention also needs to be given to the organisations role in offering support to workers, and determining what are the most effective mechanisms for facilitating workfamily balance.
Other Moderators
Some studies have examined individual difference variables (e.g., dispositions) as moderators of relationships between workfamily conflict and affective reactions. For instance, Behson (2002) examined the stressbuffering effects of a form of coping which he referred to as informal work accommodations to family. Accommodation was a significant moderator of the relationship between family-to-work interference and negative emotional reactions to work experiences. Among respondents who reported greater use of these coping behaviours, the association between FWI and negative emotions was reduced.
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Jex and Elacqua (1999) also examined the moderating effects of coping behaviour on the relationship between workfamily conflict (both WFI and FWI) and psychological strain. They reasoned that the ability to manage ones time efficiently should alleviate the negative impact of WFI and FWI. In their study, however, while time management was a significant buffer, the direction of the effect was opposite to that anticipated, with a stronger WFI-strain association being reported by respondents who scored high on time management. No other moderator effects were found for coping. Greenhaus, Parasuraman, and Collins (2001) predicted that level of involvement in both family and career would moderate the relationships of work-to-family interference (WFI) and withdrawal intentions and behaviours. Individuals who were highly involved in their family life were expected to display a stronger linkage between WFI and withdrawal than were their less family-involved counterparts. In contrast, individuals with high levels of career involvement were expected to show a weaker linkage between WFI and withdrawal than were those whose career involvement was lower. The results of their study illustrated a moderator effect only for career involvement. Greenhaus et al. suggested that these findings indicated that there is less of a reason to put up with extensive work-tofamily conflict if work is not a highly salient part of ones life (p. 96). On the other hand, where career is highly important to the person, interference of work with family life may be less of an issue. The authors conjectured that WFI may be accepted as a necessary by-product of having to provide financial support for the family, even by individuals whose family involvement is high. Harvey, Kelloway, and Duncan-Leiper (2003) investigated worker level of trust in management as a moderator of relationships between work overload and three indicators of strain: burnout, psychological strain and workto-family interference. Individuals with lower work overload reported lower WFI, and there was a significant interaction between work overload and trust in management. Harvey et al. suggested that workers who have trust in their management may be less affected by more work (p. 313). Trust in management may have important connotations for workfamily policies and interventions. Similarly, perceptions of procedural fairness in management decision-making may also buffer the impact of workfamily conflict on variables such as a workers commitment to their organisation (Siegel, Post, Brockner, Fishman, & Garden, 2005). There has been some investigation of negative affectivity as a moderator in the relationship between workfamily conflict and strain variables. Individuals who score highly on negative affectivity are presumed to be
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more vulnerable and less resistant to stressors, and they may not adopt effective coping mechanisms. This expectation was confirmed by Stoeva, Chiu, and Greenhaus (2002), who obtained a significant moderating effect for negative affectivity on the link between family pressures and FWI, such that family pressures were more closely linked with FWI for individuals who were high in negative affectivity. However, there was no significant moderating effect of negative affectivity on the corresponding relationship between work pressures and WFI. Stoeva et al. suggested that work pressures may be more difficult to contend with than family pressures, and hence even respondents low on negative affectivity may experience the detrimental effects of the former.
Conclusion
This chapter has reviewed some of the current thinking concerning workfamily conflict and facilitation and we also discussed how workfamily balance may incorporate these two constructs. We considered how different countries and organisations help their workers to balance their work and non-work responsibilities, and how gender, social support, involvement, and individual dispositions can influence individual experiences of balance, conflict and facilitation. The chapter identified that changes in both employment and social traditions continue to shape our perceptions of workfamily balance and, for example, that this may lead to the emergence of different views of how balance is experienced by male and female workers. The chapter also emphasised that whilst much of the workfamily conflict literature is dominated by research from western countries, attempts to achieve workfamily balance by workers in non-western countries is also pertinent and requires representation. Finally, the chapter touched on the issue of responsibility for dependant family members and how different countries produce legislation to acknowledge some collective responsibility, whilst other countries adopt a more individualistic stance. We predict that it will be of considerable interest for organisational psychologists to evaluate the longterm impact of this legislation in terms of levels of worker health and work performance, organisational recruitment and retention, as well as wider issues such as immigration and national childbirth rates.
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ODriscoll, M., Brough, P., & Kalliath, T. (2004). Workfamily conflict, psychological well-being, satisfaction and social support: A longitudinal study in New Zealand. Equal Opportunities International, 23(1/2), 3656. Parasuraman, S., Greenhaus, J., & Granrose, C. (1992). Role stressors, social support and well-being among two-career couples. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 13, 339356. Perrewe, P. L., Hochwater, W. A., & Kiewitz, C. (1999). Value attainment: An explanation of the negative effects of workfamily conflict on job and life satisfaction. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 4, 318326. Pocock, B. (2005). Work-life balance in Australia: Limited progress, dim prospects. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 43, 198209. Siegel, P. A., Post, C., Brockner, J., Fishman, A. Y., & Garden, C. (2005). The moderating influence of procedural fairness on the relationship between work-life conflict and organizational commitment. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90, 1324. Stoeva, A. Z., Chiu, R. K., & Greenhaus, J. H. (2002). Negative affectivity, role stress and workfamily conflict. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 60, 116. Tausig, M., & Fenwick, R. (2001). Unbinding time: Alternate work schedules and work-life balance. Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 22, 101119. Thomas, L., & Ganster, D. (1995). Impact of family: supportive work variables on workfamily conflicts and strain. Journal of Applied Psychology, 80, 615. Voydanoff, P. (2002). Linkages between the workfamily interface and work, family, and individual outcomes: An integrative model. Journal of Family Issues, 23, 138164. Wolf, N. (2001). Misconceptions: Truth, lies, and the unexpected on the journey to motherhood. New York: Doubleday.
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CHAPTER
5
The Bullied Boss: A Conceptual Exploration of Upwards Bullying
Sara Branch, Sheryl Ramsay, and Michelle Barker
Increasingly, workplace bullying has attracted attention from researchers and practitioners from around the world, mainly because of its serious economic and psychological costs. Predominantly, research has examined downwards bullying (as perpetrated by managers against staff) and, more recently, horizontal bullying (one colleague bullying another; Lewis & Sheehan, 2003). However, the voice of managers who feel that they have been bullied by (a) staff member/s has rarely been heard in this research data. The present chapter explores this type of workplace bullying, using the term upwards bullying to describe the bullied boss. While research has indicated that managers can be the targets of bullying by staff, the nature and impact of the phenomenon of upwards bullying has been underexplored within workplace bullying research (for a summary of the status of perpetrators see Zapf, Einarsen, Hoel, & Vartia, 2003). However, a number of studies indicate that upwards bullying does occur. Indeed, Scandinavian, United Kingdom and European research has identified the occurrence of upwards bullying from between 2% and 27%, with a mean of 11% (figures obtained from the table presented in Zapf et al., 2003, p. 116). The reasons for, and circumstances around, upwards bullying have also been discussed in the literature. According to Hoel, Cooper, and Faragher (2001), an important reason for the commencement of upwards bullying may include resentment about a decision made by a manager.
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Similarly, Davenport, Distler-Schwartz, and Pursell-Elliott (1999) proposed that staff may bully upwards as a way of dissenting against a manager who they believe is the cause of the stress they are experiencing in the workplace. Furthermore, some staff may use the term bullying as a way of voicing their dissatisfaction with organisational issues (Liefooghe & Davey, 2001). Thus, it may be that within some interpersonal conflict situations involving staff and management, staff are claiming to be victims of workplace bullying as a weapon against their manager or even the organisation as a whole (Einarsen, 1999). Given the detrimental impacts that workplace bullying can have on individuals (see Einarsen, 2000; Einarsen & Mikkelsen, 2003) and organisations alike (see Hoel, Einarsen, & Cooper, 2003), we argue that it is essential to understand all perspectives of workplace bullying, including upwards bullying. An investigation of upwards bullying is even more important when the vital role that managers perform within organisations is considered (Bartol, Tein, Matthews, & Martin, 2005). If managers are not functioning effectively because of the negative impact that workplace bullying can have on them as targets (for instance, feelings of abuse and victimisation; see Einarsen, 2000), then it is reasonable to expect that impacts will not be confined to the manager alone. That is, the managers workgroup and organisation are also likely to be affected. Moreover, by exploring the perspective of upwards bullying, practitioners and organisations will be better informed about all forms of negative behaviour wherever the target or perpetrator sits within the organisation. In this way, more effective strategies to address workplace bullying can be developed. The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the concept of upwards bullying and to present our current understanding of the phenomenon, as reflected within the academic literature. A conceptualisation of upwards bullying, which challenges and refines existing assumptions and approaches to workplace bullying will then be presented using the theoretical frameworks of power and dependency (Bass, 1990; Emerson, 1962; Mechanic, 1962, 2003), and social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1986).
Workplace Bullying: A Summary

Definition
Workplace bullying incorporates a range of inappropriate behaviours in the workplace, from low intensity behaviours often termed incivility (for a review of the term incivility see Andersson & Pearson, 1999) to higher intensity aggressive and violent behaviours. However, in order for these behaviours to meet the definition of workplace bullying, they must meet
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two essential criteria: the regular occurrence of these inappropriate behaviours over a period of time, and the inability of the targets to defend themselves (Einarsen, 2000). For example, in order for aggressive acts to fulfil the criteria mentioned, the acts would need to occur repeatedly over a period of time with no effective defence from the target (Einarsen, 2000). An important extension to the criteria is that a single event can also be considered workplace bullying if it induces a perceived ongoing threat to the target (Einarsen, Hoel, Zapf, & Cooper, 2003; Zapf, 2004). For instance, a threat to destroy someones career could be considered to be workplace bullying if the threat is perceived to continue over a period of time and the target finds it difficult to defend him/her self.
Impact of Workplace Bullying
Workplace bullying has been found to have significant consequences for those who are targeted, those who witness it and the organisation. Consequences of bullying at work for those targeted can range from physical harm through to an increase in psychological stress for the recipient (Einarsen, 2000; Einarsen & Mikkelsen, 2003). Physical and psychological impacts can include fatigue, muscular complaints, lack of self-esteem, sleeplessness, depression, feelings of abuse and victimisation, nervousness and psychosomatic complaints (Einarsen, 2000; Einarsen & Mikkelsen, 2003). Research has also indicated that the impacts extend to witnesses of bullying events (Einarsen & Mikkelsen, 2003). Co-workers of those who experience workplace bullying have reported that workplace bullying impacts on them physically and psychologically, largely through an increase in stress levels and concern about being the next target (Rayner, 1999). This climate of fear (Rayner, 1999) is likely to impact upon the organisation through loss of productivity, increased absenteeism, intention to leave and turnover, as well as the cost of intervention programs (Einarsen, 2000; McCarthy & Barker, 2000). Significantly, it has been estimated that workplace bullying could cost Australian organisations anywhere between 6 and 13 billion dollars per annum when using a conservative prevalence rate of 3.5% (Sheehan, McCarthy, Barker, & Henderson, 2001). Using a higher prevalence estimate of 15% increases this figure to between 17 and 36 billion dollars per year (Sheehan et al., 2001; for a review of the literature on organisational costs see McCarthy & Mayhew, 2004). Given that Australias working population consists of just over eight million people (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2002) with a GDP of $697 billion (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2003) this is a staggering figure. However, these costs have largely been estimated from the perspectives of downwards and horizontal workplace bullying. While these are
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important and legitimate foci, the voice of managers who feel that they have been bullied by (a) staff member/s often remains unheard. We argue that managers who have been bullied, like other bullied employees, could well be negatively affected, with significant impacts on their ability to work effectively. As a result, estimated costs to organisations could well increase if we also consider reduced managerial effectiveness and productivity caused by upwards bullying.
Upwards Bullying: What Do We Know Already?

Despite limited use of the term upwards bullying (Lewis & Sheehan, 2003; McCarthy, Henderson, Sheehan, & Barker, 2002; Rayner & Cooper, 2003), there does appear to be general agreement in the literature that managers can indeed be targets of workplace bullying by their staff (e.g., Zapf et al., 2003). Nevertheless, this area of research is underexplored. To date, insights into the prevalence of upwards bullying have been largely inferred from studies that focused primarily on downwards or horizontal bullying. While it is legitimate that the predominant focus has been on managers as perpetrators of workplace bullying (results indicate clearly that the primary targets of workplace bullying are staff at lower levels within organisations; Rayner & Cooper, 2003), it is important to explore all forms of workplace bullying, including upwards bullying, in order to gain greater insight into organisational processes involved in workplace bullying. Cases of upwards bullying have been reported rarely (Rayner & Cooper, 2003) and are often presented anecdotally or as a single case (see Braverman, 1999, for example). In a chapter entitled Workplace bullying: Its management and prevention, McCarthy and his colleagues (2002) referred to evidence of upwards bullying, but they do not elaborate on this point. Similarly, Scandinavian and European research has identified small numbers of managers who have been bullied by a subordinate (see Zapf et al., 2003, for a summary of the status of perpetrators). For instance Salin (2001) found that one-sixth of self-identified managerial targets of workplace bullying reported being bullied by a staff member. This led Salin (2001) to conclude that the imbalance necessary for workplace bullying to occur is created via means other than formal position. Further Salin (2001) suggested that it would be useful to examine further how superiors can be put into a position in which they cannot defend themselves and how bullying alters power relations (p. 435). These results, however, have been overshadowed by findings that consistently confirm people in supervisory or managerial positions and, to a lesser
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extent, colleagues as the primary perpetrators of workplace bullying (Zapf et al., 2003). However, Hoel et al. (2001), in one of the most comprehensive studies into organisational status of bullies, questioned the approach taken in such research.
Typically, this study [UNISON study by Rayner] did not include responses from people in managerial positions. It is not surprising if this discrepancy may lend support to a common perception of bullying as predominantly a process whereby a worker is being bullied by someone in a managerial capacity. (Hoel et al., 2001, p. 445)
Further, Hoel and his colleagues (2001) suggested that the omission of managers from studies of workplace bullying may have exaggerated the focus on managers at the expense of attention to peer bullying (p. 446), thus not allowing a complete understanding of workplace bullying to emerge. As a result, Hoel et al. (2001) included managers and supervisors in their study, hypothesising that managers may be vulnerable to workplace bullying. Results indicated that 6.7% of respondents identified a subordinate as their perpetrator, while another 7.8% referred to experiences of being bullied by a client. Interestingly, Hoel et al. found that supervisors were most vulnerable to being bullied by a subordinate (14.9%), while senior management (9.4%) and middle management (7.8%) were less likely to report bullying by a staff member. Reasons given for the apparent vulnerability of supervisors compared with senior and middle management were that staff may be resentful towards the supervisor for accepting the supervisory role or disgruntled due to missing out on the promotion themselves (Hoel et al.). In addition, Millers (1997) innovative and unique study of gender harassment within the U.S. Army supports the proposition that superiors can be bullied or harassed by (a) staff member/s. Indeed, if workplace bullying is seen as a general form of harassment (as suggested by Bjorkqvist, Osterman, & Hjelt-Back, 1994; Einarsen, 2000), then Millers study could be considered to be the first comprehensive study into the phenomenon of upwards bullying. Interestingly, Miller found that often men do not recognise the authority of women in power, believing that their power was obtained illegitimately, or that they have used their gender inappropriately in being promoted to their position. Miller found that subordinates often used disruptive and covert behaviours to undermine women in authority. This, in turn, impacted on female superiors ability to fulfil their roles. Examples of disruptive and covert behaviour included tardiness, constant unjustified scrutiny of the managers decisions, gossip and rumours, as well as sabotage.
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A more recent qualitative study into bullying and occupational violence in tertiary institutions by McCarthy and his colleagues (2003) found that 11% of respondents identified a student as their perpetrator, while another 6% referred to experiences of being bullied by a subordinate or staff member at a lower level. Indeed, the authors suggested that workplace bullying by a student or staff member/s could result in changes to decision-making processes (e.g., a failing student being passed due to bullying behaviour). In a related but specific paper on student aggression, Mayhew, McCarthy, Barker, and Sheehan (2003) reported a rising tide of student aggression (p. 330) directed towards university staff. The authors suggested that the current higher education environment in Australia (characterised by increasing levels of commercialisation and changing student cohorts, for example) has placed increased strain on the relationships between staff and students in university workplaces. This perspective supports the view of Hoel et al. (2001) that managers or others with legitimate authority are vulnerable to workplace bullying from their staff or students due to the current and rapidly changing nature of work. In summary, there appears to be general acceptance that bullying of managers and supervisors by staff members does occur. However, there has been little focus on upwards bullying as a phenomenon. While research into workplace bullying clearly indicates that staff and those in lower levels of the organisation are the group most vulnerable to workplace bullying, the preceding discussion has highlighted flaws in the assumption that only staff can be targets (Zapf et al., 2003). We suggest that workplace bullying researchers expand their focus to include situations where a manager is targeted by (a) staff member/s. By expanding research to include upwards bullying we are not suggesting that the research focus on staff as the primary targets of workplace bullying be minimised. Rather, the intention is to deepen our understanding of the multifaceted phenomenon of workplace bullying and the processes involved. The following section of this chapter uses the theoretical perspectives of power and dependency to strengthen our conceptual understanding of upwards bullying.
Upwards Bullying: Exploring Power and Dependency

Power and Workplace Bullying
Power, even when not explicitly referred to, is entrenched in definitions of workplace bullying through reference to the intent of the offender and the vulnerability or defencelessness of the recipients (Keashly & Jagatic, 2003). Hoel and Salin (2003) concurred, stating that power and control are core aspects of workplace bullying. Commonly within the workplace
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bullying literature, the abuse of power in relation to workplace bullying is associated with organisational structure and the position of the perpetrator (Einarsen et al., 2003; Keashly & Jagatic, 2003). It is suggested that those in the lower levels of an organisation (i.e., staff members) are more vulnerable to being abused by those in the higher levels of the organisation (i.e., supervisors and managers), due mainly to the authoritive position of the latter (Beed, 2001; Keashly & Jagatic, 2003). While there is empirical evidence to support this framework (for a review of the effects of workplace bullying see Einarsen & Mikkelsen, 2003; Hoel et al., 2003; Rayner, Hoel, & Cooper, 2002; Zapf, Knorz, & Kulla, 1996), we suggest that there is a risk in assuming that formal organisational authority alone contributes to abuse. In support, a number of workplace bullying researchers have suggested a reassessment of how we consider power when discussing workplace bullying. For instance, Liefooghe and Davey (2001) have called for a broader understanding of power within workplace bullying research. Salins (2001) study also indicated that formal position was not the only factor that created the imbalance necessary for workplace bullying to occur. Keashly and Jagatic (2003) also questioned the assumption in the workplace bullying literature that power is related uniquely to either the position a person holds within an organisation, or the authority they have. Indeed, by considering power in terms of organisational position alone, we may limit our conceptualisation of workplace bullying (Keashly & Jagatic, 2003; Rylance, 2001). The literature on power and dependency can contribute to a deeper understanding of the complexity of the imbalance of power in relation to workplace bullying. Bacharach and Lawler (1980) recognised power as a multidirectional construct that can be directed horizontally, upwards and downwards. In addition, power can be derived from a range of sources other than organisational position or authority alone. In their classic work on power, French and Raven (1959) introduced five interpersonal bases of power: legitimate, reward, coercive, expert and referent power. Legitimate power is seen as the traditional form of power usually held by a manager in an organisation and tends to come directly from the persons position. Similarly, reward power (the provision of rewards), and coercive power (the power to punish) are both derived predominantly from a persons position in the organisation. Further, power can be drawn from personal attributes such as possession of specific expertise, knowledge or expert power (French & Raven, 1959). In the case of referent power, power is gained through
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the attraction of others. In 1993, Raven added informational power as a sixth basis of power in recognition of its importance in a power framework. Information is different from expert power in that it focuses on access to, or ability to obtain, needed information (Raven, 1993). Thus, according to French and Raven (1959; Raven, 1993) power in organisations can be sourced from many areas, including those areas associated with the position of a person (e.g., legitimate power) and characteristics of the person (e.g., expert power). As a result, we suggest that the supposition within the workplace that the power abuse in workplace bullying relates to a persons formal authority alone must be challenged because of the multidirectionality and varying sources of power found within organisations. In addition, the circumstance of holding a position of authority does not always mean that others will respect the power that comes with such a position. French and Raven (1959) suggested that acceptance of legitimate power stems from three internalised values that acknowledge another persons right to power: acceptance of cultural values (e.g., experience is respected), acceptance of the social structure (e.g., managers have more power within organisations), and recognition of a legitimising agent who endorses the manager (e.g., endorsement by the CEO). If a manager is seen to lack any one of these aspects of legitimate power, then potential power sourced from their position will be affected. For example, in Millers (1997) study into gender harassment, it was found that female officers power was not respected because it was believed by subordinates that their power was obtained illegitimately. Therefore, although a manager may be in a position that traditionally holds power, their power may be undermined if another person/s does not accept their power. This can occur due to the manager being perceived as a member of a minority group within the organisation, as with Millers study. Thus, it can be argued that it is the perception of power and not an objective analysis of power resources that influences an individuals behaviour (Miller). Further, we argue that perceptions that a managers power base is illegitimate, leaves managers vulnerable to upwards bullying, in the same way that women in the armed forces were vulnerable to gender harassment (Miller). The practical implication of this dynamic is that managers may be open to being bullied by their staff, potentially reducing their ability to manage effectively.
Dependency and Upwards Bullying
If power cannot be defined according to position or authority alone, then other aspects of power need to be considered. Einarsen et al. (2003) proposed that in the case of workplace bullying, it is the targets depend100
ency on the offender that produces the power imbalance, enabling bullying in the workplace to occur. Similarly, because dependency is an underlying feature of power, Keashly and Jagatic (2003) proposed that power should be defined as a process of dependency (p. 48). Dependency within organisations occurs at all levels with staff relying on their managers for direction, resources and rewards, and managers depending on staff to be productive and fulfil the organisations goals (Cook, Yamagishi, & Donnelly, 1997). However, problems arise when either party within this interdependent relationship denies or hinders the other person from achieving his/her goals (Emerson, 1962). For example, staff members can acquire power when they withdraw an item valued by a manager (such as information or expertise), which can interfere with managerial goal achievement (Emerson, 1962). Further, Bass (1990) suggested that the power of an individual staff member is compounded when the individuals particular knowledge, skills and expertise are difficult to replace. Therefore, in the social exchange relationship, just as a manager can abuse the dependency that staff members have on them by misusing their positional power, staff can abuse the dependency that managers have on them by misusing their own personal sources of power (Mechanic, 1962, 2003). Indeed, Mechanic (1962, 2003) went so far as to suggest that managers and the organisation as a whole are at the mercy of staff members, because organisations are dependent or rely on their workforce for efficiency and effectiveness. Largely, this perspective of workplace bullying has been overlooked in previous research. Thus, it appears that the concepts of personal power, illegitimate power and dependency are central to our understanding of upwards bullying. The following section builds on this conceptualisation through the application of social identity theory.
Applying Social Identity Theory to the Process of Upwards Bullying

In exploring the processes around workplace bullying, extant research has focused on individual factors such as personality traits of the target or the bully (for example, Ashforth, 1997; Coyne, Seigne, & Randall, 2000; Douglas & Martinko, 2001; Zapf, 1999), and bullying as interpersonal conflict (for example, Einarsen et al., 2003). In addition, the influence of organisational factors, such as leadership and the changing nature of work, on workplace bullying has also been a focus (e.g., Einarsen, 1999, 2000; Einarsen et al., 2003; Einarsen & Skogstad, 1996; Hoel & Salin, 2003; McCarthy, 1996; Sheehan, 1996; Vartia, 1996). Others have emphasised that bullying is a multifaceted phenomenon and, as such, multiple causes including organisational and group-related factors, and
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not just individual aspects, require consideration (Zapf). For example, Zapf suggested that group characteristics, for example envy and scapegoating of groups, are also related to workplace bullying. Furthermore, group characteristics such as ethnicity (Rayner & Hoel, 1997), gender, age (Zapf cited in Zapf & Einarsen, 2003) and organisational status differences (Hoel et al., 2001) such as the division between management and staff (Jablin, 1986) have also been found to be related to workplace bullying. As a result, further research into workplace bullying as a group event has been called for (Ramsay & Troth, 2002). It is argued here that because managers are commonly viewed by staff as outsiders, different from the dominant culture of workers (Jablin, 1986), they can be regarded as legitimate targets of abuse. Moreover, Einarsen et al. (2003) contended that being a member of a group that is considered to be outside the accepted dominant culture could be the only reason that some people are bullied. As a result, bullying of managers by their staff could be regarded as a group-based conflict between staff and their managers. Indeed, if staff use the term bullying as a weapon (Einarsen, 1999) against management to voice their dissatisfaction with organisational issues (Liefooghe & Davey, 2001), then applying group-based theory could assist our understanding of the processes involved in cases of upwards bullying, as well as workplace bullying in general. In the following section, social identity theory is applied to the concept of upwards bullying as a useful conceptualisation of the processes involved when (a) staff member/s bully/ies a manager.
Social Identity and Upwards Bullying
A number of hypotheses have been presented as part of, or extensions to, social identity theory (SIT) to explain why individuals seek to place themselves within or outside social groups. According to SIT, social competition resides within two processes, social categorisation and social comparison (Hogg & Mullin, 1999; Hogg & Terry, 2000). Social categorisation occurs when individuals self-categorise themselves within a group (Haslam, 2001). This self-categorisation provides members with security through the guide of prototypes, which tend to indicate model behaviour or the ideal types of behaviours, thoughts and attitudes expected from a member of a particular group (Haslam; Hogg & Terry). Through social comparison, similarities of prototype attitudes, beliefs and behaviour are commonly emphasised within the in-group, whilst differences with out-group members are accentuated (Hogg & Terry). Thus, norms, stereotyping and cohesion within and between groups are developed.
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One method that people within organisations use to categorise themselves is by their position in the organisation. The differentiation found within most organisations between Us the workers, and Them the management, can be seen as a categorisation of different groups within an organisation. The existence of these two major groups is supported by research into supervisorsubordinate communications. For instance, staff members and managers tend to describe themselves differently and also use different criteria when making judgments (Jablin, 1986). In addition, staff members and managers rarely agree on the duties of the subordinate (Jablin). Thus, it is possible that within organisations workers and managers categorise themselves into two different groups: Us and Them. Social comparison between the two groups then occurs with the in-group favouring other members of the in-group at the expense of those in the out-group, who can be excluded (Hogg & Terry, 2000; Schneider & Northcraft, 1999). From the workers perspective, Us is the in-group, in which group members are perceived to share the same values and attitudes (Hogg & Terry, 2000; Schneider & Northcraft, 1999). By comparison, members of the out-group, managers, may be distrusted by staff and are often seen as more difficult to communicate with (Schneider & Northcraft). Interestingly, Schneider and Northcraft suggested that shared social identity within groups increased perceived differences between groups, thereby enhancing the possibility of unnecessary conflict, which might increase during times of organisational uncertainty. In the case of upwards bullying, social comparisons of managers as members of the out-group may result in managers being regarded as untrustworthy, which could lead to unnecessary conflict.
Organisational Uncertainly as a Trigger
Since prototypes inform individual group members about appropriate beliefs, thoughts and behaviours, they can also help to reduce uncertainty for individuals. Reduction of uncertainty is seen by Hogg and Terry (2000) as an additional motivation beyond enhancement of self-esteem, and perhaps a more central explanation as to why individuals seek to categorise themselves into groups. In times of great uncertainty and particularly with regard to vital issues, groups that provide clear and simple prototypes will be especially attractive to individuals (Hogg & Terry). Therefore, the level of uncertainty and constant change found in organisations today may influence the occurrence of upwards bullying and indeed all forms of workplace bullying (Lewis & Sheehan, 2003; McCarthy, 1996; Ramsay & Troth, 2002; Sheehan, 1996, 1999). Interestingly, factors such as de-layering of organisations (Sheehan,
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1999), changes in organisational procedures (Baron & Neuman, 1996), and increased diversity within the workforce (Baron & Neuman, 1998) resulting from, for example, the increase of women in managerial positions (Hammond & Holton, 1993), were all suggested as factors that could enable or trigger workplace bullying (Hoel & Salin, 2003). For some staff members, organisational change in the form of restructures and changes in organisational processes may be perceived by both staff and management as a threat to their in-group. Individuals may resist these changes to protect either their position in the in-group or the in-group itself, seeking the reassurance and security of the group membership as well as enhancement of their self-identity (Brewer, 2001; Hogg & Terry, 2000). Thus, factors such as organisational change, organisational culture and climate, leadership and challenges to workplace diversity can all create a level of uncertainty that results in an individual acting against their manager. Davenport et al. (1999) supported this view, stating that staff may dissent against a manager who they hold responsible for uncertainty within an organisation. Ramsay and Troth (2002) concurred proposing that:
One partial explanation for increased bullying, and acceptance by bystanders, in such contexts is that the heightened uncertainty and stress in these environments accentuates the in-group/out-group demarcation between the victim and others, as well as prototype induced depersonalisation towards the victim. (p. 6).
Thus, within current workplace environments, many of which are characterised by uncertainty and constant change (Lewis & Sheehan, 2003; McCarthy, 1996; Sheehan, 1996, 1999), social identity and self-categorisation processes are particularly relevant because they can help to explain how certain individual and group behaviour, including counterproductive behaviours such as bullying can become prevalent. In addition, according to Brewer (2001) aggression is triggered by a desire to enhance or protect the in-group. Where the out-group is seen as a threat to the in-groups goals or values, hatred of the out-group can be intensified (Brewer, 2001). In this case, the individual acts out of the desire to be a good group member. Similarly, if an individuals identity or inclusion within the in-group is threatened, then the individual may act because of this perceived threat (Ashmore, Jussim, Wilder, & Heppen, 2001). The motive in this case is for the individual to reduce the uncertainty and to protect their position in the in-group. Thus, upwards bullying may occur when an individual perceives a threat to the in-group (for instance a merger between two organisations may lead
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to concern about cultural change in the work-group) or perceives a threat to their own position within the in-group (e.g., because of an organisational restructure). Consequently, a manager, who as a member of the out-group or Them, is perceived to be a threat to the in-groups values and goals, would be more likely to experience upwards bullying. For instance, a manager implementing or overseeing organisational change processes may be seen by (a) staff member/s as challenging and threatening the values and norms currently operating within the in-group. Furthermore, a manager who is seen as a threat to the culture of the workplace (for example, a young new manager, a new female manager or a female manager in a traditionally male dominated organisation) could also be seen as threatening the values and norms of the in-group. Similarly, this could be related to (a) staff member/s perceiving the managers power as illegitimate. If the manager is a member of a minority group, they may be breaking one of the values introduced by French and Raven (1959), specifically the acceptance of cultural values, such as only men work in this organisation or do this type of work. In support, Salin (2001) proposed that professionals who are perceived to have less power, such as women due to their minority status in the workplace, would be more vulnerable to bullying. For instance, women in managerial roles have been found to be bullied more often than their male counterparts (Hoel & Cooper, 2001; Salin).
Risk of Action for Staff
However, the risk for (a) staff member/s acting against a manager could be substantial, due mainly to the authoritative power of the manager. Nevertheless, feelings of victimisation and vulnerability may increase the occurrence of action and override concerns that an individual may have about potential risks (Ashmore et al., 2001). In addition, after reviewing the workplace bullying and power and dependency literature, a number of factors that reduce the risk for an individual worker have emerged. For example, a staff member gaining support from another manager (Zapf et al., 2003); use of subtle behaviours (as indicated in Miller, 1997, e.g., tardiness, sabotage and gossip), rather than more obvious forms of aggression like yelling; and a power imbalance due to a managers dependency on (a) staff member/s for expertise (Mechanic, 1962, 2003). These all appear to be factors that could minimise risk to (a) staff member/s who choose/s to act inappropriately against a manager. However, a continuing cycle of threat and harm can arise because action on the part of the perpetrator(s) increases the threat, resulting in the need for further action (Ashmore et al., 2001). When applying this
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process to upwards bullying, acting against a manager could be seen to involve a risk due mainly to the positional power that managers hold within organisations (Yukl, 1989). Once inappropriate action occurs, the threat of disciplinary action on the part of the manager increases, resulting in further action becoming necessary (Ashmore et al., 2001). At this point, the interplay between the individual and the group becomes especially important. The individual may act in response to a threat and out of a need to protect either the in-group or their own position within the in-group (Ashmore et al.; Brewer, 2001). The group may actively support their actions or lend tacit support by allowing it to occur (Ashmore et al.). Thus, it is proposed that upwards bullying is an experience shared between the perpetrator and the in-group against a manager, with the perpetrator(s) perceiving the in-group as a support mechanism. In sum, social identity theory assists in providing an explanation of the processes that may occur with upwards bullying, such as explaining why change and uncertainty may trigger upwards bullying and why (a) staff member/s may act against a manager.
Implications for Workplaces

As argued in this chapter, upwards bullying is a multifaceted phenomenon that has been largely overlooked in previous research. Analysis of literature on power and dependency suggests that an important factor in upwards bullying is the level of dependency that managers have on their staff. The more dependent a manager is on a staff member (e.g., for expertise or information), the more power that staff member/s has to influence and even bully his or her manager. By defining power as a process of dependency as suggested by Keashly and Jagatic (2003), our understanding of workplace bullying in general, and upwards bullying in particular, has been enhanced. We also argue that an increase in the level of change and uncertainty in an organisation, for instance during an organisational restructure, may trigger (a) staff member/s to act against his/her manager. Despite the risk that the staff member/s take(s) in acting inappropriately towards their manager, a manager could be perceived as a suitable target because of his or her status as an outgroup member. Action on the part of (a) staff member/s against a manager increases the risk of disciplinary action, driving the need for further action by the staff member/s, and prompting a counterproductive cycle of abuse and bullying. As noted, the use of subtle behaviours such as tardiness, sabotage, gossip and rumours (Miller, 1997) and gaining the support of another manager (Zapf et al., 2003) may be among the ways
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in which the staff member/s can reduce risks associated with taking action against those in higher levels of positional power. In essence, we conceptualise that the level of dependency of a manager on (a) staff member/s, change and uncertainty within the workplace and the use of subtle counterproductive behaviours by (a) staff member/s, are variables that must be examined in relation to upwards bullying. By applying social identity theory to upwards bullying we propose that our understanding of workplace bullying as a group-based conflict has been further enhanced. To date, there is little evidence in the literature that upwards bullying is perceived as a counterproductive force in the workplace. As a result, managers may feel unsupported and unable to seek assistance when faced with a case of upwards bullying due to concern over how it could impact on their professional standing and position (Lee, 1997). This may have severe physical and psychological impacts on the manager, and their workgroup, as well as financial costs for the organisation. It is proposed here that the primary strategy that organisations can employ to address upwards bullying is to recognise its existence. Although apparently simple, such an approach may mean going against current thinking and workplace culture. For instance, inappropriate behaviour by staff members towards managers may be normalised or rationalised by managers as par for the course, something that comes with the job (Archer, 1999; Rayner, 1997, 1999). It needs to be made clear, however, to both managers and staff, that just as bullying behaviours are unacceptable when perpetuated by a manager or colleague, they are also unacceptable when directed at a manager by (a) staff member/s. By formally acknowledging the occurrence of upwards bullying, organisations will be taking the first strategic step to address this phenomenon. Further actions, such as implementing support mechanisms for managers and staff can then occur. Such action on the part of organisations is seen as vital not only for the wellbeing of managers, but also for effective functioning of the workgroup and broader organisation. In conclusion, we have argued throughout this chapter that it is important to investigate the perspective of upwards bullying (Lewis & Sheehan, 2003). By doing so, we will expand not only our conceptual understanding of the processes involved with workplace bullying but we will also contribute to the development of relevant practical strategies to address workplace bullying. A review of the literature revealed that there is general agreement that bullying of managers by staff members can and does occur. Research from Europe and Scandinavia indicates that although not as common as managers bullying staff, upwards bullying does occur (for a review of the status of the perpetrator see Zapf et al.,
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2003). While we have discussed upwards bullying mainly from a theoretical perspective, further empirical research is required to document the processes, behaviours and impacts of upwards bullying, in order to determine the nature of this phenomenon. Cross-cultural research, to confirm the prevalence of upwards bullying, focusing on variables such as gender, age and other individual differences, as well as analysis of organisational culture and climate, would also be useful. Clearly, if we are to understand the bullied boss, we must further investigate individual, group and organisational processes that operate within work environments.
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CHAPTER
6
Wellbeing at Work: A Multivariate Analysis of Warrs Vitamin Model
Feliciano Donatelli and Peter Sevastos
Work is the cornerstone of society. It is a source of social cohesion and material welfare; and for the individual it is often crucial to self-esteem, wellbeing and both physical and mental health. (Warr, 1978, p. 9)
Wellbeing, or quality of life, is a goal that most individuals continually strive for and it is often a major characteristic for the evaluation of organisations, governments and societies (Kahn & Juster, 2002). Work involves a significant amount of time and energy, and is a source of monetary income that can subsequently determine housing, neighbourhood and many other material aspects of life. As Warrs (1978) quote suggests, work is such an integral and consuming part of the majority of adults everyday lives that it also has an important effect on the health and wellbeing of individuals and is pivotal to the functioning of societies in general (Warr, 1978, 1999). Work plays a significant role in most individuals lives. According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Factbook (2005) the average amount of time each employed person worked in 2003 was 1649 hours. This value was higher in Asia-Pacific OECD member countries; for example, Koreans worked 2390 hours, Australians 1814 hours and the Japanese 1801 hours per year.
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Given the proportion of individuals lives devoted to work, relationships between job features and worker health and wellbeing continue to be prevalent in the organisational psychology and related literature. However, while existing studies have investigated linkages between job features and wellbeing, findings are often mixed and difficult to interpret due to the wide variation of measures and terminology used for the relevant constructs (Kohan & OConnor, 2002). One aspect of worker wellbeing that is often investigated is stress. Stress in the workplace can arise from factors associated with the structure and processes of an organisation, job design, demands and individual characteristics (Brief, Schuler, & Van Sell, 1981); it has also been found to have significant detrimental effects on worker health and wellbeing (see Cooper & Marshall, 1976, for a review). There now exists a growing body of research evidence linking work stress with negative health and wellbeing outcomes such as coronary heart disease (CHD), mental health problems, poor health behaviours, cancer and family problems (e.g., Cooper & Watson, 1991; Frese, 1985). Work-related stress impacts not only on an individuals health, but the high cost of workplace stress is also indirectly reflected in the growing number of stress claims, lowered productivity, high employee turnover and absenteeism (Berridge, Cooper, & Highley-Marchington, 1997). Conversely, greater worker wellbeing has been associated with better job performance, lower absenteeism, reduced intention to resign and increased frequency of discretionary work behaviours (Warr, 1999). Some estimates state that as much as 80% to 90% of an organisations budget is spent on human resources (e.g., Kemp, 1994). Therefore, in the light of the widespread impact of worker wellbeing, is it any wonder that an increasing proportion of organisations pursue interventions for improving the wellbeing of their workforce? Popular management practices including worker empowerment (e.g., Conger & Kanungo, 1988) and the creation of a learning organisation (Senge, 1990) promote self-managing workers and promise the result of an increased competitive advantage in the marketplace through the better use of human resources. However, it has been observed that a paradox of modern organisations is that people have the opportunity for personal growth, skill development and connectedness to others, but they also confront a lack of security, ambiguity, competing demands, and unrelenting work pressures (Mohrman & Cohen, 1995, p. 377). Thus it is vital to learn more about how to simultaneously maximise worker wellbeing and development, while minimising the stress associated with excess demands and pressures (Parker & Sprigg, 1999).
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Wellbeing at Work
Early Wellbeing Models

The theoretical basis driving much early research into relationships between job features and worker health and wellbeing is the Hackman and Oldham (1976) job characteristics model. This model proposed that five core job features of the workplace (skill variety, task significance, task identity, autonomy and feedback) elicit varying degrees of three psychological states in the worker. These features include the workers experienced meaningfulness of their work, experienced responsibility for work outcomes and knowledge about the result of their work activities. These three states, in turn, are thought to evoke several personal and work outcomes including internal work motivation, job satisfaction, absenteeism and work quality (for a review see Loher, Noe, Moeller, & Fitzgerald, 1985). The job characteristics model also includes the characteristic of growth need strength (GNS) as a moderator of the relationship between job features and the on-the-job outcome variables. A workers GNS refers to the need for personal development and growth through his or her job. Hackman and Oldham argued that workers with high GNS should respond more positively to jobs with high levels of the five core features than would workers with low GNS. Building on Hackman and Oldhams (1976) model is Karaseks (1979) demandcontrol model. Karaseks psychosocial model emphasised the interaction between a person and their immediate work environment (Muntaner & OCompo, 1993), and synthesised two well-studied lines of empirical research: the importance of job autonomy or job decision latitude (e.g., Gardell, 1977; Hackman & Oldham, 1976) and job demands (e.g., Frankenhauser & Gardell, 1976; Kahn, 1981; Sales, 1969). Karaseks interactive model postulated that a workers level of psychological strain is a consequence of the demands of the job and the amount of decision latitude available to the worker to deal with such demands. The aim of the demandcontrol model is to provide a theoretical framework for enhancing the quality of working life, leading to a reduction in workrelated strain and also promoting motivation and growth for workers. The popularity of the demandcontrol model is evident in its widespread adoption in health research into CHD, fatigue, depression, suicide and total mortality (e.g., Braun & Hollander, 1987; Falk, Hanson, Isacsson, & stergren, 1992; Johnson & Hall, 1988; Karasek & Theorell, 1990). The model has been equally popular in psychological research where the presence or absence of job control has been found to have profound effects on mental health and wellbeing (Spector, 1986), and has been demonstrated to be an essential ingredient in managing
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environmental stress agents (Sauter, 1989). The significance of the demandcontrol model was further reinforced by Karasek, Theorell, Schwartz, Pieper, and Alfredssons (1982) finding that whilst low job control was associated with increased CHD, a combination of low control with high demands led to even higher levels of CHD. More recently, however, these proposed interactive effects of the demandcontrol model have been tested in numerous studies endeavouring to predict job satisfaction, burnout and depression amongst workers, but have yielded inconsistent findings (for a review see Van der Doef & Maes, 1999). The predicted interactions between demand and control have been found in only a relatively few studies (e.g., Alfredsson & Theorell, 1983; Johnson & Hall, 1988), and have been partially supported in others (e.g., Carayon & Zijlstra, 1999; de Jonge, Mulder, & Nijhuis, 1999). Other studies have found no interaction effects (e.g., Carayon, 1993; Payne & Fletcher, 1983), while Kasl (1989) observed that the effects appeared to be additive, rather than interactive (p. 175). Karasek, in collaboration with Theorell, subsequently refined the model to incorporate the effects of social support as a moderator, to develop the demandcontrolsupport model (Karasek & Theorell, 1990). This version of the model has two distinct hypotheses the iso-strain hypothesis, and the buffer hypothesis. The iso-strain hypothesis of the demandcontrolsupport model states that jobs characterised by high demands, low control and low social support are considered to be the most noxious work situation, and are related to lower levels of worker wellbeing (Karasek & Theorell, 1990). The alternative buffer hypothesis introduced support as a factor in the interaction between demands and control. The implication of the demandcontrolsupport model is that workers with high levels of decision latitude and social support will have sufficient discretion to be able to manage, or buffer, the demands and stressors arising in their work environment (Bunce & West, 1996). Similar to the demandcontrol model, empirical evidence for the demandcontrolsupport model is inconsistent and suffers from an absence of clarity. Studies investigating the iso-strain or the buffer hypotheses have only found supporting evidence for the model in approximately half of the cases (for a review see Van der Doef & Maes, 1999). Van der Doef and Maes suggested that the discrepancy between studies supporting and not supporting the demandcontrolsupport model may be reconciled by considering certain key elements. These included that certain subpopulations appeared to be more prone to high iso-strain work contexts, whereas other subpopulations may benefit greater from high levels of control. In addition, only
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Wellbeing at Work
FIGURE 1 Warrs three principal axes for measuring affective wellbeing.
when aspects of job control and social support are consistent with the demands of the job will social support be able to buffer the potentially negative effects of excess demands. Furthermore, studies supporting the demandcontrolsupport model predominantly adopted a cross-sectional, rather than longitudinal, methodology.
Warrs Work and Wellbeing Framework

Warr (1990b, 1994, 1999) developed a more comprehensive conceptual framework by drawing on aspects from both the job characteristics model (Hackman & Oldham, 1976) and the demandcontrolsupport model (Karasek & Theorell, 1990). Two key points of Warrs model are the detailed account of wellbeing and job feature variables, and the proposed curvilinear relationships between wellbeing and certain job features. Warr (1990b, 1994) described five main components of mental health and wellbeing, which he labelled as: affective wellbeing, competence, aspiration, autonomy and integrated functioning. Warrs perspective on the measurement of health and wellbeing departs from more traditional thinking through his suggestion that workforce wellbeing encompasses more than just job satisfaction (Sevastos, Smith, & Cordery, 1992). Sevastos (1996) argued that intrinsic job satisfaction has a much greater role in accounting for mental health and wellbeing in the work setting than Warrs model would imply. Affective wellbeing has been granted the most attention by occupational researchers. Warrs (1990b, 1994) model (see Figure 1) locates specific
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feelings in the contextual space defined by the orthogonal dimensions of pleasure and arousal. The pleasure dimension contains three key indicators of affective wellbeing: (a) displeasurepleasure, (b) anxietycomfort, (c) depressionenthusiasm. Principal types of affect may be located anywhere along those axes. The arousal dimension itself is not considered to reflect wellbeing and therefore its poles are not labelled. In the occupational setting, the first axis (displeasurepleasure) has often been operationalised using measures of intrinsic job satisfaction, job attachment or organisational commitment (Warr, 1987). The anxietycomfort axis is usually tapped using measures of job-related anxiety, job-related tension or job-related strain; while the depressionenthusiasm axis is usually tapped using measures of occupational burnout, fatigue or job-related depression (de Jonge & Schaufeli, 1998). Previous research has also used these three axes to test Karaseks demandcontrolsupport model (Sevastos, 1996). The remaining four of Warrs (1990b, 1994) mental health features have received considerably less attention. Competence refers to the individuals ability to deal with experienced difficulties and act on the environment with at least a moderate amount of success, and bears some similarities to Jahodas (1958) concept of environmental mastery. Aspiration refers to an individuals motivations to set goals and make active efforts to attain them, and is comparable with Hackman and Oldhams (1976) GNS. The fourth factor, autonomy, is the tendency to strive for self-regulation and interdependence. Warr emphasised that it is a balance between independence and interdependence that reflects healthy levels of this feature. For the final feature, integrated
TABLE 1 Similar Terms to Explain Warrs Ten Job Features Warrs job feature Opportunity for personal control Opportunity for skill use Externally generated goals Variety Environmental clarity Availability of money Physical security Supportive supervision Opportunity for interpersonal contact Valued social position Similar terms Decision latitude, job control, task autonomy Skill use, required skills, use of valued abilities Job demands, role conflict, role demands Skill variety, task variety, non-repetitive work Task feedback, low role ambiguity, task identity Income level, amount of pay, material resources Low physical risk, absence of danger, good working conditions Supervisory support, effective leadership, leader con sideration Contact with others, social support, friendship opportunities Task significance, social rank, meaningfulness of job
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functioning, Warr has largely borrowed from the clinical psychology literature and its conceptualisation of overall functioning, concerning the person as a whole and relationships between the other components (P. B. Warr, personal communication, May14, 2002). As noted, Warrs (1990b, 1994, 1999) choice of job features are similar to those of the job characteristics model (Hackman & Oldham, 1976), and the demandcontrolsupport model (Karasek & Theorell, 1990). A list of his 10 key job features is presented in Table 1, which also includes similar terms commonly used in the employment-related and research literature. In many models covering the relationship between job features and mental health and wellbeing there is no specificity in the relationships between the two groups of variables. In essence these models assume a general mechanism whereby any job feature can lead to any mental health outcome (van Veldhoven, de Jonge, Broersen, Kompier, & Meijman, 2002). This oversimplification of these relationships hinders practical attempts to target change initiatives using job features in order to improve mental health and wellbeing. Instead, Warr (1990b) proposed that distinct job features could have different effects on the mental health and wellbeing dimensions. Warr found that the externally generated goals job feature was more closely aligned with the anxietycomfort axis than with the depressionenthusiasm axis. Furthermore, opportunity for personal control was more closely related to the depressionenthusiasm axis than to the anxietycomfort axis. Some studies have validated the existence of differential relationships. For example, de Jonge and Schaufeli (1998) uncovered differential relationships using structural equation modelling. Their research indicated that differences in job demands were more likely to have an impact on a workers level of depressionenthusiasm, rather than on his or her levels of anxiety or pleasure. Variations in task autonomy were related to differences in the displeasurepleasure and depressionenthusiasm axes, rather than anxietycomfort. Additionally, they found that differences in social support were more strongly related to variations in displeasurepleasure than on both the other axes. This study therefore supported Warrs (1990b) contention that differential relationships exist between job features and worker wellbeing, although some groupings of the relationships differed. In a review of a number of Dutch studies that concentrated on variables common to Warrs (1990b, 1994) model and the demandcontrol models, van Veldhoven et al. (2002) found that job demands were primarily associated with measures of job strain (e.g., fatigue, psychosomatic complaints, emotional exhaustion). Job variety and job control, on the
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other hand, were more strongly related to job-related wellbeing (e.g., job satisfaction) measures. The data were less conclusive regarding social support. Additionally, van Veldhoven et al. reported that the number of determinants for job-related wellbeing (e.g., job satisfaction) appeared to be larger than for job-related strain. Using canonical correlation analysis, Sevastos (1996) combined job features and mental health and wellbeing variables (with the important inclusion of intrinsic job satisfaction) within a single multivariate analysis. Two orthogonal dimensions emerged from the analysis. The first dimension highlighted that job satisfaction and, to a lesser extent, depressionenthusiasm, was significantly related to supervisory support, skill use, role clarity and feedback. The second dimension demonstrated that anxietycomfort was the primary wellbeing contributor, and that this was significantly related to work pressure and role ambiguity. It is interesting to note that although task autonomy was significantly related to the first dimension, it did not enhance the models explanatory power. Whereas the job characteristics model (Hackman & Oldham, 1976) and the demandcontrolsupport model (Karasek & Theorell, 1990) assume a linear relationship between various job features and worker health and wellbeing, Warrs framework (1990b, 1994) suggests curvilinear relationships between certain job features and mental health outcomes. The hypothesised curvilinear relationships are based on the stressperformance inverted-U model (Yerkes & Dodson, 1908), which suggested that moderate levels of stress result in optimal performance, whereas both low and high levels of stress are associated with suboptimal performance. Warr (1994) adopted this curvilinear model to describe the relationship between job features and mental health and wellbeing outcomes, illustrating his point by the use of a vitamin analogy. Warr proposed that the presence of job features (like vitamins) initially have a beneficial effect on mental health, whereas their absence impairs mental health. Beyond a certain required level, the job feature plateaus and has no additional positive effect. Further increases in a job feature may then have either a constant effect whereby health does not improve beyond a certain point (as in the case for high doses of vitamins C and E), or noxious consequences when increases in a job feature impairs an individuals health (as for high doses of vitamins A and D). In line with the abovementioned vitamin effects, Warr has labelled these two relationships as constant effect (CE) and additional decrement (AD) respectively. A graphic representation of these relationships is presented in Figure 2.
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FIGURE 2 Warrs vitamin model.
Out of the ten job features of the vitamin model, Warr (1994) suggested that six of these job features have effects that are proposed to follow the AD relationship (personal control, externally generated goals, interpersonal contact, skill use, variety and environmental clarity), while three have effects that follow the CE effects (money, safety and valued social position). The remaining job feature (supportive supervision) was subsequently added to the model by Warr (1999) without any prediction of the pattern of its relationship with mental health. It is not unreasonable to hypothesise, however, that supportive supervision may be likely to follow the AD pattern, for too much supportive supervision could lead to noxious effects such as resentment from co-workers, or to large amounts of overtime worked due to feelings of being indebted to the employer. Warr also claimed that the shape of the curvilinearity is likely to change according to the mental health aspect under investigation, as well as due to variations in personal characteristics such as trait affectivity and coping behaviours. Investigations into the proposed curvilinear relationships postulated by the vitamin model have been inconsistent, with some studies finding support (de Jonge & Schaufeli, 1998; Warr, 1990a), while others have favoured linear trends (Fletcher & Jones, 1993; Jeurssen & Nyklicek, 2001). A notable exception is that job demands has received considerable support for being nonlinearly associated with wellbeing (e.g., Sevastos, 1996; Warr, 1999).
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Inconsistencies in the existing literature documenting the relationship between job features and mental health and wellbeing may be reconciled through research by Baltes, Bauer, Bajdo, and Parker (2002). Baltes et al. (2002) argued that much of the linear findings of earlier research resulted from the particular statistical method (monomethod) adopted by most researchers. Over reliance on monomethod research (using a single datagathering method and/or a single indicator for a concept) can mask the true shape of relationships in the data. To illustrate, Baltes et al. examined the relationship of job satisfaction to role clarity, role overload and job autonomy, using both monomethod and an alternative design using multiple rating sources of these variables (multitrait-multimethod or MTMM), and found differences in these relationships depending on the statistical method employed. Whereas the monomethod design favoured linear trends, the use of MTMM data found that nonlinear trends explained more of the relationship between job satisfaction and all three of the job features.
The Present Study

To the authors knowledge, there has not yet been a study that has examined all components of Warrs (1990b, 1994, 1999) model. Rather, researchers have generally focused on the affective wellbeing variable, as well as only a few of the job features in any given study. This is surprising, considering the practical applications the model could have for the health and wellbeing of workers through methods such as organisational and job redesign. The most complete test of the model to date was conducted by Sevastos (1996), where affective wellbeing and job satisfaction were examined along with seven of the nine original job features (availability of money and physical security were not included). Possibly, this lack of a more thorough and complete investigation of the model is due to the sheer number of variables and size of the model. Our focus, therefore, was to simplify Warrs model by offering a more parsimonious account of the relationships between job features and mental health and wellbeing. An advantage of this approach is that it stands to guide future research to select more appropriate variables for inclusion in further data collection, as well as to aid practitioners to better target change initiatives using job features in order to improve mental health and wellbeing outcomes. Sevastos (1996) noted that standard research strategy attempts to explain how well independent variables (e.g., job features) can be used to predict each dependent variable (e.g., health and wellbeing variables). Past research (e.g., Jeurssen & Nyklicek, 2001; Sevastos, 1996; Sevastos et al., 1992; Warr
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1990b) has indicated that there are strong intercorrelations within the job features and mental health and wellbeing variables. Due to the amount of shared variance likely in this large a set of variables, and the possibility of Type 1 errors occurring (where a relationship is erroneously concluded where no true relationship exists), a more suitable approach would be to relate the independent and dependent variables within a single multivariate analysis. In doing so, the unique variance of each of the variables may be determined. This in turn, permits identification of a more parsimonious model. In order to simplify the model, consideration was first given to the differential associations between the job features and wellbeing variables. An assessment of the relative importance of each variable was then conducted. We expected that when Warrs job features, wellbeing variables and job satisfaction were considered within a single multivariate analysis, two major dimensions would emerge. More specifically, the wellbeing variables of job satisfaction and depressionenthusiasm, and the job features of supportive supervision, skill use and environmental clarity would account for significant variance in the first dimension. The second dimension would have variance substantially accounted for by the anxietycomfort wellbeing variable and the externally generated goals job feature. The evidence supporting Warrs (1994) vitamin analogy whereby curvilinear relationships are assumed between wellbeing and six of the job features (personal control, externally generated goals, interpersonal contact, skill use, variety, environmental clarity) has thus far been inconsistent. An exception is that externally generated goals has received considerable support for being nonlinearly associated with wellbeing (e.g., Sevastos, 1996; Warr, 1999). Therefore, we expected that in our study curvilinear components would be found in the relationship between externally generated goals and wellbeing.
The Sample
Our study comprised a sample of 489 employees (33% male) from three Western Australian public service organisations. All employees were asked to complete standardised questionnaires pertaining to job features and wellbeing, with our study achieving a response rate of 37%. Two of the organisations were local government organisations with the third being a regional health service within Western Australia (incorporating two main hospitals and several smaller nursing posts). The heterogeneous sample was drawn from a variety of job classifications (managerial, blue-collar and white-collar workers) who were employed either on a full-time (63%), part-time (19%), or on a short-term or casual basis (18%).
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Measures
The mental health and wellbeing measures used to evaluate Warrs (1990b, 1994, 1999) model were chosen as they demonstrate sound psychometric properties. Affective wellbeing, competence and aspiration were measured using Warrs (1990b) scales. However, modifications were made to the affective wellbeing scales of anxietycomfort and depressionenthusiasm consistent with suggestions by Warr (1992) and Sevastos (1996). As the anxietycomfort and depressionenthusiasm variable scores reflect positive aspects of these scales, they are labelled as comfort and enthusiasm respectively throughout the rest of this chapter. Autonomy was assessed using six items from Ryffs (1989) original 20item autonomy scale. The only mental health and wellbeing variable of Warrs model not measured was integrated functioning. This broad concept draws on clinical psychology literature regarding overall functioning, and the information currently available in the literature does not enable it to be clearly operationalised or measured (P. B. Warr, personal communication, May 14, 2002). In addition to Warrs wellbeing variables, intrinsic job satisfaction was assessed using the short form measure developed by Hackman and Oldham (1975) in line with Sevastos (1996) findings regarding the importance of this factor.
Job Features
Of the job features, all but one were chosen from the psychological literature, based on their well-demonstrated psychometric properties. Four of the variables were measured using relevant items from the Job Diagnostic Survey (JDS) designed by Hackman and Oldham (1975). The subscales of skill variety, task significance, task autonomy, and feedback were used to tap the job features of variety, valued social position, opportunity for personal control, and environmental clarity respectively. Three of the original four items from Sevastos (1996) skill use scale were used to measure opportunity for skill use job feature. The workload scale developed by Martin and Wall (1989) was used to assess externally generated goals. A scale by Koys and DeCotiis (1991), that forms part of their more general measurement of psychological climate in organisations, was used to gauge supportive supervision. Four of the six items from the Distributive Justice Index (Price & Mueller, 1986) were used to tap the availability of money job feature. The three-item dealing with others scale that formed part of Hackman and Oldhams (1975) larger job features measure was used to assess opportunity for interpersonal contact. Due to the lack of well-researched scales in the existing literature for measuring physical security, a scale was developed specifically for this
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study. Respondents were asked for their level of agreement on items dealing with the extent to which their organisation provided the workforce with a safe and healthy working environment. Evidence for the support of this scale was demonstrated through confirmatory factor analysis and group invariance analysis of the measure.
An Examination of Warrs Model

Three types of analyses were performed in our examination of Warrs model. First, to try and determine a more parsimonious account of Warrs model of the relationships between the job features and wellbeing variables we used a statistical procedure called canonical correlation to examine the multivariate relationships between the two sets of variables. Canonical correlation aimed to relate the independent (i.e., job features) and dependent (i.e., wellbeing and job satisfaction) variables within a single multivariate analysis. Canonical correlation linearly combines the sets of variables on each side to produce the highest possible correlation with the other side. The combination of variables on each side can be thought of as a dimension that relates the variables on one side to the variables on the other. It was used to mathematically weight the two sets of variables for a more parsimonious explanation of their multivariate relationships. As indicated earlier in the chapter, we expected two main dimensions to emerge from this analysis. The rationale for using canonical correlation was that we needed to account for overlapping variance among all the criterion variables in the study. The canonical analysis procedure creates a pair of sets of weights from the data that maximise the correlation between the criterion and predictor variables. Each criterion and predictor set is known as a variate, and there are as many variates as there are criterion variables. However, only the first few of the extracted variates are statistically significant and suitable for interpretation. The variates have the interesting property that, although each criterion and predictor pair achieves the highest possible correlation, correlations among the variates are zeros. As these relationships are summarised mathematically to produce parsimonious and independent dimensions, rather than carry out five or six different multiple regressions with each criterion variable separately that had overlapping variance, we conducted only one per dimension, with the confidence that the correlation between the dimensions was zero. Conducting several multiple regressions would have inflated the possibility of a Type 1 error, in addition to the problem of not accounting for overlapping variance among the criterion variables.
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To supplement the canonical correlation analysis the second type of analysis used was multiple regression, which does not identify the statistical significance of each predictor variable. As multiple regression involves the analysis of only one dependent variable (but permits several independent variables), we used the composite scores from the canonical correlation as our dependent variables. Four multiple regression analyses were conducted: (a) comparing job features on the two wellbeing composites and (b) comparing wellbeing factors on the two job characteristic composites. The third type of analysis employed in this study was hierarchical multiple regression, which was used to verify whether any curvilinear relationships exist between externally generated goals and wellbeing. Through the canonical correlation analysis, dependent variables representing the best linear combination of job satisfaction and the wellbeing variables were created. These variables were subjected to separate hierarchical regression analyses to test for curvilinear effects. The main effects of the predictor variables (i.e., job features) were entered into the final analysis in the first step, and controlled for in subsequent steps. The quadratic terms of the predictor variables were entered into the analysis in the second step to test for any curvilinear effects, as recommended by Lubinski and Humphreys (1990). This enabled the identification of whether the model was enhanced by including one or more of the job features as having a curvilinear, rather than linear, relationship. In order to reduce intercorrelations between the original variables and their products, centring was used prior to the inclusion of the quadratic terms.
Results
Results from the canonical correlation and multiple regression analyses showed that two major dimensions emerged when the ten job features, affective wellbeing variables and job satisfaction were considered within a single multivariate analysis. However, several of the variables within each dimension were slightly different to those expected. Results from the multiple regression analyses (using the composite scores from the canonical correlation from the first dimension as dependent variables) indicated that the wellbeing variables of job satisfaction and, to a lesser extent, enthusiasm, were the major contributors on the first dimension. With regard to job features, the analyses highlighted that the first dimension was primarily availability of money, opportunity for skill use, variety, supportive supervision and externally generated goals (or more specifically, a lack of externally generated goals). Contrary to what was expected, opportunity for personal control did not account for significant variance in the first
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FIGURE 3 Two orthogonal dimensions resulting from the analysis of wellbeing and job feature variables.
dimension. To check whether this was due to Warrs (1999) addition of supportive supervision to his job features, the canonical correlation and multiple regression analyses were repeated without supportive supervision, however, the effect of opportunity for personal control was still not significant. The two subsequent multiple regression analyses (using the composite scores from the second dimension as dependent variables) indicated that the wellbeing variables of competence and comfort and, to a lesser extent, those of aspiration and enthusiasm (or more specifically, a lack of aspiration and lack of enthusiasm) were the primary contributors on the second dimension. The second dimension largely consisted of the job features externally generated goals (or more specifically, a lack of externally generated goals) and, to a lesser extent, those of opportunity for interpersonal contact, availability of money, variety (or more specifically, a lack of interpersonal contact, lack of availability of money and lack of variety) and opportunity for personal control.
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These two orthogonal dimensions are represented diagrammatically in Figure 3 for ease of explanation. The first dimension is represented on the vertical axis, while the second dimension is demonstrated on the horizontal axis. The existence of two differential relationships between the job features and mental health and wellbeing variables is consistent with several other studies. The relationship of opportunity for skill use and supportive supervision to job satisfaction and enthusiasm on the first dimension, as well as the relationship between externally generated goals and comfort is similar to Sevastos (1996) findings. The results also concurred with Sevastos findings that job satisfaction had a greater role in accounting for wellbeing in the workplace than Warr (1990b, 1994) suggested. Although externally generated goals were associated with both dimensions in this study, it had more explanatory power in the second dimension than in the first dimension. However, the current study failed to replicate the relationship that Sevastos found between environmental clarity (feedback) and the first dimension. The relationship between externally generated goals and comfort found here also supports research by Broadbent (1985) and Warr (1990b). Investigating the influence of job design on affective outcomes in assembly workers, Broadbent found that anxiety was associated with the work demands imposed by machine pacing, while depression was associated with a lack of social interaction. Similarly, Warrs research highlighted differential relationships between work overload (e.g., externally generated goals) and anxietycomfort on the one hand, and job complexity and skill use with depressionenthusiasm on the other. The current study is partly consistent with a number of Dutch studies reviewed by van Veldhoven et al. (2002), which found that the number of determinants for job-related wellbeing (e.g., job satisfaction) were greater than the number of determinants associated with job-related strain (e.g., anxietycomfort). They also found that job variety was more strongly related to job-related wellbeing measures such as job satisfaction. However, their findings differed from those obtained in the current study in that they also found that job control was closely related to job-related wellbeing measures, and that job demands were more likely to be related to moods such as depressionenthusiasm rather than anxietycomfort. It is important to note that the two orthogonal dimensions demonstrated in this study describe the relationships found within the same individuals. Thus, complex aspects of an individuals job (e.g., involving high
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opportunity for skill use, supportive supervision, availability of money, variety), combined with low work pressure are related to increased job satisfaction and enthusiasm. They are rich in terms of job features and are positively related to worker wellbeing. On the other hand, aspects of the same individuals job that are low in complexity (e.g., involving a lack of interpersonal contact, lack of availability of money, lack of variety and high opportunity for personal control), combined with a lack of externally generated goals, are related to high competence, high comfort, lack of aspiration and lack of enthusiasm. In this context, the lack of opportunity for interpersonal contact and the high opportunity for personal control indicates that the individual is left alone and not bothered. Combined with the other job feature scores in this dimension, they appear to suggest that these aspects of the job are not challenging for the worker. Warrs (1990b, 1994) assertion that affective wellbeing comprises more than solely job satisfaction, and that mental health includes more components than affective wellbeing, was also investigated in this study. Interestingly, this study showed that job satisfaction was a major contributor to the model, as were the two affective wellbeing components (comfort and enthusiasm). In fact, the whole right-hand side of the arousal spectrum in Figure 1 was represented strongly in the results. Concerning the other mental health measures, only competence, and aspiration to a smaller extent, appeared to contribute substantially to the model. Our examination of any possible curvilinear components in the relationship between externally generated goals and wellbeing was tested through hierarchical multiple regression. Results of the analyses showed that quadratic components were found in the relationship between externally generated goals and the first wellbeing dimension (a composite consisting primarily of job satisfaction, enthusiasm, comfort and aspiration). However, the second wellbeing dimension (a composite consisting primarily of comfort and competence) failed to show any curvilinear relationships with externally generated goals. The mixed findings for the existence of curvilinear relationships between externally generated goals and the wellbeing composites only partially support Warrs (1990a) findings. Warr found significant nonlinear AD (additional decrement) relationships between job demands on the one hand, and job satisfaction, anxiety and depression on the other. The study also partially supports Sevastos (1996) finding that work pressure was curvilinearly related to both Warrs wellbeing composites. The failure to specifically find significant quadratic relationships between externally generated goals and the second dimension is also inconsistent with de
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Jonge and Schaufelis (1998) findings of a significant nonlinear relationship between job demands and depressionenthusiasm. Also noteworthy, is that the failure to find significant curvilinear effects of opportunity for personal control, interpersonal contact, skill use, variety and environmental clarity is inconsistent with Warrs vitamin model. The results also show only limited support for Baltes et al.s (2002) argument that the format of worker questionnaires should change from asking how much a worker has of a certain job feature, to asking whether the worker would prefer more or less of that feature to account for the nonlinear relationships they found between role overload, role clarity and job autonomy, with job satisfaction.
Summary
The differential relationships found between the job features, and the job satisfaction and wellbeing variables provides a template for researchers in their attempts to interpret the literature on job-related wellbeing, as well as aid in the choice of appropriate combinations of dependent and independent variables for future research. Kohan and OConnor (2002) suggested that the haphazard nature of variable selection in previous studies may be a reason for weak relationships between job experiences and wellbeing. They also suggested that there is value in specifying what aspects of the job are associated with different indices of wellbeing and job satisfaction, to serve as a useful road map for practitioners who attempt to target change initiatives with organisational and job redesign. Obviously, very different approaches will be required depending on the desired outcome (e.g., increased job satisfaction, or reduced anxiety). The results of this study also suggest that an individual may, at the same time, be anxious and feel low in competence because of high work demands, but have high levels of enthusiasm and job satisfaction because of enriched job features such as high opportunity for skill use, availability of money and variety. As suggested by Sevastos (1996), it is therefore inappropriate to consider job demands as stressors, or other job features as motivators, because both sets of variables are essentially orthogonal and it is the additive combination of the two sets that determines the outcome. Therefore, it follows that practitioners and researchers alike should concentrate on both the demands of the job, as well as the other job features (e.g., availability of money, opportunity for skill use, variety and supportive supervision). It can be concluded that the approach of considering multiple independent and dependent variables in a single analysis has strengthened our knowledge of the relationships between job features and mental health
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and wellbeing variables. In a holistic sense, when all ten job features and five wellbeing variables plus job satisfaction were considered within a single multivariate analysis, two orthogonal dimensions clearly emerged, providing a more accurate and parsimonious account of the relationships. These differential associations between job features and indices of wellbeing and job satisfaction afford greater explanatory power because they relate specific mental health and wellbeing outcomes to specific job features. Furthermore, results suggest that an individual may, at the same time, be anxious and feel low in competence because of high work demands, but have high levels of enthusiasm and job satisfaction because of enriched job features such as high opportunity for skill use, availability of money and variety. Our study also casts doubt on Warrs (1994) vitamin model for curvilinear relationships, as there was little support found for nonlinear relationships.
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Van der Doef, M., & Maes, S. (1999). The DemandControl (Support) Model and psychological wellbeing: A review of 20 years of empirical research. Work & Stress, 13, 87114. van Veldhoven, M., de Jonge, J., Broersen, S., Kompier, M., & Meijman, T. (2002). Specific relationships between psychosocial job conditions and job-related stress: A three-level analytic approach. Work & Stress, 16, 207228. Warr, P. B. (1978). Psychology at work (2nd ed.). Harmondsworth, United Kingdom: Penguin. Warr, P. B. (1987). Work, unemployment and mental health. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. Warr, P. B. (1990a). Decision latitude, job demands, and employee wellbeing. Work & Stress, 4, 285294. Warr, P. B. (1990b). The measurement of wellbeing and other aspects of mental health. Journal of Occupational Psychology, 63, 190210. Warr, P. B. (1992). Age and occupational wellbeing. Psychology and Aging, 7, 3745. Warr, P. B. (1994). A conceptual framework for the study of work and mental health. Work & Stress, 8, 8497. Warr, P. B. (1999). Wellbeing in the workplace. In D. Kahneman, E. Diener, & N. Schwartz (Eds.), Wellbeing: The foundations of hedonic psychology (pp. 392412). New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Yerkes, R. M., & Dodson, J. (1908). The relation of strength of stimulus to rapidity of habit formation. Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology, 18, 459482.
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CHAPTER
7
Perceptions of School Administration Trustworthiness, Teacher Burnout/Job Stress and Trust: The Contribution of Morale and Participative Decision-Making
Carolyn Timms, Deborah Graham, and Marie Caltabiano
Job burnout was first described by Freudenberger (1975) as an almost inexorable response to competing and continuing stressors on the job. Freudenberger saw the human service professional as a person caught in a three-way squeeze with their own needs competing with the needs of clients and administrative personnel. This results in personnel unable to perform to their optimum level due to internal conflict and stress. Individuals experience burnout in many workplaces and the condition has its basis in relationships (Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001). Because of the interpersonal nature of the job, burnout has long been regarded as an occupational hazard of teaching (Dorman, 2003; Friedman, 2000; Hughes 2001). In spite of a large documentary literature, research has been repetitive in that many stressors have been identified (see Dorman, 2003; Friedman, 2000); and unsystematic, in that individual approaches or interventions were advanced before consideration of organisational practices that could have contributed to the development of burnout (see Dworkin, 2001; Leiter & Maslach, 1999).
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The Burnout Syndrome
Job burnout has been described as a syndrome comprising emotional exhaustion, cynicism and inefficacy (Maslach et al., 2001). Emotional exhaustion describes the feeling of having given so much of ones individual inner resources to the job that the capacity for resilience has been fully depleted. Cynicism or depersonalisation is a sense of personal or cognitive distancing from the workplace and the people in it. Maslach and colleagues (2001) described cynicism as an immediate reaction to emotional exhaustion, thereby suggesting a sequential progression of the burnout syndrome, whereas others have seen it as an emotional reaction to workers doubts of organisational integrity (Albrecht, 2002). The third burnout construct, inefficacy, often appears in tandem with either emotional exhaustion or cynicism, or indeed with both. Inefficacys place within the burnout syndrome lies in the psychological undermining of skills by either emotional exhaustion, loss of faith (cynicism) in the integrity of the system directing the individuals workplace, or in inadequate provision of resources needed for satisfactory execution of work requirements (Maslach et al., 2001). In relation to teachers, most emphasis within psychology and education has been devoted to helping individuals adjust by means of various coping strategies (Dworkin, 2001). However, the difficulty with such approaches is that they appear to blame burned-out persons for their condition, thereby increasing individual vulnerability to systemic exploitation (Dworkin). Dworkin proposed that this traditional psychological approach is inefficient in terms of economies of scale and commented, the causal elements of burnout are to be seen within the structure of the school or the structure of the educational system (p. 70). It could therefore be concluded that psychologys previous focus on individual adjustment, the so-called existential problem (Friedman, 2000), has been deficient in providing a realistic picture of what was contributing to teacher burnout. Hence, it may well be advantageous to view teacher burnout through an organisational lens, which takes a wider view.
Psychological Climate: Morale and Participative Decision-Making
In a meta-analysis of organisational climate literature, Parker, Baltes, Young, Huff, Altmann, Lacost, and Roberts (2003) pointed out that empirical studies of organisational climate are conducted at an individual level (they include individual outcomes like wellbeing and worker performance) and that it is more accurate for this construct to
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Trustworthiness, Teacher Burnout/Job Stress and Trust
be called psychological climate. Parker and colleagues (2003) found that psychological climate has its basis in relationships (leader, work group and organisation), work role and job requirements. Furthermore, psychological climate is correlated with job satisfaction, and work attitudes such as job involvement and commitment thereby impact on motivation and performance. Rafferty (2003) saw teacher attitudes and school climate as fundamental components of school excellence. Morale is described as an individual perception of the energy, cohesion, cooperation and enthusiasm experienced by teachers in their school (Hart, Wearing, Conn, Carter, & Dingle, 2000). Staff morale is central to the effectiveness of the school (Young, 2000). It is therefore clear that morale would have a negative relationship with burnout, as outlined by Maslach and colleagues (2001). Another important aspect of psychological climate is participative decision-making (Kahnweiler & Thompson, 2000). In a study of 114 former teachers, Tye and OBrien (2002) found that the two leading factors cited in a decision to leave teaching, were increased paperwork and accountability. These factors increased workload, but not work meaningfulness. The resulting extra tasks, in fact, consumed large amounts of time where classroom teachers were alienated from meaningful decision-making processes (see also Fink, 2003).
The Role of School Administration in Disempowering Teachers
In 1992, Sarros and Sarros found that a supportive school network was essential in reducing the occurrence of burnout among teachers. The key figure in this was the principal, whose support was found to be instrumental in developing efficacy among teachers. Of interest in Sarros and Sarros (1992) study, was the finding that burnout symptoms were exacerbated in those teachers who received no support from the principal and who instead relied on support from colleagues. Blas & Blass (1998, 2003) extensive qualitative forays into teacher perceptions of schools micro politics have shed some light on particular principal behaviours that can adversely impact teachers professional efficacy and seriously impair their ability to function. Of special interest, is the abuse of reward and coercive power to the extent that teachers experience feelings of entrapment (Blas & Blas, 2003). Organisational literature suggests that workplace bullying is a significant hazard within many organisations; when it occurs, it is inevitably associated with high worker turnover, erosion of morale and loss of production (Tepper, 2000).
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Trust and Trustworthiness
Trust is seen as a critical component in the smooth operation of any organisation, including schools. In organisations where relationships are ongoing and people can expect to associate with and rely on the same group of individuals over time, it is imperative that trust relationships are formed (Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 1998). Harvey, Kelloway, and Duncan-Leipers (2003) research in a firm of accountants identified workers trust in management as a buffer that protected them against the ravages of overload and strain. In her discussion of the mutual understandings of the reciprocal obligations between employer and worker, Rousseau (1995) considered the psychological contract between management and workers as an evolving process, with both parties filling in the blanks along the way (p. 7). The universal norm of psychological contract is reciprocity (Rousseau, 1995); this implies understanding and trust. Trust is not normally instantly granted by each party to the other; it is built up incrementally as each party develops a reputation for being trustworthy. However, when violations occur, trust is likely to be instantly shattered (Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 1998). According to Tschannen-Moran and Hoy, costs to industry of a lack of trust within the workplace include unwillingness to take risks, demands for greater protection and insistence on expensive sanctioning mechanisms to defend parties interests. When applied in a school, these costs include erosion of the time and energy that teachers have available to devote to student learning and to extra curricular activities (Fink, 2003).
Perceptions of Management Trustworthiness
Investigations in the business arena may inform research into relationships between teachers and school administration. Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman (1995) prepared a framework for study of management trustworthiness from a worker perspective using the qualities of ability, benevolence and integrity. For a manager to be trusted, workers must perceive that he or she has the requisite skills and potential to deal with the situation at hand. However, Davis, Schoorman, Mayer, and Tan (2000) indicated that while ability may well be related to managerial performance and the bottom line from the perspective of those higher up the organisational hierarchy, it is the capacity to get things done that inspires workers trust. Benevolence has to do with manager/worker relationships and an understanding on the part of workers that their manager is concerned about their interests. This is conveyed through consideration, sensitivity,
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goodwill and demonstration of concern. Mayer and Davis (1999) argued that a benevolent manager would enhance opportunities for workers to achieve positive outcomes that are both economic and psychological. The generosity of spirit revealed in such relationships is demonstrated in Blas and Blass (2000) study of positive principal behaviours, and Reitzugs (1994) case study of empowering principal behaviour. Integrity is defined by Mayer and Davis (1999) in terms of a congruence of statements and actions. Leaders who have integrity therefore walk the talk; their actions reflect closely their stated values and they are consistently fair in their dealings with workers, customers and the public (Mayer & Davis). Albrecht (2002) found that integrity directly influenced trust in senior executives, as well as cynicism towards workplace restructuring. Because of this, Albrecht suggested that those leaders who enjoyed the trust of their workforce would not be obliged to spend time and energy actively forcing change through their organisations or dealing with workforce opposition. In an international study of teacher discontent, Scott, Stone, and Dinham (2001) noted that the imposition of national education standards led to a policing mentality on the part of anxious administrators, which increased teacher workload, eroded professionalism and impacted on respect. Greenfield (2004) discussed moral leadership in schools in terms of the quality of the person: morality could not just be assumed or switched on, it was a part of being. However, Mayer and Davis (1999) suggested that scrutiny of trustworthiness factors could inform management choices regarding appropriate ways to deal with workplace relationships. Whitener Brodt, Korsgaard, and Werner (1998) suggested that it was up to management to take the first step in initiating trusting relationships within the workplace. Within the context of schools there is ample support for the pivotal role played by school administration in the establishment of psychological climate and trust within schools (Blas & Blas, 2000; Greenfield, 2004; Reitzug, 1994). The current study focused on the role played by teacher perceptions of school administration trustworthiness and their relationships to the development of trust and burnout. The study also examined the roles of morale and participative decision-making in the development of burnout.
Study Aims and Hypotheses
The primary aim of the current study was to investigate the relationship of perceptions of school administration trustworthiness to variables discussed in this review: trust, morale, decision-making and burnout of teachers. The following hypotheses were advanced:
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1. When teachers perceive that trustworthiness of school administration is low; trust, morale and participative decision-making will also be low. 2. Burnout will be negatively correlated with teacher perceptions of trustworthiness of school administration. 3. Morale and participative decision-making will mediate (a) teacher perceptions of trustworthiness and burnout and (b) teacher perceptions of trustworthiness and trust.
Method
Participants
Participants in this study were currently-employed teachers in Queensland independent schools. According to the Independent Schools Council of Australia (ISCA, 2004), this sector caters for the education of 32% of primary and high school students in Queensland. Of this proportion, 20% of Queensland students are educated in the Catholic sector and 12% by other organisations, mostly religious denominations (ISCA, 2004). The Queensland Independent Education Union (QIEU, 2004) represents 12,000 workers of independent schools, of whom 8961 are currently serving teachers (personal communication, QIEU, July 20, 2004). Table 1 outlines the school and gender distribution of QIEUs teaching membership.
Materials
A 46-item survey was developed with a 5-point scale with the descriptors: Disagree strongly, Disagree, Neither agree nor disagree, Agree, and Agree strongly. The 5-point scale was used by the sources of the measures, and it was deemed necessary to maintain this in order to preserve previously established validity. A further single question, The level of morale at my school is , was measured on a 6-point scale ranging from 1 (Very low) to 6 (Very high) to avoid the possibility of a neutral response for this item. The 46 questions comprising the quantitative component of the instrument were randomly ordered.
TABLE 1 Distribution of Teacher Membership of QIEU by School and Gender School Primary Secondary Totals Male N 752 2131 2883 Female N 3165 2913 6078 Total N 3917 5044 8961
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Burnout was measured using the 8-item burnout scale of Leithwood, Menzies, Jantzi, and Leithwood (1999). It had a demonstrated reliability of .78 when used as a dependent measure with a sample of 331 teachers. This measure was combined with additional stress instruments that were used to measure ambiguity, conflict and resource inadequacy. The eight stress items were from Kim, Price, Mueller, and Watson (1996, published in Price, 1997). According to Price these items had acceptable reliability with most items achieving an alpha of > .70, and, satisfactory discriminant and convergent validity (p. 501). The combined burnout and job stress measures achieved a reliability alpha of .88 in the current study and were called burnout/job stress. Decision-making aspects of school climate (participative decisionmaking) were measured by five questions adapted from Iverson and Roy (1994; published in Price, 1997), on centralisation of power. These questions were reworded to fit the wording of the rest of the survey items and the 5-point answer scale. For example the question, How much freedom do you have as to how you do your job? became, I have a great deal of freedom as to how I do my job. The measure was included because participative decision-making was identified as an important aspect of psychological climate (Kahnweiler & Thompson, 2000). The participative decision-making measure possesses acceptable discriminant and convergent validity when tested against attitudinal commitment (.33), job satisfaction (.44), and behavioural commitment (.22) and, according to Price (1997), achieved a reliability alpha of .86; it achieved a reliability alpha of .78 in the current study. As the questions are positively worded, participative decision-making was anticipated to correlate negatively with burnout and positively with morale in this study. A 5-item morale measure was developed by scanning the literature for aspects of morale and establishing that morale is characterised by energy, cohesion, cooperation and enthusiasm (Hart et al., 2000). The items read: This is a happy school to work in and I feel that I belong here, There is a strong sense of collegiality among the staff and leadership at my school, There is a strong sense of cohesion among the staff and leadership at my school, There is a strong sense of pride in our work among the staff and leadership at my school, and a final question using a 6-point scale with 1 (Very low) to 6 (Very high), The level of morale at my school is . Morale achieved a reliability alpha of .90 in this study. Three measures of perceptions of management trustworthiness were used from Mayer and Daviss (1999) study on the effect of performance appraisal on trust in management. These measures included: a 6-item
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.31 Ability Benevolence Integrity .86 Participative Decision Making Morale
Burnout/job stress
.19
PERCEPTIONS OF TRUSTWORTHINESS
.68
.49**
.79
Trust
FIGURE 1 Alternative model for study variables showing relationships between perceptions of trustworthiness, burnout, morale, participative decision making and trust.
Note: Relationships are expressed as standardised regression coefficients (Beta) with exception of the relationship between burnout and trust, which is a significant correlation.
ability measure that achieved alphas of .85 and .88 in the two waves tested by Mayer and Davis and accounted for 27% of the variance of trust in management under performance appraisal conditions (ability achieved an alpha of .94 in the current study). Second, a 5-item benevolence measure achieved alphas of .87 and .89 and accounted for 28% of the variance of trust in management (benevolence achieved an alpha of .94 in the current study). Third, a 6-item integrity measure achieved alphas of .82 and .88, and accounted for 32% of the variance of trust in management (integrity achieved an alpha of .91 in the current study). A 4-item trust measure achieved alphas of .59 and .60 in Mayer and Daviss study (.69 in the current study). Wording of these items was adapted to suit this study, for example, the term top management was replaced by school administration. The final section had four open-ended questions. These questions were: What do you find most rewarding about teaching?, What (if anything) do you find least rewarding about teaching?, What are the thoughts that come to mind when you reflect on government education reforms that affect your teaching content, process or effectiveness?, and Any further comments you might have. It was anticipated that the first two questions might well relate to aspects of teaching experience, role overload or social climate. The third question may have relevance to workload as elucidated by Fink (2003). The fourth question invited
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TABLE 2 School Type and Gender Frequencies, Mean Ages and Standard Deviations School Kindergarten Primary Secondary
N
Male Female Totals 0 2 2
Mean age (years) 47.5
SD
0.7
N
8 31 39
Mean age (years) 43.1 41.9
SD
12.8 11.4
N
22 25 47
Mean age (years) 46.46 41. 8
SD
10.5 9.3
Note: The number for each variable is smaller than the 90 participants sampled due to missing data. Means and standard deviations were calculated using list-wise deletion.
participants to raise issues not covered in the survey, but which were nevertheless important to them.
Procedure
Names of 300 currently-serving teachers were drawn at random from the QIEU database, and packages including surveys and necessary information were posted to prospective participants by union staff. Participants were informed that the study was investigating psychosocial aspects of the school as a workplace, particularly relationships that develop between teachers and school administration, and were assured of confidentiality. Ninety (30%) completed surveys were returned directly to investigators in supplied stamped and addressed envelopes.
Results
Demographic descriptive statistics are summarised in Table 2. It was noted that the first section of the questionnaire was poorly completed by a small minority of participants, with two neglecting to indicate either their age or their school and six neglecting to indicate years of teaching experience. Participant ratios for gender were comparable with QIEU teacher membership ratios with female to male ratios of 3.88:1 (3.25:1, QIEU) for primary school teachers and 1.14:1 (1.28:1, QIEU) for secondary school teachers. These ratios are also consistent with Australian national female to male ratios of 3.80:1 at primary level and 1.20:1 at secondary level. Participants mean age was 43.2 years (median age 45 years). This is comparable with the national median age for teachers in 2002 of 43 years (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2003). Descriptive statistics and correlations for the study variables are presented in Table 3. Most correlations were significant, suggesting close
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TABLE 3 Descriptive Statistics and Correlations for Study Variables Variable Burnout/job stress Trust Perceptions of trustworthiness Morale Participative decision-making
Note: **p < .01
M
2.56 3.06 3.42 3.55 3.66
SD
0.60 0.65 0.87 0.89 0.72
1 .49** .64** .65** .56**
.77** .61** .48**
.86** .68**
.67**
relationships between the burnout/job stress construct and other variables in the study. Because there were high correlations between ability, benevolence and integrity (see Table 4), it was decided to combine these measures in terms of an additive index to address multicollinearity between independent variables. The resulting variable was called perceptions of trustworthiness. Bivariate correlations showed relationships between variables as specified in the model (see Figure 1). All variables were subjected to analysis through the multiple regression procedure outlined by Baron and Kenny (1986) for determining the influence of mediator variables. This procedure provides testing linkages in the mediation model by means of three regression equations. Consequently, a model was developed to explain relationships between perceptions of trustworthiness, morale, participative decision-making, burnout/job stress and trust, which is outlined in Figure 2. Details of the regression equations that led to the development of the model are outlined in Table 5, where it is demonstrated that perceptions of trustworthiness explain 73% of the variance in morale, 45% of the variance in participative decision-making, 40% of the variance in burnout/job stress and 60% of the variance in trust. Table 5 therefore examines the relationship of the variables to burnout/job stress and trust as dependent variables. While there is clear support for mediator roles for morale and participative decision-making on burnout/job stress, that is not the case for trust. While morale and participative decision-making correlated significantly with both trust and perceptions of trustworthiness, they did not reduce the significance of the relationship between perceptions of trustworthiness (the major independent variable) and trust as required to establish mediation (Baron & Kenny, 1986). In fact, their addition to the regression equation increased the beta value of the relationship between trust and perceptions of trustworthiness from .79 to .98 (see Table 5). This led to the conclusion
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TABLE 4 Correlations Between Ability, Benevolence and Integrity (Perceptions of Trustworthiness) Variable Ability Benevolence Integrity
Note: **p < .01
M
3.44 3.38 3.43
SD
0.89 0.98 0.88
1 .81** .85**
.89**
that, in the current study, the trust measure had been interpreted by participants as indistinguishable from perceptions of trustworthiness. Such an interpretation by participants was despite the fact that specific questions in the trust measure had been directed at achieving a sense of participant actual trust in school administration, rather than perceptions of its ability, benevolence and integrity.
Discussion
Support for the first hypothesis that when teacher perceptions of school administration trustworthiness were low, trust, morale and participative decision-making would also be low was found in significant positive correlations and by multiple regression analysis. Perceptions of trustworthiness were demonstrated to explain 73% of the variance in morale and 45% of the variance in participative decision-making. Participant reading of trust measures as indistinguishable from perceptions of trustworthiness (ability, benevolence, integrity) indicated how fundamental this concept is to their understanding of school administration performance. Mayer and colleagues (1995) model saw the outcome of trust as a risk-taking relationship (p. 724). Both parties engaged in the relationship (in this case, administration and teachers) risk a great deal. Teachers risk the chance that their trust may be violated, leading to rejection, disempowerment and loss of autonomy; while administrators risk the loss of productivity that could come with poor decision-making. Rewards stemming from a risk-taking relationship involve worker empowerment, interdependence, cohesion and collegial relationships, which indicate high morale. Such relationships provide the ideal environment for Raffertys (2003) upward communication where members feel free to speak out about problems, needed changes and other work-related issues, without fear of retribution. Rafferty further suggested that school excellence has a direct relationship to what teachers think and do; therefore it could be said that the type of communication resulting from a risk-taking relationship is at the heart of school effectiveness.
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TABLE 5 Regression Analyses of Independent and Mediator Variables on Burnout/Job Stress and Trust as per Baron and Kenny (1986) B Conditions establishing mediation Stage 1 IV = Perceptions of trustworthiness DV = Morale IV = Perceptions of trustworthiness DV = Participative decision-making
Overall statistics
.88
.86
15.62**
.56
.68
8.66**
R 2 = .74 Adjusted R 2 = .73 F (1,88) = 243.81** R 2 = .46 Adjusted R 2 = .45 F (1,88) = 75.01** R 2 = .41 Adjusted R 2 = .40 F (1,88) = 60.01** R 2 = .46 Adjusted R 2 = .44 F (3,86) = 24.49**
Burnout/job stress as dependent variable Stage 2 IV = Perceptions of trustworthiness .44 DV = Burnout/job stress Stage 3a IV = Perceptions of trustworthiness .17 MV = Morale MV = Participative decision-making .21 DV = Burnout/job stress .16 Trust as dependent variable Stage 2 IV = Perceptions of trustworthiness DV = Trust Stage 3 IV = Perceptions of trustworthiness MV = Morale MV = Participative decision-making DV = Trust
Note: **p < .01; MV = mediator variable
.64
7.75**
.24 .31 .19
1.53 1.96 1.69
.62
.79
11.33**
R 2 = .60 Adjusted R 2 = .59 F (1,88) = 130.997** R 2 = .61 Adjusted R 2 = .60 F (3,86) = 45.16**
.73 .14 .05
.98 .19 .06
7.21** 1.44 0.59
The second hypothesis predicting that burnout/job stress would be negatively correlated with perceptions of trustworthiness was also supported in this study. Burnout/job stress produced negative correlations with perceptions of trustworthiness, morale, participative decision-making, and trust, all of which reached significance at p < .01. As perceptions of trustworthiness explained 40% of the variance in burnout/job stress by itself and 44% in combination with morale and participative decisionmaking, the current study leaves 56% of the variance in burnout/job stress unexplained. Other possible contributors to burnout/job stress could include goal incongruence, inadequate professional development, ineffective discipline policies, uncoordinated curriculum and excessive work demands (Hart et al., 2000).
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The third hypothesis that morale and participative decision-making would mediate perceptions of trustworthiness and burnout/job stress; and perceptions of trustworthiness and trust was supported by a regression analysis procedure as per Baron and Kenny (1986) in the case of burnout/job stress, but was not supported in the case of trust. This would suggest that high or low teacher morale and participative decision-making serve as markers for those schools where administrations have either earned or not earned the trust of teaching staff. This research indicates that psychosocial contributions have a huge impact on morale and individual burnout/job stress outcomes for teachers. The current study therefore supports the suggestion that school administration and its trustworthiness serves as an important base for teacher efficacy. Dworkins (2001) charge that traditional psychological approaches have failed to identify systemic influences in the development of burnout/job stress among teachers, may well have considerable merit in terms of shifting emphasis from the sufferers of burnout/job stress and a multitude of stressors (Dorman, 2003; Friedman, 2000), to factors in the school environment that could be addressed more effectively and more economically by practitioners. The finding that this model explains 44% of the variance in burnout/job stress would suggest that Hughess (2001) recommendation for school administrators to take on a coaching/mentoring role with burned-out teachers, needs an important qualification. Only trustworthy administrators could take on such a role, those who were perceived by teachers as untrustworthy would be likely to exacerbate burnout.
Limitations
The current study did not investigate work intensification within the hypothesised model. This omission turned out to be a major limitation, as participant comments suggested that this particular feature of their work environment contributed substantially to their stress levels, with 73% commenting that the reforms are unnecessary or inappropriate. In addition, it could well be that legislated reforms that are currently being implemented, or that will be implemented within the next 2 years, may impact on participative decision-making and on school administrations behaviour. This issue has been canvassed in depth by Scott and colleagues (2001) and by Greenfield (2004). The standardised nature of such legislation was the concern of a number of participants, one of whom stated:
Concern about the bureaucratisation (imposition) of outcomes education with its (apparent) lack of focus on the person who is a student. Rather speaking of (reporting on) the person as being a set of capabilities
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Freedom to interpret and trial is critical to the achievement of a vibrant education system. This is not a concern in my school, but a concern about having it imposed on us from outside. (male secondary teacher).
Another concern of participants was the frequency of change, particularly a sense of being just able to grasp one concept properly, before one is swamped by the next concept. A female primary school teacher said: Often the changes are too dramatic doesnt allow teachers to grasp ideas properly and often too much paperwork instead of real teaching. Along with mandated reforms comes increasing pressure to conform to expectations and increasing pressure on school administrations to ensure that legislated reform is happening in their individual schools. Consequently, school administrations are challenged in their response, leading some to assume coercive methods of ensuring that expectations are met (Scott et al., 2001). Further limitations of this research included the combined burnout/job stress measure, which did not clearly distinguish between burnout factors. In addition, as only 30% of potential participants chose to respond to the survey, questions must inevitably be raised as to whether findings are representative of teachers in general.
Implications
Most teachers in the study expressed satisfaction with their career and work relationships. However, it was clearly demonstrated that school administration plays a key role in establishing an effective and well-functioning school where teachers feel able to contribute. It was demonstrated that perceptions of trustworthiness of school administration are central to morale, participative decision-making and trust. Implications of this for educational authorities include more appropriate leadership training for school administrators and selecting individuals with the capacity to manifest trustworthy and ethically consistent behaviour. Most participants in this study saw their career as fulfilling and rewarding. However, most were also overwhelmed by a workload that intrudes into their own time. A female primary teacher said: I have a class of 33 Year 3s. Finding time to plan for all their needs and mark all of their work takes up a lot of my time. BUT I still love teaching! From this group of participants, it appears that recognition of their efforts by those in school administration could go a long way towards preventing the development of the type of overstretching associated with emotional exhaustion. Harvey and colleagues (2003) study of workers in an accountancy firm found that trust in management could serve as a buffer against strain when work overload is high. The current study supports this
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finding among teachers and expands it to include the perceptions of trustworthiness concept of Mayer and colleagues (1995). This research introduced perceptions of trustworthiness measures from Mayer and Davis (1999) to a study of psychosocial aspects of the school as a workplace. Perceptions of school administration trustworthiness explained 73% of the variance in morale and 45% of the variance in participative decision-making. The model accounted for 44% of the variance in burnout/job stress. In addition, there was strong qualitative evidence that the impact of government reform processes on teachers is a major contributor to teacher stress. It is therefore advocated that future research into the mental health of teachers includes the study of systemic factors.
References
Albrecht, S. L. (2002). Perceptions of integrity, competence and trust in senior management as determinants of cynicism toward change. Public Administration and Management, 7, 320343. Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2003). Australian social trends. Education and trainingeducation and work: School teachers. Australia Now. Retrieved August 27, 2004, from http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@nsf/0/718f247ad9706ccaca25 Baron, R. M., & Kenny, D. A. (1986). The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 11731182. Blas, J., & Blas, J. (1998). Inquiry and collaboration: Supporting the lifelong study of learning and teaching. International Electronic Journal for Leadership in Learning, 2 (7). Retrieved April 23, 2004, from http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~iejll/volume2/Blase2_7.html Blas, J., & Blas, J. (2000). Effective instructional leadership: Teachers perspectives on how principals promote teaching and learning in schools. Journal of Educational Administration, 38, 130141. Blas, J., & Blas, J. (2003). The phenomenology of principal mistreatment: Teachers perspectives. Journal of Educational Administration, 41, 367422. Davis, J. H., Schoorman, F. D., Mayer, R. C., & Tan, H. H. (2000). The trusted general manager and business unit performance: Empirical evidence of a competitive advantage. Strategic Management Journal, 21, 563576. Dorman, J. (2003). Testing a model for teacher burnout. Australian Journal of Educational and Developmental Psychology, 3, 3547. Dworkin, A. G. (2001). Perspectives on teacher burnout and school reform. International Education Journal, 2, 6978. Fink, D. (2003). The law of unintended consequences: The real cost of top-down reform. Journal of Educational Change, 4, 105128. Freudenberger, H. J. (1975). The staff burn-out syndrome in alternative institutions. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 12, 7382. Friedman, I. A. (2000). Burnout in teachers: Shattered dreams of impeccable professional performance. In Session: Psychotherapy in Practice, 56, 595606.
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Sarros, J. C., & Sarros, A. M. (1992). Social support and teacher burnout. Journal of Educational Administration, 30, 5570. Scott, C., Stone, B., & Dinham, S. (2001). I love teaching but : International patterns of teacher discontent. Educational Policy Analysis Archives, 9(28), retrieved April 23, 2004, from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v9n28.html Tepper, B. J. (2000). Consequences of abusive supervision. Academy of Management Journal, 43, 178189. Tschannen-Moran, M., & Hoy, W. (1998). Trust in schools: A conceptual and empirical analysis. Journal of Educational Administration, 36, 334352. Tye, B. B., & OBrien, L. (2002). Why are experienced teachers leaving the profession? Phi Delta Kappan, 84, 2432. Whitener, E. M., Brodt, S. E., Korsgaard, A., & Werner, J. M. (1998). Managers as initiators of trust: An exchange relationship framework for understanding managerial trustworthy behavior. Academy of Management Review, 23, 513531. Young, D. J. (2000). Teacher morale in Western Australia: A multilevel model. Learning Environments Research, 3, 159177.
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CHAPTER
8
The Impact of Organisational Citizenship Behaviour and Non-material Rewards on Dimensions of Employee Burnout: Evidence From the Teaching Profession
Rachel L. Hannam and Nerina L. Jimmieson
In this chapter, we examine the psychological impact that organisational citizenship behaviours (OCBs) have on individuals performing them. OCB is discretionary employee behaviour that is not systematically rewarded by employers, but that contributes to overall organisational effectiveness (Organ, 1988). In a sample of schoolteachers, we predicted that performing OCBs would differentially impact two dimensions of psychological burnout personal accomplishment (PA) and emotional exhaustion (EE). Due to the volitional nature of OCB, there are theoretical reasons to suppose that OCB enhances PA. However, it is also possible that certain OCBs constitute increased workload, thereby contributing to a heightened sense of EE. In addition, given prior research showing that non-material rewards such as praise and recognition, lead to positive employee outcomes, we proposed that praise and recognition would strengthen the relationship between OCB and PA, and weaken the relationship between OCB and EE. Two studies are presented. Results of the first study support our predictions regarding the positive main effects of all forms of OCB on PA
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and one form of OCB on EE, as well as the main effects of praise and recognition on both burnout indicators. The hypothesised moderating effects of praise and recognition were not confirmed. However, the second study measured praise and recognition from specific sources and found that receiving recognition from ones principal and from students parents interacted with certain OCBs in the prediction of EE and PA. We conclude this chapter with a discussion of practical implications with particular focus on the teaching profession. The studies presented in this chapter focus specifically on the teaching profession for important reasons. Teaching is the largest profession in Australia (Graduate Careers Council of Australia [GCCA], 2005). Over 200,000 teachers work in 10,000 schools teaching over three million Australian students. As a profession, teaching has attracted a great deal of interest from researchers for many decades. Furthermore, with an impending worldwide teacher shortage (Lonsdale & Ingvarson, 2003), as well as alarming statistics about teachers leaving the profession (Kalantzis & Harvey, 2002) and filing claims for psychological injury (Nicholls, 2004), research interest in teachers work remains strong. Teaching is a unique profession in many ways (Lafleur, 1999). For example, no other profession in the world involves being face-to-face with 20 or 30 young people for five to six hours per day in a highly structured environment organised by the sound of a bell. Teachers are also professionally isolated to some extent, as much of their time on the job involves little contact with colleagues or supervisors. However, this also gives them a fairly high degree of professional autonomy. Additionally, teachers customers include not only their students, but also their students parents (Dormann & Kaiser, 2002). The topic of teacher OCB, although little researched, seems to be important given that many teachers regularly go above and beyond the call of duty, even though their tenured job conditions mean that they could avoid engaging in OCBs without adversely affecting their job security (Buchler, 2003). Research examining the consequences of OCB has focused on two types of outcome variables: (a) organisational outcomes such as increased productivity or customer satisfaction and (b) tangible outcomes for individuals performing OCBs. The latter studies have shown that employees who are higher on OCBs may receive more leader support in the form of better performance evaluations and recommendations for promotion (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Paine, & Bachrach, 2000). However, the idea that there are psychological consequences (particularly regarding affective job attitudes) for employees engaging in high levels of OCB has received
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Organisational Citizenship Behaviour, Non-Material Rewards and Employee Burnout
little research attention. This is probably because OCB has always been positioned as an outcome of various psychological states, rather than as contributing to them. The current study investigated whether employee OCB influences two dimensions of psychological burnout in the teaching profession. The first, personal accomplishment (PA), refers to a positive sense of ones own job performance and, therefore, is indicative of psychological wellbeing at work. Hence, a reduced sense of PA, described as a negative perception of ones own job performance, is considered to be indicative of psychological burnout (Maslach, 1982). The second, emotional exhaustion (EE), refers to feelings of being emotionally overextended in ones work (Maslach, 1982). Drawing on previous studies showing that employees can enhance feelings of achievement and satisfaction through better performance, we hypothesised that OCBs will increase PA and could also lead to feelings of EE. In both instances, we hypothesised that praise and recognition would moderate the effects of OCB on these two dimensions of employee burnout. A theoretical rationale for these predictions is presented in the following sections.
The Relationship Between OCB and PA
Most research asking why employees exert extra effort at work has treated OCB as a dependent variable, arguing that OCB is a consequence of job attitudes such as satisfaction and commitment (Podsakoff et al., 2000). Furthermore, past research has established that employees reap tangible benefits from performing OCBs in terms of promotion, training and reward allocations (Allen & Rush, 1998; Van Scotter, Motowidlo, & Cross, 2000). What is less clear is whether there are any psychological rewards for employees who engage in OCBs. Although it has been suggested by several authors that employees may experience positive psychological states upon engaging in OCBs (e.g., Niehoff, 2000; Perlow & Weeks, 2002; Tang & Ibrahim, 1998), to date it appears that this idea has not been explicitly hypothesised or tested. There are theoretical reasons for expecting OCBs to lead to a sense of PA. First, self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985, 2000) stipulated that when individuals engage in behaviours that provide a sense of volition or autonomy (a characteristic implicit in OCB; Organ, 1990), intrinsic rewards result, including feelings of achievement or accomplishment. Similarly, achievement motivation theory (McClelland, 1967) proposed that people consciously choose to engage in behaviours they expect will meet their need for a sense of achievement. Drawing on achievement motivation theory, Niehoff (2000) and others (e.g., Neuman & Kickul, 1998)
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have specifically suggested that people engage in OCBs because they anticipate that by doing so they will obtain feelings of accomplishment. Some indirect empirical support exists for the proposition that OCBs may enhance PA. For example, research in the area of volunteerism shows that engaging in voluntary prosocial behaviours may enhance self-perceptions, including feelings of success, positive mood and improved self-esteem (e.g., Krebs, 1970; Kuehne & Sears, 1993; Omoto, Snyder, & Martino, 2000; Primavera, 1999). Research by Dulin and colleagues on the psychological outcomes of volunteerism shows that community service among older adults can lead to positive psychological states, including greater life satisfaction (Dulin & Hill, 2003; Dulin, Hill, Anderson, & Rasmussen, 2001). Yan and Tang (2003) found that sustained volunteerism led to significantly higher levels of PA in a Chinese population. Suggesting that OCB may have positive psychological consequences employs the same logic that researchers have used to suggest that job performance leads to job satisfaction (e.g., MacKenzie, Podsakoff, & Ahearne, 1998). Findings regarding the positive effect of job performance on job satisfaction show that when tasks are stimulating, free of performance pressures, or autonomously motivated, they may lead to enhanced satisfaction (e.g., Baird, 1976; Bhagat, 1982; Brown, Cron, & Leigh, 1993; Ivancevich, 1978). Such findings implicitly suggest that engaging in autonomously motivated behaviours, such as OCBs, may result in intrinsic rewards such as feelings of accomplishment. Indeed, this is the implication of self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985). Thus, employees may anticipate that OCBs will make them feel good and result in greater feelings of PA. Hypothesis 1a is that OCB will be positively associated with employees feelings of PA.
The Role of Non-material Rewards in The OCBPA Relationship
According to OCB theory and research, OCBs are often motivated primarily by intrinsic motivations, including the need for a sense of competence and achievement (Niehoff, 2000; Organ, 1988). However, as Deci (1971) has shown, intrinsic motivation for discretionary tasks can be undermined by material rewards, whereas intrinsic motivation may be facilitated by interpersonal rewards. Hence, the proposition that OCBs lead to PA may be more likely to hold true in workplaces where: (a) financial or material rewards for performing OCBs are restricted and (b) rewards of a non-material or interpersonal nature are frequent, and constitute a significant form of job reward (as in the teaching profession). Thus, in the present study, we also investigated the extent to which the relationship between OCB and PA is influenced by non-material rewards like praise and recognition.
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We also suggest that receiving non-material, interpersonal rewards will have a positive main effect on teachers PA. Researchers have defined interpersonal rewards in the workplace as personal attention, mostly conveyed verbally, including expressions of interest, approval, compliments, thanks, praise, and appreciation (e.g., Bandura, 1986; Stajkovic & Luthans, 2001). Our suggestion that these rewards will enhance PA is supported by numerous studies showing that praise and recognition are consistently and positively associated with a range of employee outcomes. These include a sense of pride among part-time employees (Grandey, Tam, & Brauburger, 2002), enhanced motivation and job commitment among special education teachers (Parent, Cartier, Ricard, & Gingras, 2000), and improved job satisfaction for nursing staff (Blegen, 1993), salespeople (Pettijohn, Pettijohn, & dAmico, 2001), television and radio employees (Hatfield, Huseman, & Miles, 1987), and government employees (Johnson & McIntye, 1998). Receiving praise and recognition have also been linked to psychological wellbeing among university teachers (Leung, Siu, & Spector, 2000), and physical health outcomes among healthcare workers (Vegchel, de Jonge, Bakker, & Schaufeli, 2002). Praise and recognition have also been shown to influence workplace behaviours, including decreased absenteeism among factory workers (Markham, Scott, & McKee, 2002) and reduced injury rates among transport workers (Haynes, Pine, & Fitch, 1982). As mentioned, praise and recognition may also enhance the positive effects that performing OCBs have on PA. Burnout researchers such as Lee and Ashforth (1990) have argued that a sense of competence or selfefficacy, defined as employees judgment of their capabilities to organise and execute courses of action required to attain designated types of performance (Bandura, 1986, p. 391) is at the core of the PA dimension. As Henderlong and Lepper (2002) pointed out, while feelings of competence and PA are strongest when they arise from an individuals own performance of certain behaviours, social recognition may help to promote greater perceived competence and accomplishment. With regard to OCB and social recognition, Schnake and Dumler (1997) have shown that OCB is regularly followed by social rewards from others. Hence, teachers may perform OCB in the hope that it will lead to praise and recognition from others. We propose that the combination of engaging in OCB and receiving praise and recognition will enhance PA. Indeed, although this idea has not been explicitly tested until now, van Emmerik, Jawahar, and Stone (2005) have suggested that because feelings of reduced PA can result from feeling that one is unappreciated, the relationship between
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OCB and PA may be enhanced by variables such as verbal encouragement and recognition. Thus, for the purpose of the present study, Hypothesis 1b is that praise and recognition will be positively associated with feelings of PA, and Hypothesis 1c states that praise and recognition will strengthen the positive relationship between OCB and PA.
Relationship Between OCB and EE
One possibility that has never been explicitly tested is that workers who engage in high levels of OCB (particularly the more proactive forms) experience an increased sense of overload. It seems plausible that volunteering ones time and effort at work could, at least under certain conditions, lead to overload and heightened feelings of EE. We suggest that such an effect is more likely to occur in occupations where helping behaviours are already major in-role requirements, such as in teaching. If engaging in high levels of OCB amounts to extra work for teachers, heightened feelings of EE may also result. Without some moderating variable, this also raises the question of how OCB is maintained over time. A study of teachers in seven Australian schools may provide indirect evidence that OCB can increase exhaustion. Leonard, Bourke, and Schofield (1999) found that primary school teachers who experienced more stressors including workload and time pressures had significantly better performance, as measured by student satisfaction ratings. The researchers suggested that their unexpected findings might be due to teachers expending extra efforts in their jobs, which led to better student ratings but, in turn, increased their workload and feelings of time pressure. Leonard et al. suggested that the higher-performing teachers engaged in more behaviours that appeared to constitute (although were not defined as) OCB, such as spending extra time preparing classroom activities and acquiring expertise that contributed to their work. If this was indeed the case, it seems plausible that their efforts may have resulted in more feelings of EE. Another study of helping professionals also provides indirect evidence that good citizens may be simultaneously high on PA and EE. In a sample of general practitioners, Bakker, Schaufeli, Sixma, Bosveld, and Van Dierendonck (2000) found that higher workloads were associated with higher PA as well as with higher EE for more conscientious individuals (a trait consistently associated with OCB). Again, one reason for this might be that although performing certain behaviours leads to feelings of accomplishment, the extra workload that some OCBs create may also lead to higher levels of EE. Thus, in the current study, Hypothesis 2a proposes that OCB will be positively associated with EE.
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The Role of Non-material Rewards in the OCBEE Relationship
As with the OCBPA relationship, we expected praise and recognition to exert main effects on EE and moderating effects in the relationship between OCB and EE. Such a proposition is supported by research showing that helping professionals who receive more positive feedback at work experience significantly lower levels of EE (e.g., Eastburg, Williamson, Gorsuch, & Ridley, 1994). Conversely, research in the teaching profession suggests that insufficient social recognition for ones efforts is a significant source of psychological distress and dissatisfaction (e.g., Borg, Riding, & Falzon, 1991; Hamann, Daugherty, & Mills, 1987; Knoop, 1994; Leonard et al., 1999; Monfries & Hazel, 1995). Hence, the present study also examined whether a lack of praise and recognition results in teachers experiencing heightened feelings of EE. Indirect support also exists for the proposition that praise and recognition may guard against the effects that OCB has on EE. Findings from both Leonard et al. (1999) and Bakker et al. (2000) suggested that higher levels of EE resulted from a perceived imbalance between ones investments on the job and the amount of recognition received. Indeed, Leonard et al. suggested that while teachers who invested more into their job tended to have improved student ratings, these efforts, in turn, increased their sense of receiving insufficient recognition for their hard work. If this was indeed the case, it seems plausible that a lack of appreciation for their efforts resulted in more feelings of EE for high OCB teachers than for low OCB teachers, due to a perceived imbalance between their efforts and the rewards received. Furthermore, Bakker et al. found that appreciation from patients buffered the positive impact of workload on doctors feelings of EE. Their findings support the idea that receiving praise and recognition for ones effort may act as a moderating variable, thereby reducing the effects of putting forth extra effort (in the form of OCB) on EE. Hence, we expected praise and recognition to exert a negative main effect on EE, as well as a buffering effect in the relationship between OCB and EE. Thus, Hypothesis 2b states that praise and recognition will be negatively associated with EE, and Hypothesis 2c states that praise and recognition will weaken (i.e., buffer) the positive relationship between OCB and EE. The six hypotheses generated for this study are depicted diagrammatically in Figure 1. The model implies that both OCB and praise and recognition have direct relationships with PA and EE. The model
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Praise and recognition

1b Personal accomplishment
1c Teacher OCB 1a
2c
2b
Emotional exhaustion
2a
FIGURE 1 Hypothesised relationships among OCBs, praise and recognition, personal accomplishment, and emotional exhaustion.
Note: Hypotheses 1a to 2c are indicated on relevant arrows.
also suggests that when OCBs and praise and recognition coexist, feelings of PA will be enhanced and feelings of EE reduced. These hypotheses were tested in two cross-sectional studies involving primary school teachers (known as elementary school teachers in the United States and elsewhere) from south-east Queensland, Australia.
Study 1
The model presented in Figure 1 was tested using data collected from 538 teachers (409 female) employed at 125 public primary schools in southeast Queensland, Australia. Teacher OCB was assessed using a questionnaire developed specifically for the current study. As Somech and DrachZavahy (2000) pointed out, traditional OCB measures may not be entirely appropriate for the teaching profession because they only assess OCBs directed towards colleagues and the organisation, ignoring OCBs directed towards students, with whom teachers spend most of their day. Hence, a pool of 30 potentially relevant OCB items was developed using a range of sources (e.g., Becker & Randall, 1994; Borman & Motowidlo, 1993; DiPaola & Tschannen-Moran, 2001; George & Brief, 1992; Niehoff & Moorman, 1993; Organ, 1988; Organ & Lingl, 1995; Podsakoff & Mackenzie, 1993; Somech & Drach-Zahavy, 2000). Next, focus group discussions were conducted with subject matter experts (current and former schoolteachers), whereby participants were provided with a definition of OCB and asked to indicate whether each item fitted this definition within a teaching context. Items endorsed by fewer than 80% of respondents were not included in the final measure (Hinkin, 1995). This process resulted in a 23item measure of teacher OCB which, consistent with other teacher OCB studies (e.g., Somech & Drach-Zahavy, 2000), reflected a range of behaviours that may be categorised according to
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whether they aimed to benefit: (a) students, (b) other teachers or (c) the school as a whole. Teachers in the current study (N = 538) provided responses to the final set of 23 items on a 5point scale from 1 (Rarely or never) to 5 (Very often) to indicate how often they engaged in each behaviour. Contrary to our expected 3factor structure, an exploratory factor analysis revealed five factors, which accounted for 56% of the variance. Both a student-directed and a co-worker-directed dimension clearly emerged, in addition to three different categories of organisation-directed OCBs, which we labelled Civic Virtue, Professional Development, and Consideration. The student-related scale was named Student-centred Behaviour (SCB) and the co-worker-related scale, Co-worker-centred Behaviour (CCB). All five OCB scales had acceptable internal reliabilities (Cronbach (1951) alpha coefficients were .70 or above). Based on these findings, a confirmatory factor analysis was performed. The data showed a good fit with the proposed 5-factor model, 2(242) = 734, p < .001; 2/df = 2.82; GFI = .990; CFI = .989; RMSEA = .058; SRMR = .056. PA and EE were measured using three items and eight items, respectively, from the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI; Maslach & Jackson, 1986). Sample items are, I have accomplished many worthwhile things in this job (PA) and, I feel fatigued in the morning when facing another day on the job (EE). Reponses were on a 7point scale ranging from 1 (Never) to 7 (Every day). Praise and recognition was measured with four items asking teachers if they felt they were genuinely appreciated for their good work and accomplishments. A sample item is, I am encouraged in my work by praise, thanks and other recognition. Responses were on a 5-point scale from 1 (Rarely or never) to 5 (Very often). The variables of age, gender and tenure were controlled in all analyses, as prior research has shown that such demographics may be predictive of burnout (e.g., Burke, Greenglass, & Schwarzer, 1996; Yan & Tang, 2003). To test for any moderating effects of praise and recognition in the relationships between OCB on PA and OCB and EE, interaction terms between the five types of OCB and four types of recognition were created. To avoid multicollinearity between the main effects and the interaction terms, each of the predictor variables was centred (i.e., scores were subtracted from the scale mean; see Aiken & West, 1991). To limit the number of variables entered into any one regression equation, each interaction term was examined in a separate moderated regression analysis. Table 1 shows the results of these analyses. To simplify presentation,
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TABLE 1 Regression Analyses Involving OCBs and Praise and Recognition in the Prediction of EE and PA Predictors SCBs, and praise and recognition Step 2 Main effects SCBs Praise and recognition R 2 Step 3 Two-way interaction SCBs praise and recognition R 2 CCBs, and praise and recognition Step 2 Main effects CCBs Praise and recognition R 2 Step 3 Two-way interaction CCBs praise and recognition R 2 Consideration, and praise and recognition Step 2 Main effects Consideration Praise and recognition R 2 Step 3 Two-way interaction Consideration praise and recognition R 2 Civic virtue, and praise and recognition Step 2 Main effects Civic virtue Praise and recognition R 2 Step 3 Two-way interaction Civic Virtue praise and recognition R 2 Professional development, and praise and recognition Step 2 Main effects Professional development Praise and recognition R 2 Step 3 Two-way interaction Professional development praise and recognition R 2 Emotional exhaustion Personal accomplishment
.12** .31*** .11*** .01 .00
.33*** .23*** .14*** .07 .01
.06 .32*** .10*** .02 .00
.31*** .18*** .14*** .01 .00
.04 .31*** .10*** .04 .00
.17*** .21*** .08*** .05 .00
.03 .31*** .10*** .03 .00
.28*** .19*** .10*** .01 .00
.05 .31*** .10*** .02 .00
.31*** .20*** .14*** .02 .00
Note: **p < .01, *** p < .001; N = 538; Age, gender, and tenure accounted for in Step 1 of all equations
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Step 1 of each set of analyses, which controlled for the effects of age gender and tenure, is not shown. Tenure was the only control variable to exert a significant impact on EE, = .14, p <.01, suggesting that teachers with longer tenure reported higher EE. In the prediction of PA, both gender, = .12, p <.01, and tenure, = .10, p <.05, had a significant effect, implying that female teachers and teachers with a shorter tenure tended to report higher levels of PA. As shown in Step 2 of each regression analysis, all five categories of OCB were predictive of PA, providing full support for hypothesis 1a (see Table 1). However, only SCB was positively related to EE. This suggests that teachers who performed more OCBs directed towards students experienced higher levels of EE, consistent with hypothesis 2a. Interestingly, although the remaining OCBs were not significantly related to EE, these relationships were all in a positive direction. In support of hypotheses 1b and 2b, praise and recognition was positively related to PA and negatively related to EE (also shown in Step 2 of Table 1) confirming that teachers who received more praise and recognition reported higher levels of PA and lower levels of EE. Step 3 of each regression analysis shows that none of the five interaction terms between OCB and praise and recognition resulted in a significant increase in variance for either PA or EE. That is, praise and recognition did not appear to enhance the relationships between OCB and PA, nor did it provide a buffering effect against any positive impact that performing OCBs might have on teachers feelings of EE. Thus, hypotheses 1c and 2c were not confirmed. The lack of significant findings regarding the moderating role of praise and recognition in the relationships between OCB and PA, and OCB and EE, may be explained by the fact that this measure did not specify the source of the praise and recognition. However, as Bandura (1986) has noted, the potency and effectiveness of social approval will depend on the source. Receiving social approval from someone with the power or ability to administer rewards or punishments (including social rewards and punishments) is more likely to enhance self-perceptions than is recognition received from a source with less authority or credibility. In the case of teachers, it is likely that praise and recognition received from ones principal is more powerful than recognition received from students for example, although such a hypothesis has never been explicitly tested. Study 2 aimed to refine the measurement of praise and recognition by asking teachers about recognition from various sources. These data were then used to assess whether praise and recognition from certain sources, such as from ones principal, moderated the effects of OCB on teacher outcomes.
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Study 2
In this study, a new data set was collected from 222 teachers (167 females) approximately 6 months after Study 1. Teacher OCB was measured using the instrument developed for Study 1 (described above). PA and EE were also measured with the same scales as used in Study 1. However, four new measures of praise and recognition were developed. These new measures assessed teachers perceptions of receiving praise and recognition from four sources: (a) the principal, (b) co-workers, (c) students and (d) students parents. In order to refine our measurement of praise and recognition, previous research examining this topic was closely reviewed. However, previous studies have generally measured praise and recognition using one or two items embedded within broader measures of organisational culture (e.g., Parker, Dipboye, & Jackson, 1995), employee empowerment (e.g., Herrenkohl, Judson, & Heffner, 1999), or employee engagement (e.g., Harter, Schmidt, & Hayes, 2002). These items were reviewed and used as a basis for the development of a 10-item measure of praise and recognition to assess how often teachers received recognition from each of the four different sources. A sample item was: Students show genuine appreciation for the work that I do at this school. In the other three scales, the term students was replaced with the terms co-workers, parents or my principal. Responses were on a 5-point scale from 1 (Rarely) to 5 (Very often). Unlike in Study 1 where only SCBs predicted EE, in this study two forms of OCB, namely SCBs, = .19, p < .01 and consideration, = .15, p < .05, exerted significant main effects on EE. Like SCBs, consideration had a positive association with EE, suggesting that teachers who put more effort into preserving harmony in the workplace reported higher levels of EE. Consistent with Study 1, all forms of OCB exerted significant main effects on PA, suggesting that all OCBs enhanced teachers sense of PA. All four sources of praise and recognition exerted significant main effects on both PA and EE. Specifically, these results suggest that receiving praise and recognition from any source (principal, coworkers, students or parents) enhances teachers feelings of PA and reduces their levels of EE. As in the previous study, the predictor variables were centred (i.e., scores subtracted from the scale mean; see Aiken & West, 1991) before interaction terms between the five types of OCB and the four types of recognition were created. As with the previous study, each interaction term was examined in a separate moderated regression to limit the number of variables entered into any one equation. Overall, there were six
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6.5
6.5
Personal accomplishment
6.0
Personal accomplishment
6.0
5.5
5.5
5.0 Low Professional development High
5.0 Low Student-centred behaviours (SCBs) High
FIGURE 2 Interactions between teacher OCBs and praise and recognition in the prediction of PA.
instances of praise and recognition interacting with a category of OCB to predict either PA or EE. Two of these interactions suggested that praise and recognition from principals enhanced the positive effects of OCB on PA. The other four interactions depicted a pattern of results suggesting that a lack of praise and recognition from either principals or parents exacerbated the effects of OCB on EE. As Figure 2 shows, the positive effect of SCBs on PA is more apparent for those teachers who reported high levels of recognition from their principals. Likewise, the positive effect of professional development on PA is more marked for teachers who received more recognition from their principals. The positive effects of SCBs and professional development on PA are less marked for the low recognition teachers. As expected, simple slope analyses revealed that the positive slopes for the high recognition teachers were significant, whereas neither of the slopes for the low recognition teachers was significant. As Figure 3 demonstrates, the positive effect of SCBs on EE was much more marked for teachers who reported low levels of recognition from parents and from principals. However, in both instances, the high recognition teachers were protected from the adverse effects of SCBs on EE. As also shown in Figure 3, the effects of both professional development and consideration on EE were much more apparent for teachers who reported low levels of recognition from their principals. Simple slope analyses revealed that the positive slopes for the low recognition teachers were significant, whereas none of the slopes for the high recognition groups were significant, as was expected.
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5.5
5.0
5.0
4.5
4.5
Low High
4.0
4.0
3.5
3.5
3.0 Student-centred behaviours (SCBs)
3.0 Low High Student-centred behaviours (SCBs)
5.0
5.0
4.5
4.5
4.0
4.0
3.5
3.5
3.0 Low Professional development High
3.0 Low Consideration High
FIGURE 3 Interactions between teacher OCBs and praise and recognition in the prediction of EE.
Discussion
As hypothesised, both studies 1 and 2 showed that OCBs have positive direct effects on teachers sense of PA. However, we also found some evidence that certain types of OCB (i.e., SCBs in Study 1, and SCBs and consideration in Study 2) may increase feelings of EE. Feeling appreciated for ones efforts at work also appears to enhance teacher PA and decrease feelings of EE. Study 2 showed that the effects of certain OCBs on teacher PA may be enhanced by receiving praise and recognition from ones principal or from students parents. Furthermore, some evidence was found to suggest that any negative effects of OCB on EE may be mitigated by these sources of recognition. As mentioned, both SCBs and consideration had positive main effects on EE for the Study 2 sample, however, professional development did predict EE in combination with principal praise and recognition. The pattern of results found in Study 2 suggests that teachers who felt the greatest sense of PA were those who performed more OCBs and
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received praise and recognition (see Figure 2). Given that a reduced sense of PA is indicative of psychological burnout (Maslach, 1982), these findings suggest that, for teachers, performing OCBs like SCBs and professional development in combination with receiving praise and recognition from principals may mitigate against this dimension of burnout. Praise and recognition from co-workers, parents and students had no interactive effects with any OCBs in the prediction of PA, suggesting that principals may be the most important source of praise and recognition in the promotion of teachers sense of PA. However, consistent with Study 1, all forms of praise and recognition exerted positive main effects on PA suggesting that recognition from all sources enhanced teachers sense of PA. Study 2 results also suggested that teachers most at risk of scoring high on EE were those who performed high levels of OCBs and received limited recognition. This may be particularly true for teachers who engage in high levels of SCBs. As both studies 1 and 2 showed, teachers higher on SCBs also scored higher on EE. However, Study 2 suggested that those who also receive limited recognition from principals and from parents may be most at risk. In buffering the positive effects of OCB on EE, it appears that parents and principals may be more important sources of praise and recognition than students and co-workers. This is an interesting finding given previous studies, such as Bakker et al. (2000), demonstrating that praise and thanks from ones clientele may reduce the effects of workload on EE. However, as Dormann and Kaiser (2002) argued, teachers customers are the parents of their students as well as the students themselves. As adults, parents may hold more credibility and social power than students do; hence, their social approval will be more salient (Bandura, 1986). Nonetheless, despite the lack of significant interactions with student and co-worker recognition, Study 2 showed that all four sources of praise and recognition had significant negative main effects on EE, suggesting that a lack of recognition from all sources heightened teachers feelings of EE. Although only six interactions were significant in Study 2, the particular combinations of OCB and praise and recognition that predicted PA or EE seemed to fit together theoretically. For example, that praise from ones principal interacted with professional development to predict PA seems theoretically sound given that it is typically the school principal who has the most knowledge of teachers professional development activities. Additionally, that praise from parents weakened the effects of SCBs on EE makes sense given that teachers are likely to value recognition from students parents who, aside from students themselves,
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are probably most aware of these behaviours. Given that parents hold more social power and credibility than students do, it is not surprising that teachers experience higher levels of EE when they feel unappreciated by parents for their extra efforts with students, perhaps due to a sense of inequity or imbalance.
Limitations
Several limitations of the current study should be noted. First, the cross-sectional nature of the two studies means that we cannot make conclusions about the direction of relationships between teacher OCB and teacher outcomes. Longitudinal research designs are needed to obtain a clearer picture of the nature of this relationship. Second, there is a risk that our significant findings, especially the interactions in Study 2, are a consequence of chance (in light of the numerous independent tests). However, as noted, the combinations of OCBs and praise and recognition that predicted EE and PA made theoretical sense. Another limitation of the study may be the use of self-report for gathering the OCB data, resulting in inflated OCB scores due to social desirability effects. However, other sources, such as supervisor ratings, may also have their limitations. The unique structure of schools restricts principals ability to monitor and supervise teacher behaviours. For this reason, self-report methodology provides a rich and valid measure of behaviours of which supervisors may be unaware. Indeed, self-reported measures of OCB have been used for this very reason in other research (e.g., Somech & Drach-Zavahy, 2000; Yoon & Suh, 2003). Nonetheless, future research should investigate other ways of accurately assessing OCB for other workers who have a high degree of professional autonomy.
Summary
Results from our two studies suggest that by engaging in prosocial behaviours whether towards students, co-workers or the organisation teachers enhance their feelings of personal accomplishment, suggesting that OCBs may assist in preventing that aspect of burnout known as reduced personal accomplishment (Maslach, 1982). In contrast, these behaviours appear to have less of an association with teachers feelings of emotional exhaustion, aside from student-directed OCBs apparently exacerbating this dimension of burnout. However, our second study suggested that if teachers receive social rewards in the form of praise and recognition from parents or principals, student-directed OCBs may have no significant effects on exhaustion. In addition,
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praise and recognition from parents and principals may enhance the already positive association between OCBs and personal accomplishment. Hence, our results highlight the importance of receiving positive feedback from credible sources for teachers psychological wellbeing. In its absence, teachers may suffer from reduced PA and from heightened feelings of EE, especially if they are going above and beyond the call of duty in their jobs. However, it should also be mentioned that the mainly nonsignificant results regarding relationships between OCB and EE are in fact encouraging, if they mean that teachers extra efforts do not generally lead to EE or, just as importantly, EE does not inhibit most forms of teacher OCB. However, clearly more research, especially longitudinal and multi-method research, is needed to establish the exact nature and direction of the relationship between OCB and EE. Indeed, the relationship between OCB and strain generally remains unclear, with studies showing that certain stressors typically thought to increase EE (such as workload, time pressure and role stressors) may have no inhibiting effect on OCB (e.g., Organ & Hui, 1995; Turnipseed & Murkison, 2000). Others have demonstrated that workplace stressors such as time pressure and situational constraints can even increase employees propensity to engage in OCBs (Fay & Sonnentag, 2002). Clearly, we still lack a complete understanding of the relationship between OCB and psychological outcomes.
Implications
There are several practical implications of the current findings. First, given the apparently positive consequences of engaging in OCBs, teachers work and workplaces should be structured in ways that encourage and support participation in citizenship behaviours, including optional training and broader organisational activities, while being careful not to create feelings of overload. One way of doing this may be through organisational change and development initiatives that make principals, teachers and parents acutely aware of the need to foster an organisational culture that provides social recognition for teachers efforts. Additionally, leadership-training programs for school principals need to include training in how to provide feedback to teachers, including positive feedback. These programs should encourage principals to make time in their busy schedules to pay visits to their teachers, specifically to provide them with praise and thanks for their particular efforts. Such interventions may also, in turn, contribute to greater engagement in OCBs. Given that organisations such as
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schools rely so much on their employees goodwill to operate cohesively and effectively, it is crucial that we find ways to encourage and sustain teacher OCBs without undermining their psychological wellbeing.
References
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CHAPTER
9
Safety Climate and Work-Related Driving in Australian Organisations
Andrew R. Wills, Barry Watson, and Herbert C. Biggs
Safety climate, defined as workers shared perceptions about the importance of safety in their organisation, has been proposed as one of the key socio-organisational influences on occupational safety outcomes. This chapter begins with an outline of why fleet safety is relevant to organisational psychologists and briefly outlines recent developments in research on fleet safety in Australia. This chapter summarises research examining safety climate in various industrial settings and on the influence of safety climate upon driver safety in Australian motor vehicle fleets. This work is a key part of an ongoing interest by Australian researchers in work-related driver safety (also commonly referred to as fleet safety across Australasia, the United Kingdom and the United States). Future directions for researchers and practitioners are discussed with a particular focus on what organisational psychology has to offer towards research and practice in fleet safety.
The Problem: Motor Vehicle Fleets and Work-Related Driving

For many workers, driving a vehicle may be the riskiest activity that they will engage in at work. Death resulting from motor vehicle crashes is the single greatest cause of work-related fatalities in Australia (Haworth, Tingvall, & Kowadlo, 2000). Driscoll et al. (2005) compared fatal work-related vehicle incidents in Australia, New Zealand and the United States. They found that motor vehicle traffic incidents accounted for 31% of work-related fatalities
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occurring in Australia each year higher than the previously reported rates of around 25% (Harrison, Mandryk, & Frommer, 1993; National Occupational Health and Safety Commission, 1998). The rate of fatality resulting from traffic incidents in New Zealand was 16% and 22% in the United States. The most common occupations involved in these incidents were trades workers, operators and labourers (including truck drivers) (Driscoll et al., 2005). Most of these workers were employed in transport, storage, communications or public utilities industries. While many of the workers involved in these fatal crashes could be classified as professional/commercial drivers (approximately half of those killed in Australia and New Zealand were truck drivers), many others may spend a significant part of their working day driving a vehicle, but for the purpose of commuting to places of work (such as technical and trades workers working for themselves or larger organisations). In Australia and New Zealand, a range of organisations require that their workers spend a significant part of their work time driving a commercial vehicle including those involved in transport and logistics, government, telecommunications, energy, mining and other resource industries. The types of workers required to engage in this high-risk work activity are not limited to blue-collar workers, but include a variety of white-collar workers such as sales representatives and other executives. Driving for work may also be riskier than driving a privately owned vehicle in ones own time. Lynn and Lockwood (1998) for example, provided evidence to suggest that drivers may be up to 50% more likely to be involved in a crash while driving for work. This may be due to the added sources of stress, pressures and cognitive demands involved when driving for work. Adding to this, some researchers have suggested a work-related driving effect wherein drivers may take less care and take more risks when driving a company-owned vehicle due to a sense of diminished responsibility (Downs, Keigan, Maycock, & Grayson, 1999; Murray, Newnam, Watson, Davey, & Schonfeld, 2003). This is not only a substantial occupational health and safety (OHS) issue and public health concern; it also burdens business and society with substantial socioeconomic costs, including workers compensation, property and insurance costs, as well as the cost of lost work days, injuries and rehabilitation (Murray et al., 2003). As these events typically occur on public roads (and may involve members of the public) it is also an issue of corporate responsibility. Improving workers on-road safety benefits organisations in terms of safety outcomes and associated financial costs, as well as meeting their moral and legal OHS obligations.
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Safety Climate and Work-Related Driving
Fleet Safety
Fleet safety represents a relatively new area of interest for road safety authorities (Henderson, 1997; Murray et al., 2003). Historically, the fact that some drivers involved in crashes were driving for work purposes was generally viewed as incidental to the event. The primary focus of attention for road safety researchers and agencies tended to be on the immediate driver, vehicle and road environment factors contributing to crashes. Consequently, the safety of work-related drivers was primarily considered the responsibility of individual organisations. Similarly, within organisations, responsibility for managing the safety of employees who drive for work purposes was historically unclear. The most common approach is for organisations to focus on fleet safety from an economic, asset-management perspective (Haworth et al., 2000), rather than an OHS perspective. As a consequence, organisations have typically used loss-reduction strategies such as selecting safer vehicles, driver training/education programs, fleet safety policies and crash monitoring. The predominant limitation of these popular (often reactive) approaches to improving fleet safety is that they do not systematically address inherent organisation-wide factors that contribute to work-related crashes (Bibbings, 1997). Moreover, these approaches have typically lacked sound empirical and theoretical support (Haworth et al., 2000). During the 1990s, there was a growing recognition in Australia and other motorised countries of the need for road safety authorities to devote more attention to fleet safety (e.g., Henderson, 1997; McCorry & Murray, 1993). This change appears to have been driven by two considerations. First, there was a growing body of evidence confirming the extent of the work-related driver crash problem (e.g., Haworth et al., 2000; Wheatley, 1997). Second, there was a growing realisation that the fleet setting represents a unique opportunity for implementing targeted road safety interventions. Indeed, one of the first well-designed studies in this area demonstrated the crash reduction potential of a range of fleet safety initiatives with the Swedish telecommunications organisation, Televerket (Gregersen, Brehmer, & Moren, 1996).
What Does Organisational Psychology Offer?
Over recent years, there has been a steady increase in the amount of research attention devoted to fleet safety. Not surprisingly, much of this research has focused on: (a) understanding the scale and nature of workrelated road crashes and (b) identifying cost-effective interventions (e.g., Haworth et al., 2000). However, there has also been growing interest in the role of organisational factors in fleet safety. This research has been
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largely driven by the belief that a proactive fleet safety culture and/or fleet safety climate within organisations can play an important role in reducing work-related road crashes (e.g., Downs et al., 1999; Haworth, 2002; Moser, 2001; Murray, 2003). Not surprisingly, research in this area has been informed by concepts drawn from organisational psychology, as well as from traffic psychology. Each of these areas aims to apply psychological theory, principles and research to the setting of concern (organisational psychology to the study of work and organisations, and traffic psychology to the study of drivers and other road users). Examples of recent research of this type include investigation into: the impact of job demands upon bus driver safety (Meijman & Kompier, 1998), the impact of various work and person-related factors upon crashes amongst veterinary workers (Trimpop, Austin, & Kirkcaldy, 2000), differences in driver safety when driving a work vehicle compared with a personal vehicle (Newman, Watson, & Murray, 2004; Newnam, Watson, & Murray, 2002), the relationship between knowledge of fleet safety policies and driver behaviour (Newnam et al., 2002), the influence of organisational factors on driver behaviour compared with other personal and exposure-related factors (Wills, Watson, & Biggs, 2004, in press), the impact of organisational factors on driver health and safety behaviours among taxi drivers (Machin & De Souza, 2004) and the relationship between safety climate and fatigue amongst commercial truck drivers (Morrow & Crum, 2004).
Climate and Culture

This chapter focuses on the application of the notion of safety climate and culture to fleet safety research. It is useful, therefore, to define the more general concepts of organisational culture and climate. The holistic notions of climate and culture are derived from theory and research in organisational psychology and management science. There has often been confusion within these fields (and other professions) about the distinction between the concepts of culture and climate. While an extensive review of this literature is beyond the scope of this chapter, it is useful to provide a brief summary of key conceptual differences. Organisational culture is typically defined as a behavioural and psychological phenomenon that manifests as the shared values, attitudes, beliefs and behaviours occurring within an organisation (Schein, 1990). Occupational safety researchers have further refined this line of thought by specifying organisational safety culture as including the shared values, norms, beliefs, attitudes, ideas and behaviours of workers that impact upon their exposure to risk at work and ultimately their involvement in accidents (Cooper, 2000;
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Glendon & Stanton, 2000; Guldenmund, 2000). Therefore, those concerned with work-related driving and the fleet setting tend to be interested in those aspects of organisational culture that may impact on driver safety such as: attitudes held by organisational stakeholders, driver training practices, management commitment to fleet and driver safety, as well as fleet safety policies, practices and procedures (Haworth et al., 2000; Moser, 2001; Murray, 2003; Murray & Dubens, 1998). In other words, an organisations fleet safety culture is characterised by not only how safely employees drive, but also how safe driving is valued within the organisation and how management practices impact on driving. Organisational climate, on the other hand, is primarily defined as the psychological manifestation of organisational culture, representing workers cognitive perceptions of specific aspects of the work environment (Coyle, Sleeman, & Adams, 1995; Glendon & Stanton, 2000; Hale, 2000; Mearns & Flin, 1999; Neal, Griffin, & Hart, 2000; Williamson, Feyer, Cairns, & Biancotti, 1997; Zohar, 1980). In other words, climate refers to workers perceptions of organisational culture and practice (Glendon & Stanton, 2000). This conceptualisation (sometimes referred to as climate theory) draws upon the cognitive framework of attribution theory, proposing that climate perceptions inform causal attributions that workers make about organisational practices which, in turn, influence their own behaviours at work (DeJoy, 1994). Such definitions suggest that, in addition to theoretical distinctions between culture and climate, there is also a clear methodological difference. As climate represents workers psychological perceptions about specific aspects of the organisation, a quantitative measure of it can be obtained by using survey methodology to gather worker perceptions, much like other psychological constructs such as attitudes, personality or cognitive ability (Glendon & Litherland, 2001; Mearns & Flin, 1999). Furthermore, climate scores can be aggregated across certain groups of workers (or the whole organisation) to investigate the shared climate/s within or across the organisation.
Safety Climate
Organisational climate for safety, referred to as safety climate, has become a concept of increasing interest in organisational safety research. It was first introduced by Zohar (1980) who defined it as a summary of employees shared perceptions about safety in their work environment. It has been described as the psychological mechanism through which management practices and attitudes impact upon the way in which workers ultimately behave at work (including their on-road driving practices). An organisations safety climate represents workers shared perceptions
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about how safety is managed and treated within their workplace (Flin, Mearns, OConnor, & Bryden, 2000; Zohar, 1980). In the years since Zohar introduced the notion of safety climate, the concept continues to influence the way that organisational psychologists (and researchers in other safety-related areas such as ergonomics) approach occupational safety behaviour and how organisations could and should manage employee safety and welfare. Theory and research on safety climate offers a multidimensional approach to examining driver safety within organisational settings. From this perspective, driving is viewed as a behaviour that is not the result of individual characteristics alone, but one that is also influenced by management practices and the extent that driver safety is valued within and by the organisation.
Safety Climate and Safety Outcomes
Researchers have attempted to identify relationships between workers scores on measures of safety climate and various organisational safety outcomes including: company accident rates in aviation-related organisations (Daz & Cabrera, 1997) and the wood processing industry (Varonen & Mattila, 2000), self-reported occupational injury involvement in offshore mining (Mearns, Flin, Gordon, & Fleming, 1998; Mearns, Whitaker, & Flin, 2003), self-reported occupational injury frequency in hospital settings (Vredenburgh, 2002), injury severity in construction (Gillen, Baltz, Gassel, Kirsch, & Vaccaro, 2002), safety performance and behaviour in manufacturing settings (Garavan & OBrien, 2001; Griffin & Neal, 2000), frequency of workers compensation claims in manufacturing (OToole, 2002) and other safety-related events (Evans, Michael, Wiedenbeck, & Ray, 2005). For a review, see Glendon, Clarke, and Mckenna (2006). Further evidence supporting the validity of safety climate as a concept worth investigating is shown by changes to employee safety climate perceptions with the implementation of organisational/behavioural safety interventions in manufacturing settings (Cooper & Phillips, 2004; OToole, 2002). Gillen et al. (2002) found that safety climate differed between union and non-union construction workers, reflecting the different worksite safety requirements of these affiliations. On the other hand, while Cooper and Phillips found changes in safety climate perceptions, they reported that these changes were not reflected by changes in behaviour. It is also worth noting that research has linked safety climate with other non-safety related worker outcomes such as job satisfaction, organisational support and job performance (Michael, Evans, Jansen, &
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Haight, 2005), suggesting that workers perceptions about how committed the organisation is to worker health and wellbeing may also play an important role in other occupational outcomes.
Safety Climate in the Fleet Setting: Recent Research and Advances

In order to enhance our knowledge of safety climate in the fleet setting, the authors and other researchers at the Centre for Accident Research and Road SafetyQueensland (CARRS-Q) have started to investigate the relationships between safety climate and different measures of work-related driver safety amongst Australian samples. Some of the major findings arising from this research are summarised in this section.
Measuring Safety Climate in Fleets
The first step in investigating safety climate in the fleet setting was to identify (or develop) a measure of safety climate that was suitable for the organisational settings and contexts that we were interested in (fleets), and related safety behaviours (work-related driving). A review of the factors contained within 18 different safety climate measures (Flin et al., 2000) found several recurrent underlying dimensions. These included perceptions relating to: management behaviours and attitudes, safety management systems such as policies and procedures, risks, work pressures and competency. Although there is some inconsistency between many of the measures, according to Flin and colleagues these factors appear to be important aspects of safety climate across organisations from different countries and industrial settings. Further evidence suggests that perceptions concerning management commitment to safety is one of the key elements of safety climate, representing the core theoretical notions underlying the concept (Cox & Flin, 1998; Farrington-Darby, Pickup, & Wilson, 2005; Garavan & OBrien, 2001; Guldenmund, 2000; OToole, 2002; Oliver, Cheyne, Toms, & Cox, 2002; Zohar, 1980). After reviewing several measures it was decided to modify and use the Safety Climate Questionnaire (SCQ) devised by Glendon and Litherland (2001). The original SCQ comprised six factors: Communication and Support, Adequacy of Procedures, Work Pressure, Personal Protective Equipment, Relationships and Safety Rules. Minor modifications were made to several items (such as those pertaining to safety rules and procedures) in order to focus on perceptions about fleet safety and driver safety practices within the organisations. Items pertaining to protective equipment were removed, as they were deemed irrelevant to the context of interest. Items were devised to address two additional aspects of safety climate in the fleet setting forming two additional factors, which were labelled
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TABLE 1 Safety Climate Factors (N = 319) Factor Sample item Number of items (total 35) 13 Factor loadings (range) .71.39 Per cent of variance explained (total 60.5) 39.3 Scale reliability () .92
Communication and procedures
Work pressure
Management commitment* Relationships
Driver training*
Safety rules
Changes in working procedures and their effects on safety are effectively communicated to workers Time schedules for completing work projects are realistic Management are committed to driver safety Good working relationships exist in this organisation Potential risks and consequences are identified in driver training Safety rules relating to the use of motor vehicles can be followed without conflicting with work practices
.80.60
7.7
.92
.80.67
5.2
.93
.75.57
3.5
.88
.89.82
3.0
.92
.55.44
1.8
.68
Note: * New factors Source: Wills, Biggs, & Watson, 2005
Management Commitment and Driver Training. These items were informed by a combination of discussion with industry stakeholders (driver training is one of the key ways in which fleet managers believe that they can implement driver safety initiatives) and in response to the safety climate literature (the importance of management commitment). Employees from three organisations based in the state of Queensland were surveyed, resulting in a sample of 319 participants who were predominately male (approximately 93%). The organisations were a local government council, a state government transport agency and a private industrial resource provider. A summary of the measures statistical properties (the Safety Climate Questionnaire Modified for Drivers [SCQ-MD]) is shown as Table 1. Readers should refer to Wills et al. (2005) for a complete description of the study method, the development and factor structure of the SCQ-MD.
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Subsequent research conducted using the same measure within an emergency services organisation based in the state of Queensland (Banks, Davey, & Brownlow, 2006) revealed a similar factor structure, with some exceptions. These authors found a 4-factor solution, with factors labelled Management Commitment, Trusting Relationships and Communications, Appropriateness of Work Demands and Appropriateness of Education and Rules. These results provide evidence for the stable structure of the shared safety climate of workers across organisations and industries, supporting its conceptualisation as a generic organisational construct. The findings also exemplify that a measure of safety climate can be sufficiently modified by researchers and practitioners to reflect the nature of the organisation and context of interest. We are currently conducting research with a substantial sample (N 5000) of participants from a large Australia-wide organisation to further examine the underlying factor structure of the measure using techniques such as confirmatory factor analysis.
The Safety Climate and Driver Safety Relationship
The next step in this program of research was to investigate the relationship between employees safety climate perceptions and a number of occupational safety outcomes relating to driving, including selfreported occupational driving behaviour, crashes, and traffic offences. In order to compare the influence of safety climate relative to other factors, safety climate and additional factors were included in regression analyses. Including these additional factors was informed by both theory (theory of planned behaviour) and findings from pervious road safety research (e.g., Lajunen & Summala, 1997; Lynn & Lockwood, 1998; Stradling, Meadows, & Beatty, 2000; Stradling & Parker, 1997; Trimpop et al., 2000). Safety attitudes, driving experience and workrelated driving exposure were included. A multiple regression analysis was conducted with a measure of driver behaviour (a modified version of the Driver Behaviour Questionnaire) as the dependent variable. Together, safety climate and the other factors accounted for 26% of the variance in driver behaviour (see results in Table 2). Inspection of the coefficients showed that safety climate was the strongest predictor, uniquely accounting for 16% of the variance in driver behaviour. Driver safety attitudes was the next strongest predictor, uniquely accounting for 6% of the variance in driver behaviour. The results suggested that, when all other factors are treated as equal, safety climate had a stronger statistical association with self-reported driver behaviour than did the other factors considered in this study (including attitudes and demo183
TABLE 2 Regression Analysis for Driver Behaviour (N = 319) (from Wills et al., 2004) Variable Safety climate Driver safety attitudes Driving experience Driving exposure B .26** .20** .05* .04*
Std. error
.03 .05 .02 .01
.38 .22 .11 .15
sr 2 (unique)
.16 .06 .02 .03
R2
Adj R 2
.26**
.25
Note: *p < .05; **p < .001; F(4, 314) = 27.17
graphic factors). Readers should refer to Wills et al. (2004; in press) for further information and analyses. Further (logistic) regression analyses were conducted to explore the relationship between safety climate and the other outcomes (past crashes and traffic offences). Results showed that neither safety climate (nor the other factors included) predicted crashes or traffic offences (for further information refer to Wills et al., 2004; in press). This may be indicative of the nature of the relationship between the factors considered and on-road events, in that other factors that were not included may serve to mediate/moderate the relationship between safety climate and driver safety outcomes (such as traffic offences). On the other hand, a number of methodological issues may have constrained these results. For example, as crashes and traffic offences are relatively rare events, they were measured in terms of the previous 3year period. According to theoretical notions underlying organisational climate and culture, safety climate should be considered a fluid construct; one that may change over time. This may have impacted on the statistical relationship found between employees current perceptions and past safety-related events (e.g., crashes and offences). Recent work has further investigated the link between safety climate and work-related driving by comparing relationships between underlying safety climate factors and four different aspects of workrelated driver safety, including traffic violations, driver error, driving while distracted from the road and pre-trip vehicle maintenance habits (Wills, Watson, & Biggs, 2006). Preliminary results have shown that while the safety climate factors predict significant amounts of variance in each of the four aspects of work-related driving behaviour, certain factors are more predictive than others of certain driving behaviours. When combined, the safety climate factors were best able to predict how distracted drivers reported being while driving for work. Work pressure had the strongest link across the four aspects of driving
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behaviour; showing a strong relationship with driver distraction. On the other hand, Safety Rules and Communication appeared to be more consistently related to different aspects of work-related driver behaviour than did the other factors. It is also worth noting that one other study has found a strong association between management commitment and driver safety in fleet settings. Among a sample of taxi drivers based in Brisbane (Queensland), Machin and De Souza (2004) found that the perceived level of management commitment to health and safety was a significant predictor of un/safe driving behaviour.
Practical Implications for Organisational Psychology
These findings lead to two key practical considerations for organisational psychologists. First, when designing and implementing organisational safety initiatives, it is important to consider the specific target behaviour to be changed and to identify the organisational aspects (e.g., safety climate factors) that are most strongly linked to that behaviour. In so doing, change programs can be designed to target those aspects of the organisation most likely to lead to the desired behavioural change. Second, while the findings confirm that safety climate is an important influence upon driver safety at work, there may be other work-related or person-related factors (not considered in this research) that could also influence these behaviours and thus be of interest to future investigations. While our research found moderate relationships between safety climate and work-related driving behaviour, and suggested that some aspects of safety climate (such as safety rules) may have more influence than others, overall, the strength of such relationships varies between studies. This questions the nature of the relationship between safety climate, safety behaviours and safety outcomes. In turn, further research is needed to investigate the nature of the climatebehaviouroutcome relationship in the fleet context, including those factors that mediate and moderate the impact of safety climate upon driver safety. The following section outlines considerations for researchers aiming to address this objective.
Future Directions for Research in Fleet Safety

Theoretical Frameworks
In order to understand, predict and ultimately manage, work-related driver safety it is imperative to place the behaviour within a relevant theoretical or conceptual framework. Such a framework allows researchers to begin to describe the nature of the behaviour, some of the important influencing factors and to make informed recommendations to
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practitioners. It has also been argued that devising and assessing conceptual and theoretical models of occupational safety behaviour is a key aspect of enhancing safety climate theory and research (Guldenmund, 2000; Hale, 2000). In other industrial settings, researchers have placed safety climate (or certain aspects such as communication or organisational support) within conceptual models of organisational safety. For example, Coopers (2000) reciprocal model of safety culture (drawn from Banduras social learning theory) proposed an interaction between the person (represented by safety climate perceptions), the situation (the management system) and the behaviour (safety behaviour). Other more extensive models, such as Neal and Griffins (2004), outline the impact of environmental antecedents (such as safety climate and other organisational factors) and individual antecedents (such as attitudes), suggesting that the link between these antecedents and safety performance at work is mediated by an individuals safety knowledge and motivation. A number of other generalised approaches have been recommended for consideration, including culture and attitude formation models, strategic (top-down) and operational (bottom-up) approaches (for more extensive reviews see Glendon & Stanton, 2000; Guldenmund, 2000). Researchers have also provided statistical evaluations of such models using path analysis and other structural equation modelling techniques.
Statistical Models
In addition to safety climate, such models often include a wide range of individual and organisational factors. While many of these models appear similar in structure, often proposing that safety climate (or certain aspects of safety climate) have some influence upon safety-related behaviours and outcomes, there is some inconsistency in terms of the other work and individual factors considered. Many are complex and include factors such as safety standards and management, personal involvement, communication, hazards, the physical work environment, supervisor and co-worker responses, attitudes, organisational involvement, general health (Cheyne, Cox, Oliver, & Toms, 1998; Oliver et al., 2002; Toms, Meli, & Oliver, 1999), safety knowledge and motivation (Neal et al., 2000), transformational leadership, safety consciousness (Barling, Loughlin, & Kelloway, 2002), psychological distress, job satisfaction (Siu, Phillips, & Leung, 2004), pressures, risks and barriers (Seo, 2005). These models often treat safety climate as the main antecedent to safety behaviour or participation at work, with this relationship being mediated by one or more of the other factors (determinants) mentioned previously. Some of these models include injury rates as a measure of safety outcomes, while others focus solely on
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behavioural artefacts. Hazards is often included as a moderator of the behaviour and outcome variables. With the exception of a few examples (such as Fogarty & Shaw, 2003), most of these models lack strong theoretical grounding. Fogarty and Shaw added aspects of safety climate (management attitudes and work pressures) to the theory of planned behaviour model, which they examined using path analysis. Finally, one study conducted with work-related drivers found that an aspect of safety climate (organisational support) was related to drivers capacity to plan, which in turn predicted crash involvement (Caird & Kline, 2004). Research has also begun to explore those factors that are thought to influence safety climate itself. For example, Neal et al. (2000) found that general organisational climate was strongly related to safety climate. DeJoy, Schaffer, Wilson, Vandenberg, and Butts (2004) found that in addition to organisational climate (particularly communication and organisational support), environmental conditions, safety policies and programs were strong predictors of safety climate. Amongst commercial truck drivers, Arboleda, Morrow, Crum, and Shelley (2003) found that driver fatigue training, opportunity for driver input and management commitment were strong predictors of safety climate. Further research needs to provide a more extensive description about the nature of the link between safety climate and workers driving behaviours, by devising and evaluating a model that includes relevant mediating and moderating factors, as well as influences upon safety climate itself.
Other Factors
At its core, organisational psychology is the application of psychological theory, principles and research to work settings. The concept of work settings, however, is a function of changes in the nature of work itself and the accumulation of knowledge about work-related behaviours gained since the pioneering work of Munsterberg and Cattell in the early part of the 20th century (Landy & Conte, 2004). While approximately 100 years of theory, research and practice in organisational psychology suggests many factors that are of relevance to the fleet setting, three pertinent considerations are outlined briefly below. Occupational stress. Research has found that factors such as time pressure, thinking about work, lack of concentration and lack of planning time are key risk factors for work-related drivers (e.g., Adams-Guppy & Guppy, 1995; Caird & Kline, 2004; Downs et al., 1999; Salminen & Lahdeniemi, 2002; Stradling et al., 2000; Trimpop et al., 2000). Such factors and behaviours are intuitively linked with the experience of occupational stress. Interestingly, however, few of the models mentioned above include psycho187
logical distress (or occupational stress). In the case of work-related driving, it should be expected that a number of stressors may impact negatively upon driving behaviour including work, social, interpersonal, family or on-road factors (Buunk, de Jonge, Ybema, & de Wolff, 1998). Such stressors can have negative impacts upon work performance in general and need to be given greater consideration by researchers interested in modelling safety climate in fleets and other industrial settings. Although the extent to which work factors lead to an experience of stress may be moderated or mediated by person-related factors (Kahn & Byosiere, 1992; Karasek, 1990; Katz & Kahn, 1978; Michie, 2002), it is important to consider the role played by stressors (both work and non-work related) as influences on driver safety. Group level climate. Safety climate has been treated as both an organisation-wide (e.g., Daz & Cabrera, 1997) and a group level construct (e.g., Zohar & Luria, 2005). Recent research has had a greater focus on the impact of group level membership. This approach argues that workers perceptions are more strongly tied to group practices and attitudes (such as those of their supervisor) than to organisation-wide practices (Zohar, 2000). Research has confirmed group-level differences in safety climate as a function of supervisor or subunit membership (Zohar, 2000; Zohar & Luria, 2005), as well as employment level and work type (Adie et al., 2005; Cheyne, Toms, Cox, & Oliver, 2003; Clarke, 1999). Organisational structures and policies may dictate that fleet managers and health and safety managers are responsible for managing driver safety at an organisational level. However, as indicated by the findings of group level research, workers driving behaviours may be more strongly tied to the practices and attitudes of their immediate supervisors. Grouplevel climate may be a factor worth considering in future research into work-related driving. This may be particularly pertinent when investigating the impact of safety climate upon employees in large organisations with several departments, subunits and work groups. Motivation. The changing nature of the work environment and of the employer base suggests a growing mandate for a flexible and resilient workforce. The question of motivation then becomes a salient part of what drives both employers and workers alike in establishing both an employment and a psychological contract. The importance, for example, of an employer establishing and maintaining a safety climate with the goal of ensuring the maximum safety and security for the workforce could be seen as an attractive employment option for a potential employee, who in turn may engage and set positive personal goals in alignment
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with those of the employer. The motivational drivers for engagement at work generally fall across two theoretical positions: extrinsic and intrinsic rewards. Extrinsic rewards are exemplified in operant conditioning models, whereby behaviour that leads to positive consequences tends to be repeated, where the reverse is true for behaviour with negative consequences (Hamner, 1992; McGregor, 1960). In the fleet setting for example, it may be worth investigating what incentives and negative consequences may have a positive influence upon work-related driving. On the other hand are theories emphasising the motivational impact of intrinsic rewards, such as goal setting, a motivational theory that has been well supported by research. Goals are seen as the most immediate antecedent to behaviour, but may be derived and defined by higher order concepts such as values or motives and the individuals psychological composite (Locke & Latham, 1996). It may therefore be useful to consider how various motivational forces may affect the impact of organisational safety culture and climate upon drivers behaviour and the related outcomes.
Conclusion
Research into safety climate and work-related driving leads to several conclusions, as well as directions for future research (not only into work-related driving, but also for general safety within organisations). The underlying factor structure of one safety climate measure (the modified version of the SCQ) appears to be consistent across the organisational fleets included in this research thus far. A growing body of evidence links workers safety climate perceptions and self-reported work-related driving behaviour. However, the relationship between safety climate and outcomes such as crashes and traffic offences does not appear to be as direct or robust, requiring further research. Research conducted in different industrial settings suggests that other work-related, organisational and individual factors mediate and moderate the link between climate and behaviour. Hazard exposure also appears to moderate the occurrence of unsafe events. These issues need to be considered and an adequate model of work-related driver safety needs to be devised and examined. Organisational psychology offers a broad range of additional factors that may be pertinent to drivers such as occupational stress, group level factors and motivating factors. Thus, many findings from fleet safety research may help to shape future research and theory in organisational psychology. Regardless of how safety climate is defined and where the concept leads organisational theory, there are important implications that are often understated in the literature. The case of fleet safety exemplifies some of these. Prior to the notions of safety climate and culture in the
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area of fleet safety, little consideration was given to the impact of socioorganisational influences upon the safety of workers on the road. Organisations typically employed loss-reduction and skills-training techniques, often overlooking the influence of other important socio-organisational factors. By identifying links between concepts such as work pressure and driver distraction, organisational psychology has taken the first step in uncovering how organisations may have a positive (or negative) impact upon worker behaviour, safety and wellbeing in fleet settings. As work-related crashes are the largest single cause of fatalities amongst Australian workers, it is arguably an important issue worth the attention of organisational psychology researchers and practitioners.
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to acknowledge the support and assistance received from several current and former colleagues at the Centre for Accident Research and Road SafetyQueensland (CARRS-Q) including Associate Professor Jeremy Davey, Mr Darren Wishart, Dr Kerry Armstrong, Dr Will Murray and Mrs Cynthia Schonfeld. Associate Professor Ian Glendon of Griffith University is acknowledged for his helpful feedback and suggestions. Gratitude is also expressed to the industry partner organisations with whom we have collaborated in a program of applied research, particularly members of the fleet management, health and safety, and operational teams. Parts of this chapter were previously presented at the Australasian Road Safety, Policing and Education Conference, and at the 2005 Australian Psychological Society Industrial and Organisational Psychology Conference.
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SECTION
III
Organisational Structures and Processes: Leadership, Teams, Justice and Change
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Introduction to Section III

The seven papers comprising this section exemplify well both the richness of approaches and the diversity of content within contemporary organisational psychology. The section begins and ends with conceptual reviews (Dick; Greenberg), and also includes a qualitative study using a grounded theory approach (Arnold), three empirically-based chapters involving quantitative multivariate analyses (Hooper & Martin; Purkiss & Rossi; Inkson et al.), and a methodological contribution (Langan-Fox et al.). This section introduction outlines key elements of each chapter and indicates some particular aspects of practitioner relevance. Bob Dicks opening chapter challenges some current popular notions about organisations, inviting us to adopt a pastfuture timeline to examine radical changes that are taking place under our very noses. In a substantial contribution, Arnold describes the process of collecting and analysing qualitative data in a Singaporean hospital to provide some fascinating insights into staff perceptions of the SARS crisis. In their empirical paper, Hooper and Martin combine three key concepts within organisational psychology leadership, teamwork and procedural justice. Continuing the theme of team functioning, Janice Langan-Fox and her colleagues describe new statistical methods for analysing and representing team mental models, using data from a natural team as an example. Purkiss and Rossi expand the conceptual orientation of this section by considering the psychological construct of sense of community, linking this with leadership and other notions, including wellbeing, which is explored in some of the chapters in Section II. Revealing something of the potential for macro-level analyses within organisational psychology,
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Inkson et al.s chapter addresses an issue of national level concern that of skilled professional migration flows, in this case from a New Zealand perspective. This collection is privileged to include a contribution from a major originator of the concept being addressed in this case, Jerald Greenbergs chapter on organisational justice, in which he describes his ten most important reasons for us to be aware of this important concept.
The Past and Future of Bureaucracy
Dick opens this section with a series of profound observations about some common themes within organisational psychology. With an initial focus on bureaucracy, in his inimitable style, Bob Dick rapidly progresses to other major insights concerning the current singularity that we are in the midst of. This state has resulted not only in the collapse of bureaucracy in many organisations, but inter alia, has also moved us inexorably towards alternative more flexible, mainly team-based, organisational structures. Dick locates his conceptual contribution within a time frame that stretches from around 10,000 years ago the approximate date of the origins of agriculture and the bureaucratic organisational form, to some 40 to 50 years into the future. Dick also grounds his observations within the context of an organisational psychology literature stretching back over 50 years. Dick challenges the notion that rationality in planning, decision-making and problem-solving, is optimal when seeking solutions. The dynamic complexity of organisational structures, as well as the emotional drivers of our own behaviour honed by millennia of evolution ensure that this is so. Dick refers to such situations as existing on the edge of chaos. Practitioners are likely to readily heed one of their own and few can claim such a depth of organisational experience as Bob Dick. Those who are instrumental in analysing, recommending, or implementing organisational change, can glean some useful lessons from Dicks chapter. For example, if traditional hierarchical structures are under threat, then any organisational interventions are very likely to need to take account of this changing feature of organisational structure. Second, while teambased structures may be considered to be an alternative route to marrying individual and small group aspirations with broader organisational objectives, they are in many cases unlikely to be readily incorporated within more traditional structures like bureaucracy. As Hackman (1994) has pointed out, changes towards team-based approaches are also likely to present a considerable threat to established systems. Dick offers practitioners a checklist of items for facilitating interventions in large complex organisations.
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Introduction Section III
A central feature of Dicks contribution is to encourage us to think beyond present structures to use an historical perspective, if necessary the full extent of our evolution as well as describing possible alternative futures, when approaching organisations from any point on the scientistpractitioner continuum. His upbeat message for organisational psychologists is to consider complexity and uncertainty as providing opportunities both conceptual (e.g., for researchers) and applicationsbased (for practitioners).
Analysing an Organisational Crisis
Arnolds adeptly crafted contribution describes a grounded approach to data gathering, illustrating a bottom up or interpretive approach to organisational functioning. His chapter also highlights the importance for making useful research advances of a sound conceptual basis for interpreting such data. The dual theoretical pedestals on which Stewart Arnold opts to found his interpretations are organisational crises and sense-making, both of which flow almost naturally from Bob Dicks chapter. After exploring and skilfully merging key concepts from the relevant literatures to develop two research questions, Arnold describes the environmental backdrop and in-depth interview methodology of his empirical study. True to the grounded theory interpretive position and using a semistructured approach, Arnold deemed it critical to allow his respondents to tell their own stories. His detailed description of the studys methodology could be used as a model for researchers adopting this approach. Likewise his description of how data from respondent interviews are analysed is a model of clarity and one that has already been used in a lecture given by one of the editors of this book. The results section offers an opportunity for Arnold to use the two conceptual bases as a framework for presenting the findings. This chapter is a fine illustration of how qualitative data can be presented every bit as clearly as those from quantitative studies in some cases more so! Helpfully, Arnold dedicates a section of his chapter to the main implications of his study for organisations responding to crises, which should be of assistance to organisational psychology practitioners based both within organisations and who operate as external consultants. Features include: providing opportunities for staff to show professionalism and expertise for example through teamwork, demonstrating symbolic and substantive management to increase organisational identification, greater worker involvement in decision-making and increasing communications across an organisation. Arnold thereby reveals how an organisational crisis can become an opportunity both for manage201
ment and for the organisational psychology scientistpractitioner echoing another theme from Dicks chapter. Arnold also raises an important question that is explored further in some of the chapters in Section IV of this book the extent to which national or community culture influences an organisations response to events. His contribution has valuable lessons for organisational psychologists at all points on the scientistpractitioner spectrum.
LeaderMember Exchange and Justice
Hooper and Martin begin by describing something of the history and tenets of leadermember exchange (LMX) theory, the basis of which is that leaders at any level within an organisation develop different relationships with each of their followers. Leaders exchange resources with their followers in varying degrees to set up these differential relationships. The authors carefully describe the basis for their methodology, demonstrating analytical rigour in selecting an appropriate measure for their main construct. They then consider the important issues of how LMX variability can affect team performance and how it can impact upon workplace perceptions of procedural justice and fairness. This topic is considered in greater detail in Greenbergs chapter. Hooper and Martin develop a team-based concept of procedural justice procedural justice climate as a way of conceptualising how leader behaviour can affect the team as whole. The authors describe their survey technique within an organisation and to test their hypotheses tabulate their initial findings before describing their moderated regression analyses. The discussion in Hooper and Martins chapter reinforces the longheld position that LMX is associated with procedural justice climate, that is, perceived LMX variability (low leader neutrality) affects procedural justice perceptions. Practitioners who work within organisations at this level could usefully heed the authors suggestion that if team leaders are unable to be consistent in their treatment of followers, then they may be able to compensate by applying other justice rules for example suppressing bias, being accurate and transparent in their performance assessments, correcting errors made in respect of follower treatments, selecting follower behaviours for comment on a representative basis and being ethical in their dealings with followers. For practitioners consulting either from within, or operating as external consultants, the main message from this paper is that for the sake of good team relationships, leaders should be advised against fostering high quality relationships with only a subset of followers. The paper is a fine example of a carefully conducted study based upon sound theory and one that has useful practical implications.
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Analysing Team Effectiveness
The chapter by Langan-Fox, Ng, and Canty describes a new approach to understanding the challenging topic of whole team mental models. Their research advances previous methods by moving beyond considering mental models shared by dyads to exploring the whole team mental model (TMM). Their approach can determine the extent and pattern of team member agreement and disagreement, potentially adding important new insights to some long-established group effects, including risky shift/group polarisation and groupthink, as well as issues concerned with leaderteam member relationships and the balance between task and socio-emotional domains. Their chapter is an excellent example of how conceptual development of constructs is necessary before methodological advances can be made, which in turn can give rise to practical applications. In this case, a key conceptual advance involves measuring cognitive structures usually considered to be an individual level variable, at a group level. The authors expert exposition of relevant literature lays the basis for the conceptual and methodological advances described in their chapter. The data were collected over a 3-year period and the method describes the analysis of data from a 7-member team operating within an organisation. These authors outline of their methodology and analysis is an object lesson in clarity and parsimony of description of sophisticated statistical methodology. They conclude by outlining some further potential for this exciting new approach. For the many practitioners who work with teams within organisations, this chapter promises a vital diagnostic tool for the future. Questions that managers and organisational psychology practitioners frequently ask about teams include: How effective is this team? Is this team operating at its full potential? If not, what can be done about it? How flexible is this team? How well can it adapt to changing circumstances? The authors of this chapter report that team effectiveness is enhanced when team members have a high degree of shared understanding of their organisational environment, the way in which the team works, the tasks to be undertaken and team member interrelationships. Practitioners may also seek to compare the performance of different teams within an organisation, and the TMM methodology has the potential to assist in this task.
Leadership and Wellbeing
Important findings from Purkiss and Rossis research include that a strong sense of community is associated with increased workplace attachment and wellbeing, and lower feelings of hopelessness, as well as possible improvements in such outcomes as absenteeism and staff turnover. Leadership
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style was found to be especially important in building and maintaining the sense of community as well as increasing the likelihood of innovation within organisations. With data from 23 schools, the authors use path analysis to model effects of sense of community, social support, workrelated demands and perceived control variables. Confirmatory factor analyses identify a number of robust, reliable factors for key referent parties: supervisor, other staff and principal. The authors use structural equation modelling to construct their models, one of which is illustrated in their chapter. Their detailed description is an outstanding demonstration of the utility of this technique in unpacking complex relationships between variables. Information from interviews suggested that some of the unexplained variance in outcome variables, such as strain and hopelessness, may lie outside the immediate work environment; for example, at various levels of the organisation or at government level (e.g., policy directions). To understand more about how external factors outside the immediate work context may affect organisation variables such as these, the authors suggest that multi-level analysis may be required. This chapter will be particularly relevant to practitioners who operate in the broad area of human or social capital, and whose work involves finding ways of increasing individuals ability and willingness to strive for excellence in their daily working lives, and working to their full potential for example, innovating as well as the often difficult search for ways of reducing absenteeism and employee turnover. Purkiss and Rossis vital contribution is to highlight the critical role of social support within an organisation, particularly from immediate supervisors, and also the key role of the organisations leader in influencing the organisations culture to achieve these desired outcomes. The authors also identify some implications for practitioners working with individuals in organisations seeking to avoid the development of feelings of hopelessness and to support general wellbeing. Because sense of community can affect hopelessness and various stressors, and this can in turn be influenced by leadership style, these are good grounds for seeking to address these aspects of organisational life by tackling some of the big picture issues like leadership style and organisational support mechanisms. Interventions (e.g., training, coaching) targeted at these critical organisational factors can have important downstream effects upon a range of individual and group outcome variables. Practitioners can therefore learn a considerable amount from the complex models of relationships between organisational variables that are increasingly being developed and validated by researchers such as Purkiss and Rossi.
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Migration and Talent Flow
A particular strength of Inkson et al.s study is the large (N = 2208) sample size, which serves to increase the power of the statistical analyses and confidence in the findings. These authors use exploratory factor analysis to reveal two factors that were found to be critical in detracting expatriates from returning to New Zealand career and cosmopolitan culture, and two factors tending to increase likelihood that skilled professionals would return to New Zealand lifestyle and family. Their well-constructed study also found that for expatriate Kiwis, achievement motivation was negatively associated with intention to return, and affiliation motivation was positively associated with intention to return to New Zealand. Relevance of the studys findings to practitioners who hold a strategic brief can be identified at both national and organisational levels. The study is relevant at one level to policy-makers who are seeking both to attract and to retain skilled talent within their jurisdictions, both returning expatriates and new migrants. It is also relevant to organisationallevel strategists who wish to attract and retain workers with relevant skills and abilities. Highlighting the point that many organisations operate in an increasingly global marketplace for labour, one potential dilemma is how to balance the desirability and benefits of providing overseas experience for some categories of staff (e.g., managers), against the possibility that, if sent, they may not return. This can also be a critical issue for organisations needing to recruit expertise from overseas, and who wish to ensure that the considerable cost of overseas recruitment brings at least adequate returns. Understanding something of the underlying factors frequently cultural in origin which influence individual migration motivations and decisions, is a major contribution from this unique and impressive study. While the focus of this study is New Zealanders currently resident overseas and their motivation to return or not to return, the authors are diligent in providing an international context for their study that of global migration flows, primarily represented by rich countries appropriating skilled human capital from poorer countries, described by Inkson et al. as talent flow. The area of study they characterise as the psychology of migration, with a prime concern upon individual motivations for migration and return. Of all the chapters in this book, this one probably demonstrates most clearly the potential for organisational psychologists to make valuable contributions to policy, in this case through better understanding of important psychological components of a particular phenomenon of national interest.
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Organisational Justice
Greenbergs expertly presented contribution, which echoes Murphys top ten approach to his subject material, adroitly reviews ten reasons why organisational psychologists (and others) should know about and study organisational justice. In reverse order, these are: the increasing popularity of the topic; its sound theoretical basis; broad consensus in respect of its definition; the validity of its measurement; its ability to predict some other important organisational variables for example, attitudes and behaviours; its conceptual versatility; the scope for its further development; opportunities for applications; its fundamental connection to a number of basic psychological phenomena; and its universality. Greenbergs most important reason for studying organisational justice its universality, is moderated by the cultural dimension (revisited in some chapters in Section IV of this book), in that different issues are perceived to be unfair in different countries, while differences in how feelings of injustice are expressed also differ between countries. Aspects of organisational justice of most relevance to practitioners would relate in particular to three of the features described by Greenberg. The author describes the development of a valid measure for this construct (Reason 7), which has four subscales measuring: procedural justice, distributive justice, interpersonal justice and informational justice. The 20-item scale offers practitioners and researchers alike a valuable and very practical tool with numerous potential applications. Closely aligned with the ease of measurement of organisational justice components is this concepts ability to predict certain organisational attitudes and behaviours (Reason 6). A general case example provided by Greenberg is that distributive justice predicts satisfaction with outcomes, while procedural justice predicts system elements satisfaction, and is associated with such important variables as turnover intention and trust in management. Other organisational variables predicted by organisational justice include: worker health and wellbeing (the topic of some chapters in Section II of this book), productivity, OCBs, and deviant work behaviours productive and counterproductive work behaviours are considered in the chapter by Lau et al. in Section IV. Greenbergs Reason 3 explicitly declares that organisational justice concepts can readily be applied. The first example that he elucidates concerns the relationship between promoting justice and improving important aspects of organisational functioning (e.g., competitiveness). Evidence cited by Greenberg is from a study in which fair treatment of employees was linked with higher employee retention and with customer
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perceptions of high service quality. Greenbergs second example concerns the positive effect of shared perceptions of procedural justice on strategic alliances between organisations. A third example relates to the use of organisational justice as a basis for managerial training interventions and subsequent improvements in organisational behaviour. Such interventions also relate to the organisational variables predicted by organisational justice worker health and wellbeing, OCBs and reduced incidence of counterproductive work behaviours. As with an implication from Purkiss and Rossis chapter, Greenbergs excellent examples show that tackling some of the big picture organisational variables can have multiple beneficial downstream impacts. Together, the chapters comprising this section offer valuable insights and strong empirical evidence on a range of organisational variables that are important across a number of levels of analysis, including individual, group/team, organisational and national/cultural. As well as their sound conceptual basis, they also offer a potentially rich array of applications for practitioners.
Reference
Hackman, J. R. (1994). Trip wires in designing and leading workgroups. The Occupational Psychologist, 23, 38.
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CHAPTER
10
Whatever Happened to Bureaucracy? And Why Does It Matter?
Bob Dick
We are in the middle of a prolonged shift in our social systems, locally and globally. This is a singularity, an event with such dramatic effects that we cannot predict longer-term outcomes. In this chapter I identify two aspects of the shift. The first is the collapse of bureaucracy. Already begun, this is transforming our social systems towards more team-based structures. The other, barely evident, is the gradual failure of rational problem solving and decision making for some purposes. Each of these changes threatens disruption. However, there are opportunities here. The opportunities are especially relevant for those who understand people and organisations, including organisational psychologists. We can make important contributions, theoretical and practical, if we are willing to make the most of the possibilities. In futures studies, a singularity is an event with effects so large and varied that they obscure everything that follows. There are so many possibilities that the future becomes uncertain. When futurists like Naam (2005) talk about the singularity, they mean the time at which artificial intelligence exceeds human intelligence. They locate it mid-century, 2050 or thereabouts it should be noted that futurists arent much better at prediction than anyone else! However, as singularities are not point events it is unlikely we will wake up one morning to find a dramatically changed world run by computers. The artificial intelligence singularity is already in train: a computer beat209
ing a chess master is a symptom. The effects of the singularity may still be playing out a millennium from now. Singularities can be very slow and very gradual, which is probably why weve barely noticed that were in the middle of one. I think that its an important singularity, and a complex one. Thats why Ive chosen it as the topic for this chapter. Globalisation is involved as both result and cause. This chapter considers aspects of this singularity, this turning point for the world aspects that offer some enticing opportunities. Some are especially relevant for organisational psychologists. In particular Ill address two aspects. The first is the impending failure of bureaucracy. The second, less apparent, is the impending failure in some situations of rational planning, problem solving and decision-making. Ill follow these with a discussion of the opportunities that I believe they provide to people who understand people and organisations.
The Rise and Demise of Bureaucracy

Let me first say something about what I intend bureaucracy to mean. Im using it as description, not criticism. Weber (1921) thought that it was the rational way to structure large organisations. In some circumstances I agree with this characterisation, defined (among other aspects), by the structural notions of hierarchy and regimentation. The result is a familiar triangular shape. This is how many people still visualise the shape of organisations and other social systems. Its uncertain when bureaucracy first arose. A reasonable estimate might place it at the beginnings of agriculture conventionally dated to about 10,000 years ago. My guess is that bureaucracy and agriculture may have coevolved. Agriculture is likely to have benefited from the specialisation that bureaucracy allowed, for instance into warrior and agricultural classes. Bureaucracy would presumably have been favoured by the stability permitted by agriculture. Or perhaps, as Taylor (2005) suggested, bureaucracy trailed agriculture and is 6,000 years old. We do know that bureaucracy worked well enough for long enough to become the standard structure for almost all social systems. This included not just industrial, commercial and government organisations, but also families and tennis clubs, for example. In my early youth a typical family exhibited clearer differences in rank and role than you find in many families today. Early signs of the collapse of bureaucracy have been with us for several decades. They could be seen in the academic literature of the 1960s. In many respects this earlier literature is worth reading today. Less
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Future Directions for Organisational Psychology
FIGURE 1 From supervisor to team leader.
specialised than much current journal literature, it is often very informative and easy to understand and use. For example, Woodward (1965) compared the effectiveness of manufacturing companies in southern England. Less bureaucratic organisations were found in less stable environments. Burns and Stalker (1961) found similar differences between industries. The fast changing industries like plastics and electronics moved towards the looser structures that Burns and Stalker labelled organic. In their important work on structure within organisations, Lawrence and Lorsch (1967) found much the same. This all makes sense. Imagine that youre someone at the workface of a bureaucratic organisation. The organisation is rational and procedure driven. You notice some important change in the organisations environment a shifting market, for instance. In such an organisation, because you have no authority to change your behaviour you communicate the news upward. In time, new procedures work their way back down to you. If the environment has changed again by the time this happens, the new procedures probably wont work. For reasons considered below, the push towards less bureaucratic structures has continued. We have reached a point where many organisations have moved towards more team-based structures. Others are in the process of doing so, or are thinking about it. This chapter argues that most of them underestimate the difficulty of the change. In theory and in the better organisations, in practice we are able to use the new structures effectively at team level. The work of team leader and team becomes the task for the team as a whole. The team leader becomes a boundary rider, managing coordination outside the team. In structure the team shifts, as shown in Figure 1.
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FIGURE 2 From organisational hierarchy to flattened structure.
The two structures shown in Figure 1 are quite different. Team leader and team member roles and responsibilities have changed substantially. The required skills have also changed. Thats why the shift is often more difficult than people anticipate. For an entire organisation the shift is even more problematic. Its usual for the number of organisational levels to be reduced. The organisation is flattened. It is also interlaced with myriad project teams, meetings, committees and working parties (Figure 2). It seems that they are needed to keep the organisation functioning. Why is the shift so difficult? In some respects we are just moving back to pre-bureaucratic structures. There are good reasons to believe that were a tribal species. Even if you dont accept Dunbars (1992) argument about cortex and tribal size, the summary he provides of group size amongst humans and other primates is persuasive. You might think that modern organisational structures would suit a tribal species. Work teams offer more design flexibility. Workers can be offered more autonomy, variety and learning within more meaningful jobs. Among others, Emery and his ANU colleagues (Emery & Emery, 1975) have argued this for some years. Rehm (1999) has reiterated it more recently. But if thats so, why dont these new structures work more effectively more often? That question could be of interest to organisational psychologists. I think that our genetic inheritance does equip us well to make the most of the new structures at team level. The problem is to be found, I think, in our social inheritance: our memes. Ten thousand years is long enough for us to be well enculturated into thinking about structures as
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bureaucratic structures. Weve developed many beliefs that support such structures. In addition, thousands of years provide time enough for many of these supporting beliefs to sink out of awareness. The result is that many of our beliefs are not easily accessible to conscious examination. They are beliefs without reason. This issue is considered below. Many of our current organisations are hybrids, part bureaucracy and part something else. Bureaucratic structures, driven by procedures, require workers to be obedient. That was part of Webers (1921) recipe for organisational success. Team-based structures require innovation and responsibility. We might therefore anticipate that workers in hybrid structures experience tension between such conflicting requirements. Its difficult to anticipate the resolution to this conundrum. Networks of networks are possible, perhaps, if Hock (1999) is right. But after all, Im arguing that we are in a singularity. Its not surprising that the endpoint is mostly still obscure at this stage.
The Rise and Partial Demise of Rational Planning and Problem Solving
We seem to be in an earlier phase of this second aspect of the singularity. Im referring to the threatened failure under some circumstances of our rational methods for planning and problem solving. Under some circumstances rational methods still work. But often they dont, as Mintzberg (1994) has argued. Explanations for this are to be found in the literature on complexity. Increase the complexity and turbulence of a phenomenon and the relationship between cause and effect becomes unclear. It has been called the butterfly effect. The incident that triggered the interest in chaos and complexity provides an illustration. In the early 1960s Lorenz modelled weather on a small computer (Lorenz, 1972). As you can imagine, at that time it wasnt a very sophisticated computer. However, with a limited number of interconnected variables it behaved on paper very like real weather systems in nature. On one occasion he noticed an interesting pattern, which he decided to study. He keyed in the data again to watch how the pattern developed. It didnt. Initially the program followed a path similar to the one it followed earlier. Then, gradually, it diverged. Eventually it became quite different. As you know, a digital computer is a deterministic machine. Run the same program on the same variables several times. Each time the results are the same. Think how interesting multivariate analysis would be if this werent so!
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FIGURE 3 Complexity in the spectrum from simple to chaotic.
At one level the explanation was simple enough. On the first run the data were typed in to six decimal places. In his haste, on the second occasion Lorenz only keyed in three decimal places. You will note that the data were still the same to an accuracy of a thousandth of a unit. To me, that seems like reasonable accuracy for weather variables. Do weather forecasters enjoy such accuracy? Lorenz (1972) reported the results in a paper entitled, Predictability: Does the flap of a butterflys wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas? The butterfly effect became part of our vocabulary. Its not that a butterfly can deliberately start a tornado. Its that some complex systems are sensitive to initial conditions. Very small changes in initial conditions can lead to very large changes in eventual outcomes. This is the important point. Under some circumstances you cannot tell what the effect of the small changes will be. To state it differently, you can no longer always predict the effects resulting from a particular cause. You cant always tell what the outcomes of your actions will be. That means that there are circumstances where rational planning and problem solving and decision making dont work. Think of a continuum ranging from simple to chaotic. Imaging turning on a tap very slowly and smoothly. From predictable drops of water, evenly spaced, it becomes a steady stream. At higher pressures and volumes still it becomes like a thing alive, turbulent and unpredictable. It now appears that just before a system turns chaotic it passes through a zone now labelled complex. Some of the literature refers to this as the edge of chaos. In some respects it turns out to be a more populated space than might be imagined. Its where many social systems are to be found (see Figure 3). It is useful to think of this continuum in terms of cause-effect relationships. In the simple zone the causeeffect relationships are obvious and known. In the complicated zone they can be known in principle, but require study and research, although rational planning, decision making and problem solving still work. However, in complex or chaotic zones cause-effect relationships become unpredictable and it is no longer useful to think in terms of cause and effect. That means rational planning and
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problem solving are no longer appropriate. This can be illustrated with a metaphor from Beer (1975). He asks you first to imagine a social system as a number of ball-bearings connected by springs. Then imagine giving one of the ball-bearings a small jiggle. If there are few ball-bearings and relatively few interconnections the whole system will jiggle briefly in response. It will then quickly settle down. Now imagine many ball-bearings, richly interconnected. Your initial small jiggle may reverberate though the system for some time. As the effects work their way through the many sequences of springs, parts of the system may jiggle more than the initial ball-bearing did. It is possible that the ball-bearing that started it all will itself be shaken around greatly. Globalisation is creating systems with more nodes more ball-bearings and more interconnections between them. Thats not to say that everything is complex. When causeeffect relationships are known or knowable, rational planning and problem solving are effective. However, when: people who exercise choice are involved, or almost everything affects almost everything else, or there are multiple feedback loops, some time-lagged, or some of the variables change often or continuously,
then you may be in the complex zone on the edge of chaos. If so, expect difficulties. Think of the way in which many of our organisations try to behave. Compare this to the description by Weick and Sutcliffe (2001) of high reliability organisations. These are organisations that cant afford error: aircraft carriers, nuclear power plants, firefighting crews and the like. Weick and Sutcliffe describe such organisations as mindful in the way they: carefully analyse failures and partial failures in a no-blame way accept and try to understand the complexity of the situations they face they dont oversimplify pay attention to the operational aspects of what they do develop high resilience and flexibility, for quick recovery defer to expertise, wherever it is to be found. A further illustration of an approach to complex problem solving and decision making is based on the work of the Cynefin centre (e.g., Snowden & Stanbridge, 2004). Its a checklist I find useful for facilitating in these situations. Its not possible to predict what will work. Therefore, encourage participants to develop multiple initiatives and options. Monitor those initia-
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tives closely for success or failure. Accept that trial and error is required. Participants may bring inappropriate bureaucratic behaviours that interfere with creativity and flexibility. Reduce the behaviour by defining appropriate limits, preferably by negotiation. Keep the limits flexible. Participants are capable of fitting into many different roles. They may not know which of them are most useful. I can encourage appropriate roles, for instance through careful instructions and negotiation. Participants are likely to move to premature decisions and solutions. These solutions are likely to draw on their own training and experience at the cost of other possibilities. Anything I can do to encourage diversity and dissent will therefore be useful. For example I can aim for high diversity within groups. I can introduce naive or novice participants. I can encourage cross-fertilisation between groups. I can create an environment, physical and psychological, that conveys useful and appropriate signals to participants about the style and purpose of the task.
In Partial Summary ...
To recollect the ground we have covered, so far, there are occasions when bureaucratic structures work well, though they are becoming fewer. There is a general move towards more team-based structures and more flexible organisations. However, there is some doubt about which structures will be effective. Teams may fit our genetic make-up as a tribal species. They dont always work as well as expected. As globalisation creates more complex systems we can expect bureaucratic structures to become less and less effective. At the same time, systems that are complex technically are less predictable. Rational planning and problem solving can be expected to lose much of their effectiveness.
The Potential Organisational Psychology Contribution

Times of change challenge our beliefs and our strategies. At the same time they offer opportunities to those who are willing to seize them. Organisational psychologists are well placed to make the most of some of those opportunities. Some of the opportunities are new while others are more a reworking of traditional organisational psychology approaches. Others may only need better integration. Some are listed below. As bureaucratic and procedure-driven systems collapse, organisations will be forced to move to alternative structures. These attempted changes will bring a range of challenges in their wake. For example:
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managing hybrid organisations, half bureaucracy and half something very different helping team members to develop skills and orientations that enable effective team decision making and problem solving helping team leaders to abandon much of their control of their team, giving their attention instead to facilitating the team, and managing upward and outward rather than downward rediscovering our tribal commitment to good relationships while learning to manage diversity and conflict coping with the growing use of virtual teams and temporary project teams. Note how often our traditional organisational behaviours are supported by ingrained habits and entrained beliefs developed over generations beliefs without reason. A bureaucratic mindset has been burned into our memes. Its often inaccessible to conscious examination. This is also true of the cultural changes that will be needed to support the structural changes. For example, as procedures can no longer keep up with the rate of change, some changes that can be anticipated include: using guiding principles rather than detailed procedures the growing importance of the human resource functions as signals to workers of what is important to the organisation the worth of values-based rather than instrumental organisational allegiance, and the benefit therefore of recruiting for values as well as skills and experience. We see around us instances of the shrinking half-life of careers, skills, solutions, strategies, and the like. If the rate of change increases further and if we dont decouple the world there is reason to expect that it will it will be accompanied by: a growing need for creativity and innovation at all levels of organisations learning that becomes increasingly an unavoidable and partly individual dimension of change a need for greater tolerance of ambiguity on the part of all of us. The Australian economist Quiggin (1997) provides some evidence that workers have experienced increased work intensity. If so, the changes of the near future will add to the stresses that work intensity and job insecurity have generated. As the need for learning is increasing, the time to engage in it is being reduced.
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Beliefs Without Reason

This section considers the importance of beliefs sustaining the conventional. As already mentioned, well-embedded beliefs and behaviour support traditional structures and strategies. In my experience, when organisations move people to a new structure, those people take their old beliefs and behaviours with them. Aronson (1972) hints at much of the difficulty: As long as I know why I believe x, I am relatively free to change my mind; but if all I know is that x is true and thats all there is to it I am far more likely to cling to that belief, even in the face of disconfirming evidence (pp. 299300). To say this differently, we may be working with people who carry over beliefs from earlier ways of structuring organisations or solving problems. Our current structures and solutions may depend on these beliefs changing. The beliefs may be held without reason. Our temptation will be to use rational debate and explanation to bring about the change. Reason is ineffective at changing beliefs without reason, as Aronson (1972) realised. In effect, people have been inoculated against evidence. Without a change in beliefs, however, new behaviours are unlikely to be sustainable. And of course we are handicapped by our own beliefs without reason. However, notice the opportunities. Organisational psychology has a theoretical and practical interest in such topics as: the fit between individual and organisation the relationship between belief and behaviour change, stress, and coping problem solving and decision making learning.
In the decades facing us, it seems that we have a lot to contribute.
References
Aronson, E. (1972). The social animal. New York: Freeman. Beer, S. (1975). Platform for change. New York: Wiley. Burns, T., & Stalker, G. M. (1961). The management of innovation. London: Tavistock. Dunbar, R. I. M. (1992). Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates. Journal of Human Evolution, 20, 469493. Emery, F. E., & Emery, M. (1975). Participative design: Work and community life. Canberra, ACT: Centre for Continuing Education, Australian National University. Hock, D. W. (1999). The birth of chaordic organization: Human resources or resourceful humans. Boca Raton, FL: KPMG International Executive Series.
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Lawrence, P. R., & Lorsch, J. W. (1967). Organization and environment: Managing differentiation and integration. Boston: Harvard University Press. Lorenz, E. (1972, December). Predictability: Does the flap of a butterflys wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas? Paper presented at the 1972 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, DC. Mintzberg, H. (1994). The rise and fall of strategic planning: Reconceiving roles for planning, plans, planners. New York: Free Press. Naam, R. (2005). More than human: Embracing the promise of biological enhancement. New York: Broadway Books. Quiggin, J. (1997). Estimating the benefits of Hilmer and related reforms. Australian Economic Review, 30, 256272. Rehm, R. (1999). People in charge: Creating self-managing workplaces. Glasgow: Hawthorn Press. Snowden, D. J., & Stanbridge, P. (2004). The landscape of management: Creating the context for understanding social complexity. Emergence: Complexity and Organization, 6, 140148. Taylor, S. (2005). The fall: The evidence for a golden age, 6000 years of insanity, and the dawning of a new era. Winchester, England: O Books. Weber, M. (1921). Economy and society: An outline of interpretive sociology. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Weick, K. E., & Sutcliffe, K. M. (2001). Managing the unexpected: Assuring high performance in an age of complexity. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Woodward, J. (1965). Industrial organisation: Theory and practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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CHAPTER
11
Making Sense of an Organisational Crisis: The Experiences of Hospital Employees Working During the SARS Outbreak
Stewart Arnold
In discussing industrial and organisational psychologys greatest hits and misses, Murphy (Section I) suggested that industrial and organisational (I/O) psychology should focus more on the experience of work, rather than direct endless attention to the products of work. This is consistent with Heath and Sitkins (2001) call for organisational behaviour (OB) to adopt more of a Big-O focus, where the emphasis is on organising behaviour how do people align goals and coordinate action in organisations? rather than focusing solely on behaviours observed in organisations. Heath and Sitkin (2001) proposed that emphasising Big-O would lead to more theory and research explaining how organising occurs, rather than purely empirical work on relationships between behavioural variables. This chapter responds to these calls for explanatory work, first by discussing what is known about the psychological impact of organisational crises on employees. Second, the chapter reports on a study of employee experiences during a crisis. The study sought to understand experiences of employees who worked at a Singaporean hospital during the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) viral outbreak in 2003 that affected many Asia-Pacific countries. In taking a Big-O perspective, the study
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investigated how employees made sense of the situation and subsequently responded to it, and how they perceived the actions of their organisation. The study contributes to I/O psychology theory by providing a framework that draws from the literature on organisational crises and the literature on sense-making. The chapter first discusses the concept of organisational crisis before developing a framework for how employees experience and readjust psychologically to such a crisis. Second, the concept of sense-making is applied to this framework. A qualitative research study of hospital employees experiences working during the SARS crisis is then discussed before considering some organisational implications of this study, and suggestions for future research.
Organisational Crises
The Concept of Organisational Crisis
Crises and disasters of various types have recently struck across the globe. The Asia-Pacific region, in particular, has been hit by acts of terrorism, the 2004 Tsunami and the 2005 Pakistan earthquake. As well as the considerable human toll of such disasters, organisations are also impacted, both directly and indirectly, by such events (Mitroff, 2002). Crises are usually defined as unexpected events that have severe, negative consequences for many people (Chourlaton, 2001; King, 2002; Kovoor-Misra, Clair, & Bettenhausen, 2001; Shaluf, Ahmadun, & Said, 2003). Organisational crises are events that have a severe impact on organisations and their members, triggered by events either external or internal to the organisation (Shaluf et al., 2003). Thus, an organisation corruption scandal, the breakdown of important equipment and the loss of staff or large numbers of customers due to a natural disaster, can all be classified as organisational crises. King (2002) added that organisational crises are unplanned, affect non-profit as well as profit organisations and have the potential to affect both internal and external stakeholders of an organisation. The full impact of a crisis on an organisation is said to be due to interrelated factors within the organisations structure, strategy and culture (Richardson, 1995; Sheaffer & ManoNegrin, 2003) and the crisis can be considered as a chain of events leading to progressively more severe consequences (Hambrick & DAveni, 1988). Thus, an organisation may still be in crisis long after an initial triggering event. Even after a crisis is over there may be repercussions for the organisation. For example, some years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, many organisations are still rebuilding human, financial and
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An Organisational Crisis During the SARS Outbreak
material resources (Burke, 2005) and, hence, are still dealing with an ongoing organisational crisis initiated by this terrorist event.
The Psychological Impact of Organisational Crises on Individuals
The literature on organisational stress (e.g., Norris, 1992; Pillow, Zautra, & Sandler, 1996) indicates that there is a range of job-related and nonjob-related stressors that can severely affect workers wellbeing. Similarly, the literature on traumatic events such as the Oklahoma city bombings in 1995 (Tucker, Pfefferbaum, Nixon, & Dickson, 2000) and the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 (Byron & Peterson, 2002; Galea et al., 2002) show that people exposed to traumatic events exhibit a range of symptoms, including social withdrawal, irritability, fearfulness, depression, sleep disturbances, substance abuse and marital problems. Psychologically, individuals feel as if they have little control over the events and, consequently, they experience disorientation, anxiety and feelings of emotional abuse because of the uncertainty and lack of control they experience during a crisis (Mitroff, 2002; Pyszczynski, Solomon, & Greenberg, 2002; Shaluf et al., 2003). In contrast to the substantial literature on crises in general, the experiences of employees in organisational crises are understudied (Pearson & Clair, 1998). There is much literature on why organisational crises occur, how organisations can prepare for them and how organisations should respond operationally to a crisis (Barton, 2001; Greening & Johnson, 1996; Pearson & Mitroff, 1993; Perrow, 1999; Richardson, 1995; Sheaffer & Mano-Negrin, 2003). However, there is little in this literature about psychological reactions of an organisations workforce during a crisis. One perspective of organisational crisis that does include consideration of employees psychological reactions is provided by Pearson and Clair (1998). They defined an organisational crisis as a low probability event that has the potential to severely damage the organisation and harm the individuals who work for it. Such events present uncertainty and ambiguity in their cause, effects and means of resolution, which can affect how individuals think, feel and behave during a crisis. Pearson and Clair draw on a trauma perspective of crisis to suggest that individuals subjective experiences are as important as the objective events of the crisis when analysing the impact of a crisis upon an organisation. The potential of an organisational crisis to harm its employees has a major impact in itself. The trauma perspective of crisis used by Pearson and Clair (1998) is one presented by Janoff-Bulman (1992) who discussed clinical aspects of traumatic events for individuals. She argued that a significant impact of such events on a range of victims is that individuals fundamental
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Psychological impact
The psychological impact of a crisis on an individual: it doesnt make sense Uncertainty Lack of personal control Assumptions shattered: The world is benevolent The world has meaning I am worthy
Psychological readjustment
Individual psychological readjustment: making sense' of what happened Look for the good in what has happened Look for meaning, reasons, explanations Analyse ones own part in the crisis in order to re-establish a sense of selfworth
FIGURE 1 The psychological impact of a crisis on an individual.
assumptions about the world are shattered (Janoff-Bulman, 1992, p. 51). She discussed three main assumptions that are disrupted in a traumatic event. First, the assumption that the world is benevolent good things tend to outweigh bad things is destroyed when a major, unexpected bad thing occurs. Second, the assumption that the world is meaningful there is reason behind those bad things that do occur is overthrown when there appears to be no sense or rationale to a traumatic event. Third, the individuals assumption that, I am a good and worthy person and dont deserve to experience a traumatic event is undermined when an individual experiences such an event. This perspective accords with suggestions in the crisis literature (Mitroff, 2002; Pyszczynski et al., 2002; Shaluf et al., 2003) that individuals experience disorientation, anxiety and feelings of emotional abuse because of the uncertainty and lack of control they experience during a crisis. In summary, a crisis impacts on an individuals ability to make sense of what is happening or has happened. An important part of individuals recovery from the trauma of a crisis is to somehow make sense of the crisis for themselves. This is said to involve searching for meaning in the event, reaffirming that there is justice and goodness in the world, regaining some degree of personal control over the situation and restoring ones sense of worth and self-esteem (Folkman, 1984; Janoff-Bulman, 1992). Janoff-Bulman also suggested that victims need to analyse their own contribution to the crisis or its consequences in a constructive way. Thus, in order to have healthy readjustment after a traumatic event, or even during an ongoing crisis, individuals must make sense of the event in terms of their assumptions about goodness and meaning in the world and their own role in the event. This process is illustrated in Figure 1.
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The Impact of a Organisational Crisis on a Organisations Workforce
Whilst Janoff-Bulman (1992) focused on the impact of a crisis on an individual, Pearson and Clair (1998) extended her ideas to discuss the psychological impact of a organisational crisis on the aggregate of individuals throughout the affected organisation. They argued that employees affected by a organisational crisis experience challenges to their basic assumptions and beliefs and may question their role in the organisation. This can impact on the workforces capacity to manage the crisis and can result in negative outcomes for employees and for their organisations business, reputation and ultimately, its survival. Weick (1993) described a similar process of system deterioration in discussing the difference between sense-making and decision-making in a crisis. During crises, people do not necessarily make logical decisions; instead they try desperately to make sense of what is happening, falling back on norms about how things are usually done in the organisation. When these norms fail to give any guidance, people become progressively confused, anxious and uncertain. Weick described this process for a group of fire-fighters who, although used to the dangers and demands of fighting fire, faced a set of circumstances that were outside their previous experience. As their assumptions and well-trained responses were challenged, they became less and less able to function effectively, and their, world rapidly shifted from cosmos to chaos as it became emptied of order and rationality (p. 637). Parallels can be drawn between individual reactions to a crisis, as discussed earlier, and the reactions and experiences of a whole workforce in an organisational crisis. The similarities are represented in Figure 2. In a general crisis, individuals experience uncertainty and feelings of a lack of control over what is happening. Personal assumptions about the
Psychological impact
The psychological impact of a crisis on an individual: it doesnt make sense Uncertainty Lack of personal control Assumptions shattered: The world is benevolent The world has meaning I am worthy The psychological impact of a crisis on a workforce: it doesnt make sense Uncertainty over what is happening in the organisation and individual roles Lack of personal control Shared assumptions shattered: The organisation is benevolent There is meaning and order to what occurs in ..this organisation I have a part to play
FIGURE 2 Comparison of the psychological impacts of crises on individuals and on a workforce.
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Psychological impact Psychological readjustment
The psychological impact of a crisis on an individual: it doesnt make sense Uncertainty Lack of personal control Assumptions shattered: The world is benevolent The world has meaning I am worthy The psychological impact of a crisis on a workforce: it doesnt make sense Uncertainty over what is happening in the organisation and individual roles Lack of personal control Shared assumptions shattered: The organisation is benevolent There is meaning and order to what ..occurs in this organisation I have a part to play
Individual psychological readjustment: Making sense of what happened Look for the good in what has happened Look for meaning, reasons, explanations Analyse ones own part in the crisis in order to reestablish a sense of self-worth and personal control
Workforces psychological readjustment: Making sense of what happened Reassert control and some degree of certainty over the situation Look for the good in the organisation Look for meaning, reasons, explanations behind the organisational crisis Analyse ones own part in the crisis and in the organisation, itself, in order to reestablish a sense of self-worth and personal control
FIGURE 3 Psychological impacts and readjustment for employees in an organisational crisis.
world and ones place in it are shattered. In a organisational crisis, the same reactions are probably directed toward the organisation itself, as individuals struggle to make sense of what is happening. Assumptions and expectations of what normally happens are destroyed. Because a organisations workforce is a collection of individuals who share values, beliefs and goals (Schein, 1985) assumptions that are challenged in a crisis are not just individual but include shared assumptions. Pearson and Clair (1998) predicted that the uncertainty and disillusionment experienced by individuals during a organisational crisis will lead to a loss of shared values and beliefs within the organisation.
Helping the Psychological Readjustment of Employees
At a organisational level, what can be done to help individuals make sense of a crisis so that they can meet the challenges of the abnormal and unexpected event and its aftermath? The crisis literature (e.g., King, 2002; Nathan & Kovoor-Misra, 2002; Nystrom & Starbuck, 1984; Pearson & Clair, 1998) presents only general operational strategies such as making contingency plans for abnormal events, setting up an appropriate crisis management team, and managing the flow of information during a crisis. An I/O psychology approach can now be proposed, based on the preceding discussion of Janoff-Bulmans (1992) perspective on
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psychological readjustment after trauma, and Weicks (1993) and Pearson and Clairs ideas on the psychological impact of a crisis on a whole workforce. It is argued here that an organisation should provide individuals with as much certainty and control in the situation as possible. It should also help individuals to make sense of what has happened by reconfirming the fundamental assumptions that individuals hold about their organisation and their own role in the organisation during the crisis. A framework that encompasses these ideas is presented in Figure 3. The lower right hand box in Figure 3 suggests that employees need to make sense of an organisational crisis by readjusting or strengthening their assumptions about their organisation and their own role within it. This framework can be applied to the concept of sense-making, discussed next.
Sense-Making
The Concept of Sense-Making
Sense-making is a cognitive process in which an individual makes sense of something that has happened or continues to unfold (Gephart, 1993; Weick, 1995). Weick suggested that there is not really a beginning or end to sense-making, because we are always in the midst of interpreting our experiences and new reflections, thoughts, information or perspectives can continue long after any event has occurred. How organisational actors interpret an event usually leads to a set of thoughts and actions that, in the first instance, can be considered as responses to the event (Peterson & Smith, 2000), before those responses become experiences that are then subject to the sense-making process once more. For example, if a manager observes two staff members raising their voices at each other over a work issue, he/she might interpret the event to mean that the staff do not get on well together. Acting on this belief, the manager might suggest mediating a conflict resolution between the staff concerned, only to be told by them that it is not needed. The manager might then interpret this to mean that the staff will not acknowledge their dispute and, in trying to understand why this is the case, she/he might come to the conclusion that they have some longstanding, deep-seated interpersonal concerns. In response to this interpretation, the manager might choose to physically remove the staff from working together. Thus, the manager has made sense of the initial incident and its implications through an iterative process of interpretation and action. Of course, many alternative sense-making processes and subsequent outcomes could have followed from the initial incident.
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Sense-Making in a Crisis
Sense-making occurs whenever we notice anything different in our experience or our environment and we try to understand what has happened, or what we have experienced. If we experience uncertainty, information overload, or other forms of change, then we begin processing those changes (Weick, 1995). In processing such experiences, we try to interpret them using existing frameworks or interpretive schemes (Balogun & Johnson, 2004; Peterson & Smith, 2000). Events that are highly unlikely and/or that have severe consequences for us as individuals both demand sense-making and restrict our ability to engage in it, because our current frameworks appear to be inadequate to explain the event (Stein, 2004; Weick, 1995). Therefore, by Pearson and Clairs (1998) definition of an organisational crisis, the uncertainty and ambiguity in the cause, effect and means of resolution of such crises would challenge employees ability to use sense-making. However, it is precisely these situations of crisis that we need to make sense of, in order to survive them well and even learn from them (Nathan, 2004; Weick, 1993). Breakdowns in sensemaking have been attributed to negative outcomes in the Mann Gulch fire (Weick, 1993), the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant (Stein, 2004), and the Union Carbide gas leak (Weick, 1988). In contrast, constructive sense-making has been said to contribute to positive outcomes in the Apollo 13 near-disaster (Stein, 2004), and the communitys responses to the Columbine High School shooting (Nathan, 2004). Believing that we have gained an understanding of an event can also give us a sense of interpretive control (Rothbaum, Weisz, & Snyder, 1982), which helps us feel as if we have some control over the event, even if we cannot tangibly influence it. Weick (1995) proposed that sense-making has several properties. It is both retrospective and ongoing, as we continue to interpret an event or an experience that has occurred. It involves focusing on cues in any situation and then processing the information from those cues. In doing this, we take into account what other people think (or would think) and we aim to find plausible explanations rather than searching exhaustively for accurate ones. Our interpretations lead to enactment; that is, we take actions that change the situation and help us to refine our interpretations. Finally, sense-making leads to ongoing development of our own identity; how we view ourselves as humans is affected by the sense-making we do. Weicks (1995) conceptualisation of sense-making can be applied to the framework for psychological readjustment by employees, presented earlier. It is argued that, in an organisational crisis, Weicks properties of
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The psychological impact of a crisis on a workforce: it doesnt make sense Uncertainty over what is happening in the organisation and individual roles Lack of personal control Shared assumptions shattered: The organisation is benevolent There is meaning and order to what ..occurs in this organisation I have a part to play
The psychological impact will be reduced by employee sense-making: Looking for meaning, reasons, explanations behind the organisational crisis Looking for the good in the organisation Analysing ones own role in the organisational crisis
FIGURE 4 The influence of sense-making on the psychological impact of an organisational crisis.
sense-making will be directed towards three facets of psychological readjustment. First, individuals will retrospectively examine cues from the crisis in attempts to find some plausible explanation or, at least, some meaning in what occurs during the crisis. Second, individuals will look for some good to come out of the crisis so that enactment can occur; they will seek interpretations that the crisis shows the organisation to be benevolent so that they can contribute in some way to the organisations responses. Third, individuals will interpret the crisis, and respond to it, in a way that strengthens their own identity and self-worth with respect to their role in the organisation. This leads to the broad proposition that, in an organisational crisis, the extent to which employees can be engaged in sense-making will influence the psychological impact of the crisis. This proposition is illustrated in Figure 4.
Research Aims
A research study was undertaken to investigate the above proposition through two research questions: How do employees experience and make sense of an organisational crisis? How do employees perceive the actions of their organisation to help their sense-making?
Method
Organisational Context
The SARS outbreak in 2003. In early 2003, many countries in the AsiaPacific region faced severe challenges from the spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). This syndrome presented as an atypical pneumonia due to an (initially) unknown virus that proved to be highly infectious (Low & McGeer, 2003; Peiris, Yuen, Osterhaus, & Stohr,
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2003). The virus originated in mainland China in November, 2002, and the global spread of the disease can be traced to the visit of one Chinese doctor to Hong Kong on February 21, 2003. From there it spread rapidly to Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore and Toronto in Canada (Peiris et al., 2003; Tomlinson & Cockram, 2003). By the time the pandemic ended in midJune 2003, a total of 8456 cases had been reported in 30 countries and 809 of these people had died (Fleck, 2003). Because of its unknown aetiology, its rapid transmission and its deadly effects, SARS, struck fear into the public across the globe, triggering drastic measures: mass quarantine in hospital wards enforced by armed guards, infectious passengers hauled off planes, and closed businesses and schools (Fleck, 2003, p. 626). SARS as a trigger for organisational crises. As well as its obvious impact on nations affected by SARS, the effect of the disease on hospitals meets Pearson and Clairs (1998) criteria for an organisational crisis. The emergence of the virus was a low probability event and it presented uncertainty about: (a) the cause of the event (the nature of the virus and its transmission), (b) its effects (the symptoms and the reason it caused death in some people, but not others, were unknown initially) and (c) the means of resolving the crisis (the best form of treatment was unknown). Furthermore, the virus had the potential to cause severe harm to healthcare organisations and their staff. SARS threatened the viability of each hospital in SARS-affected countries because hospitals had to enforce major infection control procedures organisation-wide, which affected their ability to maintain regular organisational processes (Peiris et al., 2003). In addition, hospital employees were exposed to a high risk of illness, and even death, by virtue of their work. In most cases, SARS was transmitted in hospitals (Emanuel, 2003; Peiris et al., 2003) and it was a common situation for healthcare staff to be treating other staff as patients; staff who had previously been young and healthy before contracting SARS (Farquharson & Baguley, 2003). Consequently, the SARS outbreak presented an opportunity to investigate the experiences of employees who worked during an organisational crisis. A public hospital (AH) in Singapore. One of the countries that faced SARS very aggressively was Singapore. Yet, despite uniform Singaporean government policies and initiatives, individual hospitals differed noticeably in how they contained the spread of SARS. One Singaporean hospital that was seen to be successful in how it managed SARS will be referred to as AH a public hospital employing around 1000 staff. During the 3-month period of the SARS epidemic, AH took in twice its normal intake of patients, as other hospitals with diagnosed SARS patients
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transferred many of their non-infected patients to AH. Many of the patients at AH were diagnosed as possibly being infected and so these SARS suspects were placed in specially prepared isolation wards, until their diagnosis could be confirmed or disconfirmed. Staff treating the SARS suspects had to wear full protective gear, including face masks and gloves. Every day, the hospital had to monitor the temperatures and track the movements of all staff, patients and visitors in the hospital. Even before SARS, AH had a reputation for its proactive and patient-oriented approach to healthcare. This reputation was enhanced by its handling of SARS. For example, in the early stages of the SARS crisis when the no visitor policy was implemented in all public hospitals, AH provided a compassionate balance to this policy by setting up a virtual visit scheme whereby patients could still have contact with their family and friends through videoconferencing. Thus AH was considered an ideal organisational context in which to study how employees had made sense of an organisational crisis precipitated by the SARS outbreak.
Research Methodology
In addressing the research questions, a qualitative research methodology was deemed appropriate for a number of reasons (Creswell, 1998). First, the research questions focus on how individuals make sense of their experiences. Sense-making is typically studied through qualitative methods that allow people to tell their stories (Boyce, 1995; Gephart, 1991). An aim of the research was to gain a rich picture of employees experiences, their feelings about the crisis, their beliefs, their behaviours and their perceptions of their hospitals actions. This rich picture was best achieved through a qualitative methodology such as in-depth interviewing. Second, the research approach was more inductive than deductive. Although the literature guided the development of the broad proposition, there were no hypothesised relationships between a priori variables. In order to examine the experience of hospital employees during an organisational crisis, the basic principles of grounded theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) were used to establish key features of employees experience, rather than to test relationships. In grounded theory, the data are the starting point for developing theoretical explanations of empirical findings. Third, the research questions were addressed at a particular hospital and so the organisational context was important to employees experiences. Similar to a case study approach (Yin, 1984), interviewees were asked questions about what they had experienced working in their hospital during the crisis. Studies of sense-making often focus on single cases, because this allows examination of the experiences of different people exposed to the same situation (Balogun & Johnson, 2004; Theus, 1995).
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The interviews were semistructured in that the interviewer starts with some predetermined questions but is able to modify the line of questioning in order to probe deeper in the interview. This form of interviewing is appropriate when a researcher wants to understand research participants experiences without restricting the nature of their responses with a fixed set of questions (Smith, 1995; Smith & Osborn, 2003). Semistructured interviews also allow rapport-building, which is particularly important when interviewing people about sensitive topics (Flick, 2002) such as their experiences in an organisational crisis.
Research Process and Participants
It was made clear to the hospitals senior management that the intended research would not be an evaluation of the hospitals actions, but rather an investigation of employee experiences during the SARS outbreak. The author conducted a series of interviews at the hospital, adopting the fieldwork role of an uninformed outsider who seeks explanation from the organisational informants about a particular event or phenomenon (Adler & Adler, 1987; Flick, 2002). The interviewer built rapport and encouraged participants to be candid through the following method. First, interviewees were not asked any personal information about themselves or their work role. They were simply asked, What name would you like me to address you as? Second, interviewees were asked if they were comfortable with the use of a tape-recorder, with microphone placed unobtrusively on the table midway between the interviewer and interviewee. One person declined and so was interviewed without the tape-recorder (this interviewees data were not included in the analysis). Third, the use of two successive interviews allowed participants to get used to the tape-recorder and the interview situation. Participants could also decline a second interview if they so chose, using the face-saving excuse of unavailability. Interviews were conducted 4 months after Singapore had been declared SARS-free. Managers and supervisors from all 16 departments of the hospital were instructed to approach several people in their division who met the following criteria: (a) they spoke English reasonably well (most hospital employees met this criterion), (b) they were likely to be opinionated and (c) they had worked at the hospital during the 3 months of the SARS outbreak in Singapore. Such employees were invited to contact an administrative person within the human resources (HR) department of the hospital anonymously if they wished to participate and simply give a pseudonym and their department. They were then a given a timeslot and location to attend for an interview. Each department has many employees, so it was thought that the volunteers would remain
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anonymous through this sign-on process. Once two people from each department had volunteered, no more were accepted from that department. Thirty-two participants booked themselves in for interviews, and 31 of these presented for interview. In the first interview, they were asked to recount their experiences working in the hospital during SARS and how they personally had coped. They were invited to attend a second interview about week later. At the second interview, the general findings from the first interview were fed back to each interviewee and they were asked for further comments on how they, and the hospital, had fared during the SARS outbreak. Twenty participants returned for a second interview, considered to be a sufficient number to reach theoretical saturation, where no new information would emerge from further interviews (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Fifteen of the 16 departments were represented at both sets of interviews and participants worked in a range of clinical and administrative positions, so it is thought that a fair cross-section of employee perspectives was obtained from these interviews. First interviews lasted between 20 and 60 minutes (mean 44 minutes) and second interviews between ten and 75 minutes (mean 28 minutes).
Data Analysis
Data from the two sets of interviews were analysed as one data set, using an inductive approach similar to that used in grounded theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). The interview records were initially read and open coded. That is, without reference to theory, commonalities in interviewees comments were coded into concepts. These were then categorised into broader themes. In keeping with Miles and Hubermans (1994) suggestion, the themes were progressively refined by alternate consideration of the data and theory relating to the data. Two research assistants, working separately, conducted their own analysis before jointly finalising themes emerging from the data. Initial themes identified were simply descriptive categories of the data. Next, the interviews were examined for data that seemed contrary to an overall theme. Where such comments were found, their context was examined in order to ascertain links between other points made by the interviewee and the specific contrary comments. For example, there was much discussion about the extra operational and emotional demands on staff during the crisis, with many people declaring that they were exhausted by the end of the crisis. However, one interviewee said that he was energised by the state of crisis alert and, at first analysis, this comment seemed to oppose the emerging theme of exhaustion. This comment was made in the context of how good he felt to be part of a crisis team.
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He had also expressed gratitude later in the interview that he had been given time off to recuperate from the heavy schedule. Thus, his comment about being energised by the crisis did not negate the potentially exhausting effects of the crisis. Instead, it was later considered in the light of literature on engagement versus burnout (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004) to be an example of how dedicated and focused (engaged in his work) he felt, as a part of a crisis team. In the interview data, there were few other comments directly about engagement so it did not emerge as a theme, but the sense of belonging to a team was identified as a theme.
Results
In summary, the sample of AH employees described their experiences in keeping with Pearson and Clairs (1998) definition of an organisational crisis consisting of low probability events with potential to harm the organisation and its members, and presenting uncertainty regarding cause, effects and resolution. However, employees did not show signs of shattered assumptions about the organisation or their own role in the organisation. Instead, interviewees made sense of the crisis by focusing on the principles or values of their hospital, the actions their organisation took and a strong sense of professional commitment that underpinned their own actions. Several themes regarding the impact of the crisis on employees are described below, together with sample comments. It was a worrying, stressful time. Employees were anxious about possible effects of the virus: I was so worried that I would get sick and then my children would get sick. Perhaps I would not know I was sick until I see my children struck down by the virus. There was great uncertainty. Interviewees were uncertain about the nature of the virus itself and how they, as individuals, and the hospital as a whole, should best react: Considering that we did not have any idea what was happening with the virus, we were working one day at a time, trying to respond in the best possible way with little to go on but our professional instincts. Employees felt stigmatised by their association with the hospital or working directly with patients: Other people avoided me because I work in a hospital, and, Even colleagues who were not working in the wards said: Oh, you are dirty. Employees were exhausted at end of the SARS period, as indicated by the comment: Thank God it finished when it did; any longer and wed all have got sick .
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Sense of belonging to a team. Many interviewees expressed pride and commitment towards their existing medical team or the ad hoc teams that were assembled to screen patients, staff and visitors; work in the isolation wards; or communicate information about the situation throughout the hospital: We were able to show how well we work together we performed amazingly well together, no matter how much difference we have on a day-to-day basis. Pride in the hospital. There were comments such as: My hospital did a very good job and I was a part of that success. Commitment to the healthcare professions. Interviewees emphasised that they had focused on carrying out their professional responsibilities: We got to be really hands-on during this time, and, It was an experience that I would gladly go through again because you felt like youre helping youre really doing something to help your colleagues and to take care of the public.
Discussion
The first research question was, How do employees experience and make sense of an organisational crisis? The results will be discussed, first, in relation to employee experiences. Then the results will be discussed in relation to employee sense-making. In this discussion, it will be argued that the findings support the broad proposition that employee sense-making reduces the psychological impact of an organisational crisis. Finally, discussion will focus on the second research question, How do employees perceive the actions of their organisation to help their sense-making?
AH Employees Experience of Working During the SARS Crisis
This study indicates that employees had not previously faced a situation like this, and they were concerned about the potential of the virus to harm patients, their colleagues and themselves. Furthermore, they experienced great uncertainty about what had caused the viral outbreak, what its consequences would be within the hospital (and wider community) and how to contain it and protect staff and patients. Therefore, there is clear evidence that interviewees experienced the 3-month period of working at AH under the threat of SARS as an organisational crisis as defined by Pearson and Clair (1998). Reported experiences of anxiety, uncertainty, stigmatisation and exhaustion are similar to those reported for staff working in hospitals in Toronto (Farquharson & Baguley, 2003; Maunder et al., 2003), Taiwan (Tzeng, 2003) and Hong Kong (Chan & Chan, 2003; Tomlinson & Cockram, 2003) during the SARS period. The experiences of anxiety and uncertainty have also been reported in literature on other crises affecting
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hospitals (McCaughrin, 2003) or individual hospital staff (Chambers, 1998). Indeed, these experiences are typical in all manner of organisational crises (Byron & Peterson, 2002; Pearson & Clair, 1998), where there is potential for employees and their organisation to experience harm. However, unlike the literature on crises and the predictions of Pearson and Clair, AH interviewees did not report strong feelings of lack of personal control. Although they felt unsure about the virus itself, interviewees reported feeling control over their work. They were committed to their profession, had a sense of belonging to a team, and were proud of their organisations efforts. These themes are discussed further in relation to sense-making.
Sense-Making by AH Employees
Looking for the Meaning, Reasons or Explanations Behind the Crisis
Despite the anxiety and uncertainty of working in a hospital during the SARS outbreak, interviewees did not indicate that the crisis had challenged their individual or their shared assumptions about healthcare or their particular hospital. On the contrary, interviewees seemed to find meaning in the how the hospital handled the viral outbreak as it reinforced the principles of basic healthcare for them. Interviewees interpreted the crisis as an opportunity to carry out their professional responsibilities in challenging circumstances, as evidenced by comments such as: In a way, I quite enjoyed working here during SARS we got to focus on our real jobs, not all the other duties we have to do, and ,I was reminded of just how important it is to consider a patients whole health, not just see them as SARS suspect or isolation case. Thus, employee sensemaking at AH during the SARS crisis reaffirmed employee assumptions that there was order and meaning in the workplace during the crisis. This is consistent with Weicks (1995) assertion that sense-making involves retrospective attempts to find some meaning in a crisis event.
Looking for Good in the Organisation
There is evidence from interviewees reflections that their assumptions about the benevolence of the hospital were strengthened because of the crisis. First, interviewees spoke with pride and identification with their hospital: We did a great job in fighting SARS; This hospital did many innovative things and we led the way Even some respondents who were critical of some actions taken during the crisis gave positive responses about the hospital: There are things we would do differently now, but, at the time, we did the best job we could. Second, the sense of teamwork was seen to be stronger during SARS than prior to the crisis: We have never before worked as such a team.
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Interviewees pride in their hospital is consistent with previous research on the strengthening of organisational commitment when employees perceive that the organisation fulfils its obligations to employees and the broader public (Meyer & Allen, 1991; Rousseau, 1998). However, the theme of pride in the hospital is even more consistent with the notion of organisational identification. According to Kreiner and Ashforth (2004), organisational identification is a set of attachment feelings that are specific to the individuals organisation, whereas an individual could also show organisational commitment to other organisations that are seen to have the same goals and values as the individual. Organisational identification is specific to that organisation as an entity, not the goals, values or culture as is the focus of organisational commitment (Ashforth & Mael, 1989). One of the defining characteristics of organisational identification is that individuals highlight that they belong to that particular organisation and they feel part of its successes and failures (Kreiner & Ashforth, 2004). This identification is clearly shown in one interview comment: My hospital did a very good job and I was part of its success, while other comments showed that interviewees were proud of their hospital. Thus, employee sense-making at AH during the SARS crisis reaffirmed employee assumptions that their hospital was a benevolent organisation, a place they were proud to work. This is consistent with Weicks (1995) assertion that sense-making involves interpretations that enable the individual to take actions in a crisis event. AH employees actions during the crisis are discussed next.
Analysing Ones Own Role in the Organisational Crisis
In terms of assumptions of self-worth, there was some degree of stigma associated with working in AH during SARS and some uncertainty about ones own role, but most interviewees expressed pride in their own contribution to the battle against SARS. Interviewees felt that they had little personal control over the SARS virus itself but generally they were clear about their goals at work. The goalposts changed on a day-to-day basis but the goals were always to protect the community and the hospital itself from SARS, and to treat all patients as well as possible under the uncertain conditions. Employees volunteered to do extra tasks, to work double shifts, and to support each other in the battle against SARS. The crisis strengthened their sense of professional camaraderie, as typified by the comment: For the first time since I began working here (10 years ago) I felt strong bonds with my colleagues. Although the importance of identification with ones profession is well-established (Golden, Dukerich, & Fabian, 2000), little is known about how this sense of professional identity is used as a sense-making
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device. However, it is well known that the commitment of clinical staff to the principles of healthcare leads to them working in environments of great personal risk (Chambers, 1998; Mitchell, Cummins, Spearing, Adams, & Gilroy, 2002), to work through all manner of disruption (McCaughrin, 2003) and to go beyond the call of duty for the sake of their patients (Mckenna, 1993). Consistent with Weicks (1995) assertion that sense-making helps strengthen an individuals self-worth, the findings suggest that hospital staff drew upon their reasons for being a healthcare professional as a way of making sense of the crisis and their own role in it. This helped to protect their assumptions about the meaning and order in their organisation, its benevolence, and their own self-worth and role in the organisation.
Actions of Hospital Management That Helped Sense-Making by Employees
In answer to the second research question about employees perceptions of actions taken by the organisation, interviewees proudly told of many actions that were seen as unique to the hospital (i.e., not governed by Ministry of Health requests). For example, the public relations office controlled all email communication about SARS within the hospital, thereby reducing rumours and inconsistent information. The hospital also set up alternative accommodation on the hospital grounds for staff who wished to avoid contact with their family, gave staff healthy food and vitamins while at work, sent letters for reassurance and support to overseas families of staff, and set up virtual visits for visitors, whereby they went to a safe room at the hospital and talked with patients using video monitors. Interviewees spoke proudly of the hospitals control over the communication of SARS information within the hospital, and practical care shown to patients, visitors and staff, as illustrated in the following quotes: Keeping us all informed was vital, and the information control measures were as important as the infection control ones! and, [We] felt prepared and safe because of the protective equipment, the visibility of management, the constant internal news updates the hospital made sure we were all geared up for battle! Many staff explained that the hospitals commitment to healthcare strongly influenced such actions. AH had a well-publicised set of values that were seen to be guiding principles for its actions. There were comments such as: because of all that the hospital stands for the principles of good patient care and the hospitals responsibility to the community. Furthermore, interviewees reported that they believed the hospital had been true to its values during the SARS period. First, the hospitals actions were seen to be consistent with its overall values and demonstrated
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a general approach for staff to take: What the hospital did during SARS was right with its values, and what it did inspired me to put in extra effort. Second, the values indicated the hospitals expectations that staff behave professionally, as shown by the comment: They let people know that they are expected to behave in a professional manner in this hospital staff see the values everywhere and know that they are working for a dedicated hospital, one that is dedicated to caring for the Singapore public It has long been argued that organisational values should guide organisational practice and individual employee behaviour (Kluckhohn, 1951; Rokeach, 1973; Schein 1985). Furthermore, employees want their organisation to act in accordance with its stated values (Finegan & Theriault, 1997). It follows that employees would feel pride and commitment to their organisation if it is seen to be acting in accordance with its stated values (Agle & Caldwell, 1999). In summary, the impact of the SARS crisis on employees from AH who were interviewed accords with Pearson and Clairs (1998) description of an organisational crisis. Furthermore, in relation to the framework developed earlier in this chapter from the ideas of Pearson and Clair and Weick (1995), there was evidence that employees strengthened their assumptions that the organisation is benevolent, that there is meaning and order within the organisation, and that, as individuals, they had a professional role to play in dealing with the SARS crisis. A commitment to healthcare principles underpinned this sense-making and was aided by perceptions that the hospital was acting in accordance with its values.
Implications
The results have several implications for hospitals and other organisations as they respond to organisational crises. First, this study revealed that hospital employees relied on their own sense of professionalism to help make sense of the organisational crisis. Thus, it might be important for an organisation experiencing a crisis to provide opportunities for its employees to demonstrate a sense of professionalism, relevant to the organisation. For example, staff could be invited to join special teams to focus on particular areas of the crisis relating to their expertise (Pearson & Clair, 1998). Furthermore, in a hospital setting, where the value of concern for others is likely to be held highly by many individuals (Korsgaard, Meglino, & Lester, 1997), employees could be deliberately asked to think-tank ways of meeting the needs of other staff, patients, visitors, or the community in general. That is, allow staff to make suggestions beyond their area of specialty. Pearson and colleagues (Mitroff & Pearson, 1993; Pearson & Clair, 1998) recommended that, in any organ239
isational crisis, a special crisis management team should be formed to take responsibility for coordinating all aspects of a crisis response. According to Weick (1993), such a team should have the flexibility to change its membership, resources and scope, as needed, during the crisis. Second, organisational identification emerged as an important source of support in helping employees to make sense of an organisational crisis. According to Kreiner and Ashforth (2004), if organisations are to encourage employees to identify strongly with them, they should show both symbolic management and substantive management. Symbolic management might include actions such as developing an organisational mission statement and stories, traditions and rituals that are distinctive to the organisation. Substantive management includes highlighting values and beliefs that underlie the mission statement and using them to guide organisational practices (Kreiner & Ashforth). This is consistent with the finding that AH employees felt that their hospital demonstrated its healthcare values through the distinctive responses it took to the SARS outbreak. Another approach to increasing organisational identification is to involve employees as much as possible in organisational decision-making (Ashforth & Mael, 1989). Although it is traditionally difficult to use participative decision-making in institutionalised settings (Arndt & Bigelow, 2000), a situation of organisational crisis calls for more flexibility of approaches (Weick, 1995). In an organisational crisis, information is an important resource (Pearson & Clair, 1998) and the results of this study suggest that employee sense-making is assisted if an organisation informs employees of the rationale for actions taken. This rationale could refer to either the core principles of employees professions or the organisations value base. For example, if an organisation is experiencing a crisis, then at a committee or general staff meeting, discussion about what actions to take could begin with reference to the overall principles, values, or code of ethics of the organisation. Data from this study indicate that the challenges to an individuals basic assumptions presented by an organisational crisis can be offset if employees clearly see that their organisations response to the crisis is consistent with what the organisation espouses to be important.
Limitations and Future Research

Data Collection
A limitation of interviews as a data collection method is that they access the experiences of participants who are the most willing to talk and, possibly, present themselves and their organisation in a favourable light (Flick, 2002). Thus, employees who volunteered to be interviewed at AH might be the very ones who had coped well with the crisis. One interviewee did not
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answer the interview questions, but spoke instead for the whole interview (45 minutes) about her anxieties during SARS, so the tape recorder was turned off and the interview effectively became a trauma debriefing session. It was likely that the crisis had eroded her basic assumptions about working in the hospital, consistent with the process described by Pearson and Clair (1998), but it is unethical to collect data from distressed participants (Flick, 2002). The interviews probably also served as part of interviewees sense-making process, rather than simply being a vehicle for reporting on previous sense-making. Weick (1995) argued that sense-making is retrospective and thus involves attending to certain cues in a past memory that are made salient, interpreting those cues in light of whatever is happening at the time of the retrospection, thereby altering the memory of the previous experience. A mixed method approach to investigating employee responses to crisis would allow the emergence of rich data as well as the assessment of attitudes and behaviour of a range of participants (Todd, Nerlich, Mckeown, & Clarke, 2004).
Organisational Context
The current research focused on a particular organisation. While case studies provide rich data within a given context (Yin, 1984), it is also important to compare different organisations that experience similar situations. For example, by all accounts, the Singaporean hospital AH handled the SARS crisis very well. In order to further examine hospital employees sense-making during organisational crisis, it would be valuable to study employee experiences in hospitals where the organisational crisis appeared to disrupt the sense of shared meaning in the organisation. Due to the idiosyncrasies of the healthcare context (Arndt & Bigelow, 2000), findings from this paper might not be generalisable to other industries. On the other hand, public hospitals are now often run as businesses and their management principles are similar to those used for other businesses (Jones, 2000). Future research could use the framework developed for this study to examine employee experiences in a range of organisational crises.
Cultural Context
Early cross-cultural work (Hofstede, 1984; Ronen & Shenkar, 1985) indicated that Singapore was similar to other Eastern Asian countries (e.g., Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan), and quite different from Australia and the United States, on dimensions of national culture. However, more recent work (Kumar & Thibodeaux, 1998) has indicated that differences in value systems between western and far eastern Asian countries is
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much less for people who have interacted globally, than for those who have maintained their nations traditions. In the past decade, Singapore has rapidly become westernised in its approach to business and management (Moh, 2005). Consequently, we would not expect there to be much difference between the hospital context in Singapore and in western countries. In fact, it has been said that health authorities managed the SARS crisis in similar fashions in Singapore and Canada (Emanuel, 2003). However, the question of how much influence national culture plays on organisational behaviour is still hotly debated. Whereas Hofstede (1984, 1998, 2001) maintained that national culture is an important determinant of what occurs in particular organisations, others (e.g., Dolan, Diez-Pinol, Fernandez-Alles, MartinPrius, & Martinez-Fierro, 2004) have argued that there are many regional differences within countries and that organisational context is only weakly influenced by national culture. Given that SARS affected several countries, cross-cultural comparisons of how these countries responded to SARS would give a valuable perspective on cultural similarities and differences.
Conclusion
This chapter has contributed to the I/O psychology literature by focusing on employee experiences in an organisational crisis. It also raised questions of a Big-O nature regarding how employees make sense of their own work, and their organisations actions, during an organisational crisis. The chapter presented a conceptual framework that highlights the importance of employees making sense of a crisis by establishing (or re-establishing) that the organisation is benevolent, that there is meaning and order within the organisation, and that, as individuals, they have a constructive role to play in the crisis. Using this conceptual framework, the chapter reported on a study that examined the experiences of hospital employees who worked in a Singaporean hospital during the SARS outbreak in 2003. Findings showed that hospital employees experienced typical negative psychological reactions to the crisis, but that they also reported positive experiences because of the organisational environment that supported them and helped them make sense of the crisis. Employees own sense of professional identity was an important guide during the crisis. The varied and complex nature of countries that make up the Asia-Pacific region suggests that a range of crises will continue to affect organisations within the region; hence it is important that I/O psychology continues to investigate the experiences of employees in such crises and to put forward explanations of how employees can cope and how organisations can assist them through crises.
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CHAPTER
12
Measuring Perceived LMX Variability Within Teams and Its Impact on Procedural Justice Climate
Danica T. Hooper and Robin Martin
According to LeaderMember Exchange (LMX) theory, leaders develop different quality exchange relationships with each of their followers. In this chapter, we investigate the effects of such differentiation on perceptions of procedural justice climate, and describe a new measure designed to capture the perceived variability of LMX relationships within work teams (the LMX Distribution Measure). Drawing upon the justice literature, we suggest that fostering different quality LMX relationships runs counter to rules of consistency, which are important for maintaining perceptions of procedural fairness. In line with existing theory and research, it was hypothesised that personal LMX quality would be positively related to reports of procedural justice climate as enacted by a leader and that this relationship would be attenuated by perceived LMX variability within the team. One-hundred-and-fifty-two employees from an Australian organisation dealing in the sale and service of heavy machinery were surveyed. Results supported the study hypotheses, and implied that leaders may need to be cautious about fostering very high quality relationships with only a select subset of followers. In the 1970s, LMX theory made a unique contribution to the leadership literature by proposing that leaders can vary their leadership styles when dealing with different employees (Dansereau, Graen, & Haga,
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1975; Graen & Cashman, 1975). This view opposed existing theories, which assumed that leaders treated all their followers consistently. LMX is defined as the quality of the exchange relationship between a leader and an employee (Schriesheim, Castro, & Cogliser, 1999). LMX relationships range on a continuum from those that are based strictly on employment contracts, to those that are based on mutual trust, respect and obligation (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995). High-quality relationships are thought to develop through the mutual exchange of resources within the leaderemployee dyad. For example, leaders exchange resources such as information, influence, desired tasks, latitude, support and attention, for an employees services, such as task performance, commitment, loyalty and citizenship. In their review of the literature, Graen and Uhl-Bien (1995) described four stages through which LMX research has progressed since the theorys inception. The first three stages are: (a) discovery of differential dyads, (b) examination of LMX correlates and (c) description of the dyadic partnership-building process. Research in these stages has provided evidence that leaders develop different quality LMX relationships with their employees (e.g., Dansereau et al., 1975; Liden & Graen, 1980); that high quality LMX relationships lead to positive employee outcomes, including job satisfaction, leader satisfaction, wellbeing and organisational commitment (Epitropaki & Martin 1999, 2005; Gerstner & Day, 1997; Martin, Thomas, Charles, Epitropaki, & McNamara, 2005); and that LMX relationships develop through a role-making process (see Graen, 1976; Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1991; Uhl-Bien & Graen 1992). As the first three stages of LMX research have been well established in the literature, Graen and Uhl-Bien (1995) noted the timeliness of investigating LMX relationships within a wider social context. Thus, stage four of LMX theory development is the expansion from dyadic levels of analysis to group and network levels of analysis, a move that is advocated by many LMX theorists (e.g., Gerstner & Day, 1997; Graen & Scandura, 1987; Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995; Kinicki & Vecchio, 1994; Liden, Sparrowe, & Wayne, 1997; Sparrowe & Liden, 1997; Van Breukelen, Konst, & Van Der Vlist, 2002). Relevant to stage four of LMX theory development is one of the fundamental tenets of LMX theory that leaders develop different quality LMX relationships with each of their employees. In particular, Graen and Uhl-Bien (1995, p. 234) argued that:
relationship quality in some parts of the leadership structure will likely influence relationship development and relationship effectiveness in other parts of the structure. [We need to] take into consideration the effects of differentiated relationships on each other and on the entire structure.
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Measuring Perceived LMX Variability Within Teams
With the exception of several notable studies to be discussed in this chapter, few empirical investigations have addressed the impact of LMX differentiation on employees. Therefore, the key aim of this chapter is to investigate the impact of perceived LMX differentiation on employee outcomes; specifically, how it affects perceptions of procedural justice climate. After defining LMX differentiation and its measurement, an overview of existing studies that have investigated effects of LMX differentiation is presented. This is followed by a description of our research investigating the impact of LMX differentiation on perceptions of procedural justice climate, findings from which have significant implications for team management.
Defining and Measuring LMX Differentiation
LMX differentiation is conceptualised here as the amount of variability (or heterogeneity) in LMX relationships within a work team (termed LMX variability). The extent of variability in LMX relationships within a team has rarely been measured in the LMX literature, although a few notable exceptions exist. For example, Sherony and Green (2002) examined variability in LMX relationships within coworker dyads. They collected individuals self-ratings of LMX, and calculated the variability of self-ratings within dyads using the coefficient of variation (a dispersion statistic calculated by dividing the standard deviation of LMX scores within the dyad, by the LMX mean of the dyad). However, it should be noted that comparing self-ratings of LMX may only reflect differences in response style, rather than an individuals actual perception of LMX variability within a team. In order for LMX variability to affect employee attitudes, it must first be perceived by an employee. Van Breukelen et al. (2002), on the other hand, collected information regarding individuals perceptions of LMX variability within their work team. These authors measured perceived LMX variability as an individuals global judgment of differences in leader friendliness and feedback across employees. However, it can be argued that differences in leader friendliness and feedback are not an adequate proxy for the LMX construct, which is defined as the quality of the exchange relationship between a leader and an employee, with mutual respect, trust and obligation as underlying dimensions (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995; Schriesheim et al., 1999). Therefore, a new measure of LMX variability is needed to capture both the theoretical definition of the LMX construct and how individuals actually perceive LMX variability within their team.
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Park and Judd (1990) suggested that measures indicating dispersion of group members scores along a dimension most closely align with statistical definitions of the construct of variance. Therefore, a measure of dispersion was chosen for measuring LMX variability in our research. However, in order to get a measure of dispersion from an employees perspective, each employee would be required to rate the quality of every team members LMX relationship. For example, using the LMX-7 (the most widely used measure of LMX; Gerstner & Day, 1997), participants would be required to rate their own LMX relationship on seven items, co-worker As relationship on seven items, co-worker Bs relationship on seven items, and so on for each of the n members of their team. Therefore, in large group situations it becomes important to measure LMX as concisely as possible, in order to avoid outcomes such as participant confusion and fatigue, which can result in measurement error. Although single-item measures have traditionally been considered a faux pas in psychometric circles, researchers are beginning to recognise that practical constraints in organisational research can make it impractical to incorporate full scales into questionnaires. Research in areas such as job satisfaction and self-esteem has recently focused on investigating the acceptability of single-item measures. Findings from these studies have demonstrated that single-item measures can provide acceptable levels of reliability and validity (e.g., Robins, Hendin, & Trzesniewski, 2001; Wanous & Hudy, 2001; Wanous, Reichers, & Hudy, 1997). According to Robins et al. (2001) single-item measures are only appropriate when the construct under examination is uni-dimensional. Graen and Uhl-Bien (1995) argued that, the LMX construct has multiple dimensions, but these dimensions are so highly correlated they can be tapped into with the single measure of LMX (p. 237). The authors recommended the use of the uni-dimensional LMX-7 scale. It is possible to deduce from the widespread use of LMX-7, that many LMX researchers accept that the construct can be adequately assessed with a uni-dimensional measure. Research by Keller and Dansereau (2001) not only provides evidence that LMX can be adequately assessed using a uni-dimensional measure, but also that LMX can be adequately measured using a single item. Their research indicated that the centroid item of the LMX-7 scale (How would you characterise your working relationship with your supervisor? rated from extremely ineffective to extremely effective), produced a full set of significant correlations with known LMX correlates and was as predictive, and at times more predictive, than other full-scale measures of LMX.
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Instructions The boxes below represent different quality relationships that may exist between members of your work team and your immediate supervisor. Please indicate in each box the number of members in your work team whose working relationship with the supervisor falls within each category (please include yourself in this count). The boxes should add together to equal the number of people in your work team. If unsure, please make a reasonable estimate. Very Poor Poor Satisfactory Good Very Good
The quality of the working relationship between myself and my supervisor is (please circle the appropriate response) Very Poor Poor Satisfactory Good Very Good
Example Response: Very Poor 0 Very Poor
Poor 1 Poor
Satisfactory 0 Satisfactory
Good 3 Good
Very Good 0 Very Good
This response shows that within a work team of 4 people, 1 person has a poor relationship with the supervisor, and 3 people have a good relationship with the supervisor. The respondent is one of the 3 team members with a good quality relationship with the leader.
FIGURE 1 The LMX distribution measure.
This finding not only supports the acceptability of uni-dimensional measures of LMX, but also suggests that the centroid item is an acceptable short-form measure of LMX. Therefore, in order to minimise employee confusion, fatigue and ultimately measurement error, participants in our research were asked to rate their co-workers LMX relationships with the leader on a single-item measure. This item essentially reflects the centroid item of the LMX-7 scale; however, it was adjusted to align more closely with the theoretical definition of LMX. Specifically, the item focuses on the quality of ones relationship with the supervisor, rather than on the effectiveness of the relationship. In order to ensure that this single-item measure has sound psychometric properties and is tapping into the LMX construct, participants also rated their own LMX quality on this single item. If ones personal LMX score on the single-item measure (termed LMX-1) is highly intercorrelated with scores on the LMX-7 scale, and shows similar correlation patterns with known LMX outcomes, evidence is provided that the
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single-item measure is tapping into the LMX construct. The reliability, inter-scale convergence and construct validity of the LMX-1 was assessed across three studies in our program of research, with all results indicating sound reliability and validity. The resulting measure, labelled the LMX Distribution Measure, asks participants to consider every LMX relationship within their work team, and to indicate the distribution of these relationships by placing the number of these relationships which fall into each of five quality categories: very poor (1), poor (2), satisfactory (3), good (4) and very good (5; see Figure 1). From this distribution various indices of variability can be computed, as perceptions of each co-workers LMX relationship has been effectively rated on a 1 (very poor) to 5 (very good) scale. This LMX Distribution Measure was used in Hooper and Martin (in press), and similar frequency distribution approaches have been used widely in the stereotype literature to measure group variability (e.g., Lambert, 1995; Lambert, Payne, Ramsey, & Shaffer, 2005; Lambert & Wyer, 1990; Park & Judd, 1990). In line with Sherony and Greens (2002) research, the coefficient of variation was chosen as the dispersion statistic to operationalise LMX variability in the current research. According to Allison (1978), measures of variability within groups should be scale-invariant. That is, variability should be unchanged if each individuals score is multiplied by a constant, or if the focal variable is measured in different units. The coefficient of variation is one such scale-invariant measure of dispersion. This coefficient is calculated by dividing the standard deviation of the focal variable by the group mean.
Overview of Existing LMX Variability Research
In the early LMX literature, it was generally considered effective for leaders to offer different quality LMX relationships to the employees they supervised. For example, Dansereau et al. (1975) stated that:
differential treatment of members by superiors may be instrumental to adequate unit functioning [Leaders] simply cannot devote the required time and energy to each and all of his members to ensure their optimum performance. Fortunately, a subset of his members usually can perform the majority of the critical functions of the unit. Therefore, the superior invests a disproportionate amount of his time and energy in developing a select subset of his members. (pp. 7172)
However, others have raised concern that differentiation is more likely to lead to negative outcomes for individuals and teams. For example Liden et al. (1997) suggested that:
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Differentiation may represent a means for best utilizing varying knowledge, skills, and abilities of members. On the other hand, differentiation may lead to perceptions of unfairness or unhealthy factions of members which result in lowered group cohesiveness and productivity. (p. 73)
Indeed, several studies have demonstrated a link between LMX variability and poor team relations. As discussed in Hooper and Martin (in press), there have been three key studies that have investigated the affects of LMX variability within teams. Sias and Jablin (1995) interviewed 29 employees from a range of organisations and occupational groups, including accounting, advertising, administration, manufacturing and engineering professions. Their findings indicated that LMX differentiation within teams was associated with dislike and poor communication between differentiated team members, and the favourable treatment of others by the leader was often perceived as unfair whereas the unfavourable treatment of others was often perceived as fair. Sherony and Green (2002) also investigated the effects of LMX variability on interpersonal relationships among co-workers. They surveyed 67 engineers and health service personnel, forming 110 co-worker dyads. Their findings indicated that dissimilarity in co-workers LMX relationships was associated with poorer quality co-worker relationships. Van Breukelen et al. (2002) surveyed 152 employees of a Dutch water company. Their results revealed an interaction between LMX and perceived LMX variability on team commitment. Specifically, an individuals perception of LMX variability within the team attenuated the positive relationship between LMX and team commitment. Whilst all three studies indicated that LMX variability has negative effects for individuals and teams, as mentioned previously, none of these studies adequately measured perceptions of LMX variability within the whole team. Hooper and Martin (in press) filled this gap by investigating the impact of perceived LMX variability on team relations and employee reactions across two Australian samples (using the LMX Distribution Measure). Sample A consisted of 74 individuals from diverse organisational and occupational backgrounds, and Sample B consisted of 357 firefighters. In both samples, as perceived LMX variability increased, reports of relational team conflict also increased. Furthermore, this research showed a negative relationship between perceived LMX variability and employee reactions, including job satisfaction and wellbeing. As perceived LMX variability increased, reports of job satisfaction and wellbeing decreased, and this relationship was mediated by perceptions of relational team conflict.
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The Present Study

To further extend Hooper and Martins (in press) research on the effects of perceived LMX variability, the current research investigated the impact of perceived LMX variability on perceptions of procedural justice climate. As mentioned previously, several researchers have implied that LMX variability may have a negative impact on perceptions of justice (e.g., Liden et al., 1997; Sias & Jablin, 1995), however, to our knowledge, no quantitative research has explored this potential relationship. It is commonly noted that teams provide a context conducive to social comparisons (e.g., Colquitt, 2004; Colquitt, Noe, & Jackson, 2002), thereby making it likely that individuals will compare the quality of their own LMX relationships with co-workers LMX relationships. According to justice theories, such comparisons may influence perceptions of fairness within the workplace (Kabanoff, 1991). As LMX theory proposes that leaders distribute differential levels of tangible and intangible resources to members of their teams, LMX variability can be conceptualised as a type of non-neutrality on the leaders part (cf., Colquitt, 2004; Leventhal, 1980; Scandura, 1999). Several theoretical perspectives highlight the importance of leader neutrality across employees. For example, Leventhal stated that leader consistency across team members is one of six key procedural justice rules. Similarly, the Group Value Model (Tyler, 1989) proposed that leader neutrality was a key factor influencing perceptions of procedural justice within teams and subsequently individuals group-oriented behaviours. In Leventhals (1980) work, procedural justice is defined as the degree to which allocation decisions by an authority are perceived to have been made according to fair and appropriate methods (Leventhal, 1980; Neihoff & Moorman, 1993). Specifically, Leventhal proposed six rules that influence individuals evaluations regarding procedural justice: consistency, bias suppression, accuracy, correctability, representativeness and ethicality. Of relevance to the LMX variability construct, is the rule of consistency. According to the consistency rule:
allocative procedures should be consistent across persons and over time When applied across persons, the consistency rule dictates that it is necessary to apply similar procedures to all potential recipients of reward, and to give special advantage to none. In this form, the rule is closely related to the notion of equality of opportunity. (Leventhal, 1980, p. 40)
Tyler and colleagues (Tyler, 1989; Tyler & Blader, 2000; Tyler, Degoey, & Smith, 1996, 2001; Tyler & Lind, 1992) have also suggested that the consistent treatment of employees by leaders is important because it affects
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the perceived legitimacy of the leader and ones relationship with the group as a whole. According to these researchers (see Group-Value model, Relational model and Group Engagement model), employees are concerned with their long-term relationships with leaders and groups; and the procedural behaviour of the leader is indicative of the leaders values and what could be expected from the leader in the future. For example, even if one is currently treated fairly by a non-neutral leader (a leader who shows bias or lacks honesty), the fact that the leader does not always employ fair procedures may raise concerns about being potentially discriminated against in the future. Non-neutrality on the leaders part further signifies that some members are less worthy or valuable to the group, and may detract from individuals identifying and engaging with the group. Empirical research has demonstrated that violation of Leventhals (1980) consistency rule has detrimental effects for employees (e.g., Colquitt, 2004; Colquitt et al., 2002). For example Colquitt (2004) conducted an experiment where participants were grouped into teams and assigned a confederate leader. Procedural justice was manipulated by the confederate, such that members of some teams were given uniformly high or uniformly low levels of decision-making control, whereas members of other teams were given varying levels of decision-making-control. Results indicated that whilst ones own personal treatment (i.e., personal level of decision-making control) was a strong predictor of procedural justice perceptions, this relationship was moderated by consistency of treatment within the team, such that the effect was stronger when team members were treated consistently (given equal levels of control), rather than inconsistently. This interaction effect was also found when using an individuals cooperation and decisionmaking accuracy as the dependent variables. Individuals in high-quality LMX relationships receive more tangible and intangible rewards than do individuals in low-quality LMX relationships; including higher levels of decision influence (Dansereau et al., 1975; Yrle, Hartman, & Galle, 2002), which is important for enhancing perceptions of procedural justice (Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter, & Ng, 2001; Tyler & Bies, 1990). Therefore, in line with LMX theory, the distribution of rewards (including decision influence) within heterogeneous LMX work teams will be inconsistent across employees. Hence, the presence of LMX variability within work teams violates Leventhals consistency rule for procedural justice (cf. Colquitt et al., 2002; Scandura, 1999), and may result in lower levels of procedural justice perceptions for employees. While existing research has yet to explore the relationship between perceived LMX variability and procedural justice perceptions, research
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has demonstrated a positive relationship between the quality of ones own LMX relationship and procedural justice perceptions. For example, Lee (2001) found a very strong relationship between LMX quality and reports of procedural justice (r = .68). Lee operationalised procedural justice in terms of fairness of formal organisational policies and leader enactment of these policies (a composite score was reported, with no breakdown of the component dimensions). However, other research has reported no relationship between LMX and procedural justice perceptions. Specifically Masterson, Lewis, Goldman, and Taylor (2000) and Wayne, Shore, Bommer, and Tetrick (2002) both reported that LMX was not significantly related to procedural justice perceptions. However, it is important to note that both these studies operationalised procedural justice using the organisation as the referent authority, as opposed to focusing on the procedural justice enacted by the leader per se. It seems likely that ones relationship with the leader will be more closely related with perceptions about the fairness of procedures enacted by the leader, than with perceptions about the fairness of an organisations formal procedures, over which a leader may have little control. As procedural justice perceptions are enhanced when individuals are given the opportunity to participate in the decision-making process and when they are treated respectfully and communicated with in a trustful manner (Colquitt et al., 2001; Tyler & Bies, 1990), it seems likely that a positive relationship will exist between LMX and perceptions of procedural justice as enacted by a leader. This is because high-quality LMX relationships are associated with higher levels of decision influence for employees (Dansereau et al., 1975; Yrle et al., 2002) and are characterised by mutual respect, trust and obligation (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995). The current research explores how perceived LMX variability within a team affects employees procedural justice perceptions beyond the variance accounted for by the quality of ones personal LMX relationship. To achieve this, procedural justice was conceptualised as a contextual variable, which focused on procedural justice within the team as a whole (termed procedural justice climate), rather than procedural justice as experienced by an individual. Previous research has also conceptualised procedural justice as a contextual variable (e.g., Colquitt et al., 2002; Mossholder, Bennett, & Martin, 1998; Naumann & Bennett, 2000). As this research is concerned with the level of perception, the focus is on individuals perceptions of the procedural fairness enacted by the leader towards the team as a whole. In line with: (a) Colquitts (2004) finding that ones own personal treatment is a strong determinant of overall procedural justice evaluations; (b) research
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indicating that LMX is positively related to decision influence (Dansereau et al., 1975; Yrle et al., 2002), which is important for enhancing procedural justice perceptions; and (c) Lees (2001) finding that LMX is positively related to individuals procedural justice reports, hypothesis 1 is that: LMX will be positively related to perceptions of procedural justice climate. In line with Leventhals (1980) rule of consistency, and Colquitts (2004) findings that consistency of treatment within the team moderates the relationship between personal treatment and procedural justice perceptions, hypothesis 2: is that: Perceived LMX variability will moderate the relationship between LMX and perceptions of procedural justice climate, such that high LMX variability will attenuate the relationship.
Method
Participants
Surveys were administered to 799 employees of an Australian organisation dealing in the sale and service of mining and construction equipment. One-hundred-and-fifty-two usable surveys were returned (response rate 19%). The sample consisted of 105 males and 45 females (two unknown gender). Age ranged from 20 to 66 years (Mean 39.31 years, SD 10.53 years). Mean organisational tenure was 10.72 years (SD = 9.84), and mean tenure with supervisor was 3.11 years (SD = 3.58). The sample was diverse in terms of occupation (35.1% administration, 33.1% manual and trade services, 23.2% management, 7.9% sales, 0.7% other). Teams ranged from two to 20 members (Mean = 7.14, SD = 4.15).
Measures and Procedure
Self-report surveys were administered to all participants. Participation was voluntary and responses remained anonymous and confidential. Surveys were posted to participants, and a reply-paid envelope was provided for completed surveys to be sent directly to the researcher. The measures described below were used. LMX. The uni-dimensional LMX-7 scale (Graen, Novak, & Sommerkamp, 1982; Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995; Scandura & Graen, 1984) was used to measure personal LMX quality. Sample items included, My supervisor recognises my potential, and I would characterise my working relationship with my supervisor as extremely effective. Responses were given on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).
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Perceived LMX variability. Perceived LMX variability was measured using the LMX Distribution Measure described previously. Participants were asked to indicate the number of people in their team who had the following types of relationships with the supervisor: 1 (very poor), 2 (poor), 3 (satisfactory), 4 (good) and 5 (very good). They were also asked to rate the quality of their own LMX relationship on this scale. From this information, the coefficient of variation was calculated as the measure of perceived LMX variability (perceived standard deviation of LMX relationships within a team divided by the perceived team mean of LMX). Procedural justice climate. A 6-item procedural justice scale by Niehoff and Moorman (1993) was used. Participants were asked to rate the fairness of their immediate supervisors behaviours towards the team as a whole. An example item was, Job decisions are made by my immediate supervisor in an unbiased manner. Responses were given on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Control variables. Measures of gender, age, team size, leaderemployee dyad tenure and organisation-based self-esteem were collected for control purposes.
Results
Means, standard deviations, alpha reliabilities, and zero-order correlations for the study variables are shown in Table 1. All alpha reliabilities were satisfactory, with coefficients greater than .70, as recommended by Nunnally (1978). A majority of respondents (61.8%) perceived that there were different quality LMX relationships within their work team (as indicated by coefficient of variation scores > 0). As hypothesised, LMX was positively related to perceptions of procedural justice climate, and perceived LMX variability was negatively related to perceptions of procedural justice climate. Moderated regression was conducted to investigate hypotheses 1 and 2. In line with Aiken and Wests (1991) recommendations for moderated regression, independent and moderator variables were mean-centred prior to computing the interaction term. Step 1 involved entering the control
TABLE 1 Means, Standard Deviations, Alpha Coefficients and Zero-Order Correlations Variable
1. LMX variability 2. LMX
Mean
0.15 3.54
SD
0.16 0.97
1
.29**
2
(.94)
3. Procedural justice climate
3.34
0.90
.30**
.74**
(.92)
Alpha reliabilities are in parentheses along the diagonal **p < .01, two-tailed.
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Low Perceived LMX Variability 5.0 High Perceived LMX Variability
4.5
Perceived Procedural Justice Climate
4.0
3.5
3.0
2.5
2.0 Low LMX High
FIGURE 2 Simple slope plot for perceived LMX variability moderating the relationship between LMX and perceptions of procedural justice climate.
variables. The centred independent (LMX) and moderator (perceived LMX variability) variables were entered in Step 2, and the interaction term was entered in Step 3. In Step 2, the independent and moderator variables explained a significant amount of variance in reports of procedural justice climate, R2 = .38, F (2,136) = 61.96, p < .01. In line with hypothesis 1, LMX was positively related to reports of procedural justice climate, = .71, p < .01. There was no main effect of perceived LMX variability on reports of procedural justice climate, = .06, ns. Inclusion of the interaction term in Step 3 explained an additional amount of variance in perceptions of procedural justice climate, R2 = .01, F (1,135) = 4.85, = .14, p < .05. A simple slope analysis was performed to determine the relationship between LMX and perceptions of procedural justice climate at high and low levels of perceived LMX variability. The resulting plot is shown in Figure 2. The slope for low perceived LMX variability, t(140) = 9.33, p < .01, was steeper than the slope for high perceived LMX variability, t(140) = 7.97, p < .01. The relationship between LMX and perceived procedural justice climate was stronger for those who perceived low LMX variability than for those who perceived high LMX variability. This finding supports hypothesis 2, which predicted that perceived LMX
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variability would moderate the relationship between LMX and perceived procedural justice climate. To provide reassurance that these findings were not merely the result of common-source variance, a Harmans one-factor test was conducted (see Podsakoff & Organ, 1986). An unrotated factor analysis was conducted on all key study items. Perceived LMX variability did not load onto the first factor or on any other factor containing study variables. The factorial independence of perceived LMX variability provides some reassurance that common-source variance did not substantially inflate relationships involving this key variable; though common-source variance cannot be ruled out entirely.
Discussion
The findings revealed a positive relationship between LMX and reports of procedural justice climate as enacted by the leader, supporting hypothesis 1. This relationship was further moderated by perceptions of LMX variability, such that high variability attenuated the relationship. This finding supported hypothesis 2. A long-standing proposition in the justice literature is that leader neutrality is an important determinant of procedural justice perceptions (e.g., Leventhal, 1980; Tyler, 1989; Tyler et al., 1996, 2001; Tyler & Lind, 1992). As LMX variability can be conceptualised as a type of non-leader neutrality (cf., Colquitt, 2004; Leventhal, 1980; Scandura, 1999) it was argued that perceived LMX variability would affect procedural justice perceptions. Although no research has explored the relationship between LMX variability and procedural justice perceptions, previous research has attempted to link personal LMX quality with perceptions of procedural justice. Results from this research have been mixed. For example, Lee (2001) reported a positive relationship between LMX and reports of procedural justice; however, both Masterson et al. (2000) and Wayne et al. (2002) reported no relationship between LMX and reports of procedural justice. A likely explanation for the null findings reported by the latter researchers is that they used the organisation, rather than the leader, as the referent authority. Lee (2001), on the other hand, used both the organisation and the leader as referent authorities. As procedural justice perceptions are enhanced when individuals are given the opportunity to participate in the decision-making process, when they are treated respectfully and communicated with in a trustful manner (Colquitt et al., 2001; Tyler & Bies, 1990), it seems likely that a positive relationship would exist between LMX and perceptions of procedural justice as enacted by the leader. This is because high-quality LMX relationships are
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associated with higher levels of decision influence for employees (Dansereau et al., 1975; Yrle et al., 2002) and are characterised by mutual respect, trust and obligation (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995). Accordingly, hypothesis 1 that LMX would be positively related to perceptions of procedural justice climate as enacted by the leader was supported. In line with Colquitts (2004) finding that leader neutrality within the team moderates the relationship between personal treatment and procedural justice perceptions, hypothesis 2 stated that perceived LMX variability will moderate the relationship between personal LMX quality and perceptions of procedural justice climate, such that high variability will attenuate the relationship. The findings supported hypothesis 2 the relationship between personal LMX quality and perceptions of procedural justice climate was weaker when perceptions of LMX variability were high. Tyler and colleagues suggested that consistent treatment of employees by a leader is important because it affects the perceived legitimacy of the leader and ones relationship with the group as a whole (Tyler, 1989; Tyler et al., 1996, 2001; Tyler & Lind, 1992). Findings from this research appear to reaffirm the proposition that leader neutrality affects procedural justice perceptions. A strength of this study is that it used individuals actual perceptions of LMX variability within their work team, rather than differences in personal self-ratings of LMX across individuals. It is possible that differences in personal self-ratings reflect differences in response style rather than a true perception that others are indeed treated differently by the supervisor. However, the self-report, cross-sectional nature of the data may lead to concerns of common-source variance. However, as discussed in the results, a Harmans one-factor test provided reassurance that common-source variance was not a significant problem in the dataset. In order to extend our knowledge of the effects of LMX variability within work teams, future research should be directed towards investigating the relationship between perceived LMX variability and procedural justice climate using true team-level data; including examining whether there is agreement among team members in regard to perceptions of LMX variability and procedural justice climate. As procedural justice climate was strongly related to personal LMX quality, which varies within teams, it seems likely that perceptions of procedural justice climate would also vary within teams. In summary, the results provide preliminary evidence that perceived LMX variability affects perceptions of procedural justice climate as enacted by the leader. Results imply that leaders should be cautious about fostering special relationships with only a select subset of employees, as is recommended by
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some LMX theorists (e.g., Dansereau et al., 1975). However, if leaders must differentiate among employees, care should be taken to manage this situation. For example, Leventhals (1980) work on procedural justice perceptions identified six determinants of justice perceptions. If leaders are unable to fulfil the consistency rule, by establishing homogeneous LMX relationships, they may be able to compensate for this violation by fulfilling one or more of the other justice rules (i.e., bias suppression, accuracy, correctability, representativeness, ethicality). For example, the accuracy rule of procedural justice states that allocative procedures must be based on good information and informed opinion. Leaders can help fulfil the accuracy rule in the eyes of employees by being transparent in their decision-making, and explaining to employees the reasons why certain tangible and intangible resources are distributed in the way that they are. Further, leaders can fulfil the correctability criteria by giving employees a genuine opportunity to appeal any decisions that they feel are unfair. Such processes may help raise perceptions of fairness within the team, and ultimately the legitimacy of the leader.
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CHAPTER
13
Developing Methods for Analysing Team Mental Model Data
Janice Langan-Fox, Meei Ng, and James M. Canty
In this chapter, new statistical methods for analysing and representing team mental models (TMMs) are developed and explained. Current methodologies used to assess TMMs either focus on the sharedness of mental models amongst dyads rather than the team as a whole, or consider within-team agreement in terms of a comparison to often inappropriate referent sets. Instead, they should carefully and systematically investigate actual patterns of observed data provided by team members. The newly developed method presented here measures agreement amongst team members by exploring the distribution of team members responses to individual paired comparison items with reference to a predetermined external cut-off threshold based on an interpretation of the response scale provided. Detailed analyses are presented of pair-wise comparison data from a single team drawn from an existing data set obtained from a previously conducted 3-year field-based study. This new approach can determine, for each paired comparison rating item, whether a team is in agreement or disagreement, or whether the team has polarised views. This method allows for a measure of TMM congruence, which is an overall measurement of team agreement on a common mental model. After identifying the common TMM (i.e., overlap of individual team members mental models), this technique can provide data to be used to graphically represent the congruent TMM.
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Given the widespread implementation of teams in organisations (e.g., OReilly & Pfeffer, 2000) and the frequent failure of teams to reach their potential (Hackman, 1990; Kozlowski, 1995; Langan-Fox, 2003; West, 1997), it is crucial to explicate the key factors of team effectiveness (Cordery, 2002). To this end, the past decade has seen a marked growth of research into cognitive factors underlying team performance (CannonBowers & Salas, 2001; Klimoski & Mohammed, 1994; Rentsch & Hall, 1994). Recent team research has focused on how shared knowledge structures among team members affect team performance (Cooke, Kiekal, Salas, Stout, Bowers, & Cannon-Bowers, 2003; Marks, Sabella, Burke, & Zaccaro, 2002; Mathieu, Heffner, Goodwin, Salas, & Cannon-Bowers, 2000; Zelno et al., 2003). This interest is largely due to the enormous potential that the team mental model (TMM) construct has in relation to team effectiveness (Zelno et al., 2003): compatible or complementary knowledge structures among team members help teams to be adaptive in response to changing task situations. Team adaptability is crucial in many contexts, especially those within which action and negotiation teams operate (Marks & Zaccaro, 1997; Marks, Zaccaro, & Mathieu, 2000; Webber, Chen, Payne, Marsh, & Zaccaro, 2000). The underlying argument of the TMM literature is that team effectiveness is enhanced when team members have a shared, organised understanding of key elements of the team environment (Cannon-Bowers, Salas, & Converse, 1993; Klimoski & Mohammed, 1994). Types of mental models that team members hold include models of declarative (conceptual) knowledge, procedural knowledge and strategic knowledge. The content of these models can include concepts pertaining to taskwork, teamwork and the team itself. Furthermore, mental models can be shared in a variety of ways they can be similar or identical, overlapping or complementary, or distributed (Cannon-Bowers & Salas, 2001).
Mental Models
Individuals mentally represent their environment by organising information according to the relationships that exist between concepts and features that define them (Day, Arthur, & Gettman, 2001; Johnson-Laird, 1983). Theorists have used the term mental model in a variety of ways (Barsalou, 1992), however, in the current context a mental model is defined according to the integrative definition offered by Rouse and Morris (1986) as, a mechanism whereby humans generate descriptions of system purpose and form, explanations of system functioning and observed system states, and predictions of future system states (p. 360).
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Methods for Analysing Team Mental Model Data
Numerous methods exist to measure mental models (for a review, see Langan-Fox, Code, & Langfield-Smith, 2000). A crucial distinction can be made between measuring mental model content and structure. Indeed, mental model content can be elicited in the form of questionnaires, whereas mental model content and structure can be elicited and represented by such measurement techniques as concept mapping and pairwise comparison ratings. The former technique is quite popular in TMM research as it allows for a comparison of mental model structure between team members. However, the problem remains that these comparisons are mostly made between a dyad of team members, rather than across the team as a whole (see e.g., Langan-Fox et al., 2000).
Shared Mental Models
Cannon-Bowers and Salas (1990) introduced the notion of a shared mental model to account for the fluid, implicit coordination frequently observed in effective teams, and to advance the understanding of how teams function in complex, dynamic and ambiguous situations. Shared mental models are team members complementary, organised knowledge structures of key elements of the team, its task and its environment (Klimoski & Mohammed, 1994; Mohammed & Dumville, 2001).
Shared Mental Models Versus Team Mental Models
Shared mental models can be contrasted with TMMs in as much as a shared mental model can be described as the extent to which the individuals comprising a dyad possess a similar cognitive representation of some situation or phenomenon (Langan-Fox, Wirth, Code, Langfield-Smith, & Wirth, 2001). A TMM, however, is distinct from a shared mental model in that it refers to the shared knowledge structures of a team as a collective unit, rather than shared mental models among dyads of individuals (Langan-Fox et al., 2001). Although a number of techniques have been developed to measure mental model similarity between dyads, appropriate measures of TMMs have eluded researchers (Langan-Fox et al., 2001). Moreover, techniques that exist for estimating the level of within-team agreement in order to justify aggregation to the team-level are often based on assumptions of normality that are mostly inappropriate for TMM data.
Empirical Evidence for Team Mental Models
Despite the appearance of numerous theoretical papers concerning TMMs (e.g., Cannon-Bowers, Salas, & Converse 1993; Klimoski & Mohammed, 1994; Kraiger & Wenzel, 1997; Rentsch & Hall, 1994), the progression of empirical work has been slow (Langan-Fox et al., 2001; Mohammed &
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Dumville, 2001). Mohammed, Klimoski, and Rentsch (2000) offered two reasons for the lack of empirical work: (a) insufficient conceptual development of the construct and (b) confusion over how to measure cognitive structures at group level. Nevertheless, recent empirical findings have emerged to support the contention that TMM congruence positively influences team effectiveness (Marks et al., 2002; Mathieu et al., 2000; Rentsch & Klimoski, 2001). Griepentrog and Flemings (2003) meta-analysis found general support for the relationship between congruent TMMs and team effectiveness. The central problem of the TMM literature is that since there can be any number or type of task- and team-relevant mental models held by individual team members, aggregating these TMMs to obtain an index of sharedness is not a straightforward process. Indeed, recent conceptual work on TMMs has recognised the issues pertaining to aggregating different subtypes of TMMs (e.g., Kozlowski, Gully, McHugh, Salas, & Cannon-Bowers, 1996; Kozlowski & Klein, 2000) by stressing the importance of a configuration of compatible TMMs, rather than a commonly shared, identical TMM. Nevertheless, some theorists (e.g., Mohammed & Dumville, 2001) suggested that while some types of TMMs should be shared in a distributed fashion (e.g., role-specific taskwork mental models), others should be commonly shared in an identical fashion (e.g., mental models of teamwork, and the teams overall task, goals and processes). Therefore, although the different types of mental models probably fit together like discrete pieces of a jigsaw in effective teams (i.e., sharedness is a form of configural emergence; Kozlowski & Klein, 2000), some types of mental models are arguably best shared in a common or identical fashion. It is the degree of within-team similarity of these types of mental models (e.g., teamwork, overall team task/goal mental models) that can be assessed prior to aggregating the individual-level data to a team-level representation of the TMM. The TMM literature has used several methodologies for measuring the congruence of team members mental models. However, flawed assumptions often undermine the veracity of existing approaches. Indeed, the fundamental question of how to correctly determine the agreement of the TMM remains unanswered. As such, accurately representing the aggregated, teamlevel TMM is a continuing challenge for teams researchers and practitioners.
The Real-World Problem

A central problem of TMM research is the question of how to measure the congruency of team members mental models so as to create an aggregated TMM. While TMM research has used several methodologies for
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measuring the sharedness of the team members mental models, there is no single dominant approach in the literature (Webber et al., 2000; for a review of measurement methodology, see Langan-Fox et al., 2000; Mohammed et al., 2000). Most of these approaches have been based on dyadic comparisons across the team using either correlational techniques or comparisons of individuals mental models after having first created representations of the structure of these mental models via several data reduction techniques (e.g., Pathfinder, multi-dimensional scaling, cluster analysis). Correlational approaches risk neglecting meaningful differences that might exist between team members mental models despite a similar profile of responses to mental model measures. Data reduction techniques, by definition, reduce the amount of information that is compared between individuals mental models, which can result in spurious interpretations of mental model similarity. Furthermore, comparing two team members mental models at a time, rather than the team as whole, is to measure shared mental models rather than team mental models. A second type of approach tends to investigate the degree to which team members responses to mental model measures are interchangeable; or in other words, how much team members agree with each other in terms of their responses. This approach generally compares observed data with a referent set of random responses to determine whether the team is in greater agreement than would be expected by chance (Bliese, 2000). One problem with this approach concerns the choice of a referent response set a team is a meaningful unit of individuals whose members are not independent of each other, therefore similarities within the team would be expected to be greater than chance. To determine just how similar team members mental models are requires careful investigation of the observed mental model measure responses. The proposed research aims to develop and test a new approach to assessing the similarity of team members mental models and to index the congruency of the TMM.
Method
Data were collected in a 3-year research project (Langan-Fox et al., 2000) conducted in a division of a government business enterprise that had implemented team-based work as a major initiative 4 years prior to the research.
Detailed Analysis of Team Mental Model Data on a Single Team
There were seven members in the team analysed for this study. Each team member was asked to rate the relatedness of pairs of concepts on a 7-point scale from 1 (highly unrelated) to 7 (highly related). There were 16 concepts,
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therefore each team member provided ratings for 120 pairs of concepts, n(n 1)/2 = 120. These data represent the individuals mental models of their teams work. The aim of this study was to determine the overlap of the members mental models in order to establish the TMM. Preliminary data analysis. Individual team members responses were investigated to screen for unusual patterns in the response data. This included such descriptives as a frequency count of ratings along the 7-point scale, and the means and standard deviations of the ratings. Considering the data set for the entire team, means and standard deviations were calculated for each pair-wise comparison rating in order to measure overall differences between members with regards to each pair-wise comparison item. Investigating a single pair-wise relatedness item. The aim was to determine whether team members agreed, disagreed, or had polarised views on a particular item. The sample variance, s2, is an appropriate statistic to determine the degree of agreement within the team for a particular paired comparison item. It is possible to decompose residual sums of squares into contributions from each pair-wise comparison item in order to determine which item was associated with the greatest amount of disagreement within the team. In the worst case of disagreement, half the team provide ratings of 1, while the other half provide ratings of 7 (i.e., scores of: 1, 1, 1, 7, 7, 7). That is, each team members score is 3 points away from the mid-point of 4 on a 7-point scale. The following scale can be used for measuring the relative degree of agreement/disagreement within the team with regards to each particular paired comparison item (see Figure 1). The transformed scale for the particular 7-person team investigated in the present study scale is shown in Figure 2. Using this scale, it is possible to explore the set of responses for each paired comparison item made by all seven team members in order to identify those items with which the team was in agreement and those with which team members were in disagreement. In the present study, 15 of the total set of 120 concept pairs evidenced strong
________________________________________________________ n 2.25n 4n 9n Strongly agree Moderately agree Moderately disagree Strongly disagree
FIGURE 1 Scale to determine relative agreement and disagreement for a single item.
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_________________________________________________________________ n 2.25n 4n 9n (7) (15.75) (28) (63) Strongly agree Moderately agree Moderately disagree Strongly disagree
FIGURE 2 7-person team agreement-disagreement scale.
disagreement within the team. Therefore, the proportion of concepts with which the team was in agreement in is equal to 105/120 = 0.88. Since, in most situations, team membership is fixed and the team itself is the target of investigation, the team cannot be regarded as representing a random sample drawn from a larger population. Nevertheless, small values _ 0) still indicate that the members ratings are close to each of s2 (e.g., s2 ~ other, while large values of s2 reflect that their ratings are diffuse. The maximum value of s2 occurs when half the team gives a relatedness rating of 1 and the other half give a rating of 7. Thus, very large values of s2 indicate two groups in the team holding opposing views. Although team membership is not random, it is informative to compare the value of s2 with the sampling distribution of s2 of a random sample taken from the uniform distribution, which gives all possible ratings equal chance of occurring. Combinatoric methods can be use to construct the sampling distribution of s2, which will depend on the number of individuals in the team. A small percentile (e.g., 2.5%) can be used as a cut-off since smaller values than this indicate that the team is in agreement on this particular item. A large percentile (e.g., 97.5%) can be used as a cut-off for polarised views. Within-group agreement measures (James, Demaree, & Wolf, 1984, 1993; Kozlowski & Hattrup, 1992; LeBreton, Burgess, Kaiser, Atchley, & James, 2003; Lindell & Brandt, 1999), an approach often used in the performance appraisal literature, have recently been appropriated by TMM researchers (e.g., Webber et al., 2000). In particular, rWG = 1 s2/2EU (James et al., 1984) makes use of the sample variance and the uniform distribution. However, the current use of rWG in the literature does not take into account the sampling variability of s2 and the sample size, nor does it account for the presence of opposing views. The approach devised in the present study involves more statistical principles and sophistication. Measuring team congruence. Obtaining an index of TMM congruence is of critical importance in furthering TMM research. The approach devised here allows for a measure of TMM congruence that is intended to provide an
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index on the extent to which the team is a cohesive unit with respect to its members mental models. TMM congruency can be ascertained by measuring the number of pair-wise comparison items on which the team was in agreement (following the method detailed above) divided by the total number of items rated (i.e., 105/120). This gives the proportion of items on which the team is in agreement (i.e., 0.88). The team mental model. Adequate within-group agreement, or the teamwide congruency of individual team members mental models, is a prerequisite for aggregation of mental model data from individual-level to teamlevel. The TMM can therefore be determined by the commonality shared by team members. This TMM congruency can be used to produce a graphical representation of the team-level, congruent TMM. The items on which the team is in agreement form the overlap of members mental models, with average ratings used as the teams ratings for these items. Graphical representations of the TMM can facilitate visual comparisons of the teams TMM against any particular individual team members mental model, and even an experts mental model (if available).
Discussion
This research has developed new statistical methods for analysing TMM data that are based on a more precise and clearer view of observed TMM data. This approach uses sophisticated statistical methods to determine the degree of TMM congruence and allows for an accurate description of a teams shared knowledge organisation. The present study contributes to theoretical development of the TMM construct by demonstrating that whilst the overall TMM may be a configural property of the team, some aspects of the TMM can be said to be shared in a common or identical manner. The new methodologies presented here answer the problem of TMM measurement.
Future Directions
Based on the present approach, we are developing methods to compare the TMMs of different teams within the same organisation. The null hypothesis will be that members from the same team will be more alike in their mental models than with those of members from different teams. Langan-Fox et al. (2000) used a randomisation method to compare the similarity of TMMs in a global way. The current work has provided a preliminary examination of how TMM data can be investigated in a more precise and rigorous way. The TMM literature has been generally supportive of the relationship between shared cognitions and team effectiveness, yet there is still conceptual confu-
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sion over the definition of a team-level TMM. Moreover, current methodological limitations hinder the measurement, analysis and representation of TMMs. The benefit of the present study lies in a new approach to measuring and representing the commonly shared TMM. Our approach will take a more detailed perspective of the data to identify where differences lie and the extent of those differences rather than merely giving the simple answer of whether TMMs are similar. We are currently developing interpretative and predictive methodologies that will be able to relate measures of TMM congruence to demographic and performance data. We are also interested in identifying outliers within a team a very informative way of investigating TMM data that has not been undertaken before. The presence of outliers and the characteristics of these individual team members may inform analysis of team dynamics and may be predictive of team performance and effectiveness. Outliers can be identified by considering the sum of squares (SS) of the deviations of each team members ratings from the team average ratings, and by applying an ANOVA-type decomposition to the total SS. Since the assumption of normality is not valid in this case, usual ANOVA theory will not be applicable, instead combinatoric theory or asymptotic theory will be required to investigate the sampling distribution. These new directions will provide the TMM literature with new avenues for research and could lead to improved methods of assessment.
References
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Lindell, M. K., & Brandt, C. J. (1999). Assessing interrater agreement on the job relevance of a test: A comparison of the CVI, T, rWG(J), and r*WG(J) indexes. Journal of Applied Psychology, 84, 640647. Marks, M. A., Sabella, M. J., Burke, C. S., & Zaccaro, S. J. (2002). The impact of crosstraining on team effectiveness. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 313. Marks, M. A., & Zaccaro, S. J. (1997, August). Team dynamics in hierarchical decisionmaking teams. Paper presented at the Academy of Management, Boston. Marks, M. A., Zaccaro, S. J., & Mathieu, J. E. (2000). Performance implications of leader briefings and team-interaction training for team adaptation to novel environments. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85, 971986. Mathieu, J. E., Heffner, T. S., Goodwin, G. F., Salas, E., & Cannon-Bowers, J. A. (2000). The influence of shared mental models on team process and performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85, 273283. Mohammed, S., & Dumville, B. C. (2001). Team mental models in a team knowledge framework: Expanding theory and measurement across disciplinary boundaries. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 22, 89106. Mohammed, S., Klimoski, R., & Rentsch, J. R. (2000). The measurement of team mental models: We have no shared schema. Organizational Research Methods, 3, 123165. OReilly, C. A., & Pfeffer, J. (2000). Hidden value: How great companies achieve extraordinary results with ordinary people. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Rentsch, J. R., & Hall, R. J. (1994). Members of great teams think alike: A model of team effectiveness and schema similarity among team members. In M. M. Beyerlein & D. A. Johnson (Eds.), Advances in interdisciplinary studies in work teams, Volume 1: Theories of self-managing work teams (pp. 223261). Greenwich, CN: JAI Press. Rentsch, J. R., & Klimoski, R. (2001). Why do great minds think alike? Antecedents of team member schema agreement. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 22, 107120. Rouse, W. B., & Morris, N. M. (1986). On looking into the black box: Prospects and limits in the search for mental models. Psychological Bulletin, 100, 349363. Webber, S. S., Chen, G., Payne, S. C., Marsh, S. M., & Zaccaro, S. J. (2000). Enhancing team mental model measurement with performance appraisal practices. Organizational Research Methods, 3, 307322. West, M. A. (1997). Developing creativity in organizations. Chichester, United Kingdom: Wiley. Zelno, J. A., Bergman, S. M., Bowler, M. C., Engel, E. A., Vernon, R. N., Rentsch, J. R., et al. (2003, April). Are you thinking what Im thinking? Team cognition matters. Paper presented at the 18th annual conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Orlando, FL.
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CHAPTER
14
Sense Of Community: A Vital Link Between Leadership and Wellbeing in the Workplace
Roslyn B. Purkiss and Robert J. Rossi
The project described in this chapter is based on the work of John Gardner, Mark Royal, Robert Rossi, and the Center for Community Research in the United States where measures of a psychological sense of community were developed and tested in schools, workplaces, neighbourhoods and other settings (Gardner, 1990; Royal & Rossi, 1996, 1999). The project explores the association between a psychological sense of community, perceived work-related demands, perceived leadership behaviours of supervisors and key outcome variables. We recruited 358 teachers from 25 government-run primary schools in a section of the Sydney metropolitan area. Using path analysis, the goodness-of-fit of four basic models is explored, with and without community measures, and with and without variables assessing the influence of life events. A strong sense of community is associated with increased workplace attachment, increased feelings of wellbeing, lower absentee and turnover rates and lower levels of hopelessness. The leadership style of the persons school principal, as well as their immediate supervisor, was found to be important in building and maintaining a sense of community, and in increasing the support and likelihood for innovation. Work settings provide a context for developing both economic and social capital (Edwards, 2004). Social capital refers to the collective value of all social networks and the inclinations that arise from these networks
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to do things for each other (Putnam, 1995). The development of social supports may have profound effects on the ability and willingness of individuals to strive for excellence, to innovate and to work to their full potential. This study explores: (a) how a psychological sense of community serves to mitigate stressors and strains in the workplace and (b) how leadership affects, and is affected by, the sense of community among employees. In this chapter, the word stress refers to the general area of occupational stress and has its dictionary meaning. To distinguish contributing variables from outcome variables the words stressor (contributing) and strain (outcome) are used. The work setting in this study is the school, which, while mirroring stressors and challenges in other workplaces, offers two additional opportunities. First, what we learn about adults in the school setting may suggest priorities and approaches worthy of consideration in our attempts to engage students. Second, because schools contain a similar group of professionals, but differ in their immediate contexts, inferences can be drawn from results at individual sites as well as from results aggregated across those sites. This chapter focuses on results from analyses of data aggregated across 23 primary school sites. We begin by providing some background on community and on several concepts and factors that affect and are affected by it in the workplace. Then we turn to the description of our research methods, findings and their implications.
Sense of Community and Work-Related Demands
A psychological sense of community was first described by Sarason (1974) as a relational phenomenon, focusing on supportive relationships. Royal and Rossi (1996) further developed the concept, operationalising it through eleven important dimensions: shared vision, shared values, shared purpose, trust, caring, respect, recognition, teamwork, communication, participation and incorporation of diversity. Sense of community has been associated with a more united staff in terms of goals, values and vision; staff that are more supportive toward each other; a more interdependent and inclusive staff able to function more cohesively and effectively as a team; increased retention rates; increased job satisfaction; increased effort, motivation, morale and efficiency; increased innovation and the desire to strive for excellence; increased wellbeing of staff; and increased wellbeing and academic outcomes for students (Royal & Rossi, 1996, 1999; Rossi, 2004; Rossi & Shank, 2000).
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Leadership and Wellbeing in the Workplace
Stress, Hopelessness and Social Support
Stress. Teachers and principals have described an increasing lack of control in their workplaces, due to teacher shortages, increasing numbers of students with behaviour and learning problems, increasing risk of assault or violence, school closures, decreasing student numbers, increasing administrative duties, restructuring of departments, higher performance expectations and less autonomy in decision-making (Australian Institute of Criminology, 2002; Cockburn, 1996; Connolly, 2000; Macdonald, 1999; Productivity Commission, 2002). Karasek and Theorell (1990) found that work environments characterised by high demands (unrealistic deadlines and workloads, poorly defined work roles) and low control (decision-making authority and the opportunity to use and develop skills on the job) led to high levels of strain. Such environments have been linked with adverse psychological and physical outcomes for employees, and adverse outcomes for organisations. Adverse outcomes for employees have included sleep disturbance, depression and chronic health problems (such as cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and musculoskeletal disorders), while reduced job performance, morale and productivity of employees impact adversely on organisational outcomes (Jex, 1998; Karasek & Theorell, 1990; Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001; Schwartz, Pickering, & Landsbergis, 1996; Schnall, Landsbergis, & Baker, 1994 ). Hopelessness. The importance of hope has been recognised by researchers such as Seligman (1990) and Snyder (Snyder, Irving, & Anderson, 1991), and a lack of hope has been linked with negative health outcomes (Everson, Goldberg, Kaplan, Cohen, Pukkala, Tuomilehto, & Salonen, 1996). Kemeny (2003) linked development of depressive symptoms to the physiological effects of stressful experiences, and Schonfeld (2000) found that teachers, even in their first year of teaching, developed depressive symptoms in adverse environments. Social support. Researchers have differed in their understanding of the nature and role of social support. Some studies have found that the negative form of social interaction (interpersonal conflict) is a cause of strain (Frone, 2000; Janssen, 2004), some have found that social support has a direct effect on strain (Farber, 1984), and others have suggested that social support has a moderating effect on the stressorstrain relationship (Frese, 1999; Pelfrene, Vlerick, Kittel, Mak, Kornitzer, & De Backer, 2002. For reviews see de Lange, Taris, Kompier, Houtman, & Bongers, 2003 and Van der Doef & Maes, 1999).
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Workplace Attachment
Even though peoples perceptions of stressors, and their reactions to them, may differ, outcomes such as disengagement (e.g., absenteeism, turnover, disinterest or lack of enthusiasm), or an environment where people feel fearful or hopeless, detract from individual and group productivity. For example, a high turnover of teachers is a particular concern, not just because it can indicate potential staffing problems, but because it can negatively impact on school cohesion, staff performance and student outcomes (Ingersoll, 2001). While much research has sought to explain teacher turnover as a function of the characteristics of individual teachers, few studies have focused on explaining it as a function of organisational issues. Teacher recruitment programs may not be able to resolve staffing problems successfully unless they also address organisational factors that contribute to low retention rates and absenteeism (Connolly, 2000; Kenny, Carlson, McGuigan, & Sheppard, 2000).
Leadership and Sense of Community

Supervisor Support
Leadership behaviours characterised by trust, confidence, recognition and feedback have been found to enhance staff wellbeing, while negative interpersonal contexts, lack of support by supervisors and expectations of perfectionism in self or others, have been associated with increased strain, lowered job performance and intention to quit (Drach-Zahavy, 2004; Jex, 1998; Vandenberghe, Bentein, & Stinglhamber, 2004; Wiebe & McCabe, 2002). Interpersonal relationships with both co-workers and supervisors have been shown to be important for physical and psychological wellbeing and for job satisfaction (Elfering, Semmer, Schade, Grund, & Boos, 2002; McCann, Russo, & Benjamin, 1997).
Power
Power is one aspect of leadership, and describes the capacity of the leader to influence others. French & Raven (1959) identified five sources of power. Three of these sources may be traced to the leader: legitimate power (from a persons position), coercive power (based on inflicting, or the threat of, something negative e.g., sanctions, assignment of unpleasant work activities, removal of something positive), and reward power (based on giving positive benefits). The other two sources may be traced to group members, since they confer power on the leader: expert power (based on the perceived expertise, skills or knowledge), and referent power (based on admiration and a followers desire to be like the leader).
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Role overload
Strain
Hopelessness
Order
Role demands
Sense of community
Workplace attachment
Control
Support for innovation
Internal work motivation
FIGURE 1 Model 4: Demandcontrolsupport model.

Note: All models containing a sense of community were estimated for three referents other staff, supervisor, and principal.
Some current management texts regard access to all forms of power as important (Hersey, Blanchard, & Johnson, 2001), others distinguish between managers who are appointed and have legitimate power, and leaders who may influence others to perform beyond the actions dictated by formal authority (Robbins, Bergman, Stagg, & Coulter, 2000).
Features of the Current Study

The current study looks at how these various elements might be linked, and their relationship to a sense of community. The Community Assessment Guide (Rossi, 2002a), used to measure a sense of community, probes both overt and covert issues both attitudes and behaviours of staff and their congruence. The measures of hopelessness are specific to the work context and include reference to the work group, thereby refining previous research methods used to probe this construct (e.g., Beck, Weissman, Lester, & Trexler, 1974). The current study also expands the focus of previous research on leadership behaviour and social supports in schools, by including teachers perceptions of their immediate supervisor (possibly an assistant or deputy principal with whom he or she may discuss instructional approaches as well as work-related problems on a day-to-day basis), in addition to their perceptions of peers and the school principal.
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Path analysis is used to explore four main models: two models that include sense of community measures; and two direct-effects models that do not. The direct-effects models are included to determine whether inclusion of social support (sense of community) makes a difference. Exploring the importance of work-related demands (Model 1); demands and support (Model 2); demands and control (Model 3); and demands, control and support (Model 4); reflect the most prominent emphases within the theoretical and research literature. The demandcontrolsupport model, shown in Figure 1, is based on the work of Karasek and Theorell (1990) and Johnson and Hall (1988), and includes sense of community as a mediating variable between work-related stressors (role demands, role overload), control and key outcome variables. Six models examine the effects when measures of life events are also added.
Method
Participants
Twenty-five government-run primary schools in the northern Sydney metropolitan area were successfully recruited for the study, with a working sample of 338 teachers, from 23 schools, used in the final analyses.
Measures
Sense of community. The Community Assessment Guide, specifically adapted for this Australian study by Rossi (2002a), was used to sample teachers perceptions of community in relation to three referents: other staff, supervisor and principal. Work-Related Attitudes and Experiences Scale. The 18 items from the Work-Related Attitudes and Experiences Scale, developed in 1996 by Royal and Rossi, were modified for this sample by Rossi (2002b). Two additional items, assessing feelings of hopelessness about the future and the impossibility of reaching goals, were adapted from a 2-item scale of hopelessness developed by Everson et al. (1996). The final 20-item scale sampled teachers organisational attachment, job satisfaction, intention to leave, internal work motivation, role stressors (role ambiguity, role conflict, role overload), strain (finding work too stressful, feeling burned out) and hopelessness. Support for innovation. This was assessed using an item suggested by Brock (Personal communication, December 23, 2002): In this school I am encouraged to exercise initiative and innovation in my teaching. Order. Two items were adapted from Royal and Rossi (1999). These sampled teachers perceptions of student misbehaviour, lateness and absenteeism and their impact on teaching.
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Life events. Staff were asked to indicate to what extent they had experienced strain in their home, family and personal lives, during the last 12 months, and how severe it had been. Items, based on the work of Holmes and Rahe (1967), Miller and Rahe (1997), and Rahe (2002), used a 4-point scale from 0 (does not apply/not stressful) to 3 (extremely stressful). School-based data. Schools were invited to provide figures for staff sick leave and other leave during 2002, as well as staff turnover figures for the period 2002 to 2003. Supervisor section. Six additional items probed the nature of relationships between individual staff and supervisors.
Results
Confirmatory Factor Analysis
Community Assessment Guide. A first-order model confirmed the three factors described by Rossi (2004): factor 1 Mutual Obligation and Support, factor 2 Interdependence and Inclusiveness, and factor 3 Direction and Purpose. A good fit was demonstrated for all three referents, N = 338, df = 942; Other staff: 2/df = 2.78, RMSEA = .07, TLI = .97, CFI = .97; Supervisor: 2/df = 3.03, RMSEA = .08, TLI = .96, CFI = .97; Principal: 2/df = 3.17, RMSEA = .08, TLI = .96, CFI = .96. Internal scale reliabilities of = .97 (Other staff), =.98 (Supervisor), and =.97 (Principal), suggested that no more than 2% to 3% of the variance was due to random measurement error. Work-related Attitudes and Experiences Scale. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to confirm the factor structure, and to assess how well the two new items, measuring hopelessness, were performing. The model demonstrated a good fit with the sample, N = 338, df = 134, RMSEA = .07, TLI = .88, CFI = .93. Nine components were confirmed and loadings for Organisational Attachment (factor 1), Job Satisfaction (factor 2), Intention to Leave (factor 3), Internal Work Motivation (factor 4), Role Conflict (factor 5), Role Ambiguity (factor 6), Role Overload (factor 7), Strain (factor 8) and Hopelessness (factor 9) were supported. Internal reliability for the 20 items was .84 (Cronbachs alpha) with item reliabilities ranging from .83 to .85.
Job Status and Job Tenure
Mean score comparisons, using the Tukey-Kramer Honestly Significant Difference (HSD) test ( = .05), indicated differences in mean scores for job status, job tenure and gender (see Table 1). Mean scores for executive staff indicated greater role conflict, but more control (q = 1.97).
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TABLE 1 Significant Mean Differences based on Job Status, Job Tenure, Gender and Age Role conflict Control Sense of community Supervisor Staff category Executive Non-executive Permanent Temporary Mean (SD) 3.35 3.86 3.68 4.17 (1.21) (1.12) (1.14) (1.23) Mean (SD) 5.23 (0.73) 4.85 (0.97) Mean (SD) 4.75 (0.77) 5.13 (0.53) Principal Mean (SD) 4.68 (0.80) 4.99 (0.56) Sense of community (others) Mean (SD) 4.76 (0.70) 5.03 (0.61) Mean (SD) 3.10 (1.27) 3.62 (1.41) Intention to leave Mean (SD) 3.44 (1.5) 4.12 (1.43) 3.63 (1.41) 4.31 (1.45) Strain
Hopelessness Organisational Job attachment satisfaction Staff category Permanent Temporary Casual Male Female 2535 years > 45 years Mean (SD) 4.01 (1.35) 4.58 (1.25) 4.82 (1.38) Mean (SD) 4.69 (1.29) 5.08 (0.84) Mean (SD) 4.56 (1.15) 5.00 (0.97)
Compared with temporary staff, permanent staff had lower levels of sense of community with supervisors, higher levels of strain and greater role conflict (q = 2.35). Compared with casual and temporary staff, permanent staff also experienced higher levels of hopelessness (q = 2.35). Compared with female staff, male staff indicated lower levels of organisational attachment, job satisfaction and sense of community with other staff, and had higher intention to leave (q = 1.97). Teachers aged 25 to 35 years had the greatest intention to leave, and differences with teachers aged above 45 years were significant (q = 2.74).
Testing the Importance of Sense of Community Using Structural Equation Modelling
Four main models tested the effects of demands only; demands and support; demands and control; and demands, control and support. Model 4 the demandcontrolsupport model is the hypothesised model illustrated in Figure 1. Results for predicted paths, and the squared multiple correlations, are shown in Figure 2 (the model for the Principal is used as RMSEA results for this referent demonstrate the closest fit results for the other referents are available from the authors). Squared multiple correlations varied from .01 (Order) to .50 (Hopelessness) indicating that
288
.33 Role overload .16 .17 .06 Role demands .39 .32 .17 .41 Strain .17 .02 Order .14 .46 Sense of community .48 .43 .13* .27 Support for innovation
.54 .26 .33
.50 Hopelessness
.41 .51 Workplace attachment
.12* Internal work motivation
.01
Control
FIGURE 2
Demandcontrolsupport model (results for Principal as referent). Note: *p < .05; all other paths were significant at < .01. Items were reverse scored so that higher scores represented the most favourable response to an item and lower scores represented the least favourable (e.g., higher levels of sense of community were associated with lower levels of hopelessness).
predictor variables accounted for reasonable amounts of variance in some dependent variables, and that aspects of the model were providing a good fit, Other staff: 2/df = 4.03, TLI = .99, RMSEA = .08; Supervisor: 2/df = 2.00, TLI > .99, RMSEA = .06; Principal: 2/df = 1.69, TLI > .99, RMSEA = .05. All critical ratios for regression weights were below the cut-off score of 2.0. This model was better able to account for the variance in most dependent variables, accounting for large amounts of the variance in sense of community (2446%, depending on the referent), hopelessness (4650%), and workplace attachment (3141%). It did not offer any improvement over Model 3 in predicting the variance for strain, motivation or order. Table 2 gives a summary of the direct, indirect and total causal effects for Model 4 (for sense of community with the Principal). A summary of the goodness-of-fit statistics for Models 1, 2, 3 and 4 is presented in Table 3. The Principal referent, in Model 4, provides an excellent fit on all indices. While an infinite number of models could be tested, Table 3 demonstrates the importance of including a sense of community in the models in order to better account for the relationships.
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TABLE 2 Decomposition of Standardised Effects for the DemandControlSupport Model (Principal as Referent) Sense of community (SOC) Role overload Direct effect via strain Total Role demands Direct effect via strain via SOC via SOC, O via SOC, S via SOC, O, S Total Control Direct effect via SOC via SOC, O via SOC, S via SOC, O, S Total Sense of community Direct effect via Order via Strain via O, S Total .32** Strain (S) Hopelessness Order Workplace Motiva(O) attachment tion Innovation
.41** .41** .16** .05** .01nt .08** .11** .03nt .00nt .22** .04* .04** .16** .01nt .00nt .21** .04* .14** .22** .22** .11** .11**
.32** .48**
.22**
.04*
.04*
.14** .13* .21**
.08** .01nt
.16** .04nt .01nt .21** .33** .09** .01nt .43**

nt
.07*
.24** .02nt .00nt .26** .51** .04* .006nt .56**
.06*
.48**
.09** .17** .02
.07* .14**
.06* .12**
.34** .43**
.19**
.14**
.12**
.43**
Note: Tests from Kline (1998). *p <.05; **p <.01;
not tested for significance
Additional Analyses That Elaborate and Confirm These Results
The importance of negative affectivity and life events was tested. First, hopelessness was used as an indicator of negative affectivity. The same paths were used as in Model 4, but the path from strain to hopelessness was reversed so that hopelessness led to strain. Indices for the Principal were, 2 = 82.13, 2 / df = 2.93, TLI = .99, ECVI = 0.46, RMSEA = .08, p = .01, AIC = 156.13, indicating that Model 4 provided a better fit in describing the data. Second, a number of models containing life events were tested using the ECVI and AIC measures for comparison. However, the sense-of-community models provided a better fit with the data (best life events model: ECVI = 0.41, AIC = 138.20 compared with Model:
290
TABLE 3 Goodness-of-fit Summary 2 Model 1 (Direct effects) Demand model Model 2 (Sense of community) Demand support model Other staff Supervisor Principal Model 3 (Direct effects) Demand control model Model 4 (Sense of community) Demandcontrol support model Other staff Supervisor Principal
2
df
2/df
TLI
ECVI
RMSEA
AIC
557.7
28
19.92
< .01
.89
1.95
.24 (p < .01) 655.65
233.5 152.3 131.5
48 48 48
4.86 3.17 2.74
< .01 < .01 < .01
.98 .99 .99
0.94 0.70 0.64
.11 (p < .01) 317.52 .08 (p < .01) 236.29 .07 (p < .01) 215.51
221.3
15
14.75
< .01
.93
0.89
.20 (p < .01) 299.26
112.9 56.1 47.2
28 28 28
4.03 2.00 1.69
< .01 < .01 = .01
.99 >.99 >.99
0.56 0.39 0.36
.08 (p < .01) 186.93 .06 (p = .33) 130.12 .05 (p =.62) 121.23
Note: /df , normed chi-square; TLI, Tucker-Lewis Index; ECVI, Expected Cross-Validation Index; RMSEA, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation; AIC, Akaike Information Criterion
ECVI = 0.36, AIC = 121.23). More importantly, adding life events did not have a substantial effect on the standardised regression weights for any of the common paths in the models (changing them by no more than .01), nor did it explain any more of the variance in outcomes (making a difference of less than 5% to order, hopelessness, internal work motivation and strain; and no difference at all to organisational attachment, job satisfaction, intention to leave, or the composite workplace attachment). Comparison of key variables with actual absentee and turnover rates suggested further confirmation of the results. Independent data were obtained from school principals, giving staff absentee rates during 2002, and staff turnover rates for 2002 to 2003. However, since staff members did not complete the surveys until 2003, the relationships remain suggestive of important connections that require confirmation in further studies. Absence and turnover figures were adjusted according to the number of staff members at each school. Ten schools (43% of the sample) reported absentee data (range: 40568 days absent per school). After adjustments
291
for number of staff, this gave an adjusted average of between two and 24 days per person per school. Nineteen schools (83% of the sample) reported turnover data (range: 08 staff members), with an average adjusted turnover rate of 1920% per school. Sixty per cent of those who left schools were permanent staff. Mean scores for intention to leave were significantly correlated with sense of community (r = .63; p < .01), adjusted turnover rates (r = .57; p = .01), and actual turnover (r = .52; p = .02) (N = 23, N = 19, and N = 19 respectively). Mean scores suggested a strong relationship between sense of community (with other staff) and total number of days absent per school (r = .70; p = .02; N = 10).
Discussion
Sense of Community and Workplace Attachment
Higher levels of a sense of community were associated with higher levels of workplace attachment. The importance of a sense of community was reflected in the large increase in explained variance, which was three to four times higher for organisational attachment and job satisfaction in these models. Intention to leave was related to turnover and it was moderately affected by sense of community with supervisors and principals. In 2002 and 2003, schools in this sample had a turnover of up to 40% of their staff, and 60% of those who left were permanent staff. While reasons for the changes were not identified in this research, the movement of so many permanent staff is worthy of further interest. Mean differences were found based on gender; men compared with women were more likely to leave and to experience lower levels of job satisfaction, organisational attachment and sense of community with other staff. Differences between men and women in their perception of community with other staff may reflect difficulties that men experience in workplaces that are mostly comprised of women. Their reduced feelings of community with other staff and increased intention to leave may contribute to the ongoing difficulty that schools have in attracting and retaining male staff. Even more concerning was the greater intention to leave expressed by younger staff, both male and female. This may suggest longterm difficulties in retaining staff, as predicted by Connolly (2000) and Ingersoll (2001), if contributing factors within the organisation are not properly addressed.
Sense of Community, Strain and Hopelessness in the Workplace
There was a strong correlation between sense of community and wellbeing. However, the largest single contributor to strain was role overload, and neither the addition of sense of community nor life events made an
292
TABLE 4 Correlations of Supervisor Ratings with Sense of Community Sense of community measures Other staff Supervisor Principal Personal feelings of wellbeing Supervisor responsiveness Supervisor distance Sense of community (with supervisor) Support for innovation Security in making decisions Coercive power Referent power
Expert power
.59 n/a n/a .63 .27 .32 n/a n/a

n/a
.71 .69 .56 n/a .47 .46 .60 .49

.52
.72 .43 .43 .74 .51 .61 .63 .54

.56
Note: n/a = not appropriate. All correlations significant at p < .001. Items were reverse scored so that higher scores represented the most favourable response to an item and lower scores represented the least favourable (e.g., higher levels of sense of community were associated with lower levels of coercive power).
impressive difference to the explained variance in strain. Sense of community affected wellbeing most, not by lowering strain, but by lowering hopelessness. Sense of community models were able to account for half the variance in the hopelessness experienced by staff members. The hopelessness referred to in this study was well grounded in the workplace, and was not better accounted for by negative affectivity or life events. The 17 high-return-rate schools had an average participation rate of 90% (SD = 9.04). There was a high level of consensus among staff members about levels of strain and hopelessness in the 15 high-return-rate schools used in the final analyses. More than half the respondents in 13 schools agreed that they felt their work was too stressful, more than half the respondents in eleven schools felt burned out, and more than one quarter of the respondents in every school felt that it was impossible to reach the goals they would like to strive for at work. This level of agreement gives further support to the notion that aspects of the work environment were contributing significantly to strain and hopelessness, and it offers support for the concept of shared strain, that part of strain that different workers having the same job share (Semmer, Zapf, & Greif, 1996), and shared hopelessness. Although this study only measured predictors of strain and sense of community within schools, many staff members reported during whole school feedback sessions that issues at district, state and ministerial level contributed to their strain levels. This could be the reason why sense of community within the schools, alone,
293
was not sufficient to make a difference to strain and why increased strain contributed significantly to increased hopelessness. In future studies, where there are many layers of an organisation, feedback regarding relationships within and between the multiple layers is probably needed, rather than just within individual schools. Multilevel methods, designed to address such nested analyses, may be more helpful (Bliese & Jex, 2002; Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002; van Veldhoven, de Jonge, Broersen, Kompier, & Meijman, 2002). In addition, the 2-item strain scale used in this study may be insufficient to adequately explore these issues, and a range of episodic and ongoing stressors, such as those suggested by Schonfeld (2000), may be needed.
Leadership and Sense of Community
Correlations for variables with supervisor ratings are shown in Table 4. Different patterns of correlations are present according to the referent. Higher levels of a sense of community were associated with higher levels of perceived supervisor support. Sense of community, with the persons immediate supervisor was strongly predictive of sense of community with other staff and the principal. Where sense of community was higher (especially with the persons supervisor and principal), support for innovation and security in making decisions and taking actions, was also higher. Innovation has been defined as the expectation, approval and practical support for attempts to introduce new and improved ways of doing things in the work environment (West, 1990). Implementing innovative ideas, can save money, streamline work practices and help organisations to survive, adapt and grow, particularly in times of change (Gudmundson, Tower, & Hartman, 2003; Jaffe, 1995). Sense of community, in this study, included the ability to incorporate diversity. De Dreu and West (2001) found that ability to incorporate diversity and dissent had positive effects on a teams creativity, divergent thinking and quality of innovation. This study supports these findings, and those of West and Anderson (1996) who found that group social processes were the best predictors of overall levels of innovation. Higher levels of a sense of community were associated with variations in the way supervisors were perceived to assert power. Of the five ways of asserting power identified by French and Raven (1959), lower levels of coercive power were the most strongly related to higher levels of community. How supervisors treated other staff members affected community just as much as how the supervisor treated the individual staff member. The level of referent and expert power that school leaders were perceived to have were strongly linked to sense of community. Results from the cur294
rent study suggest support for Ogbonna and Harris (2000), who found negative relationships between bureaucratic and innovative cultures and between bureaucratic cultures and organisational performance.
Conclusion
This study extends previous research showing that models containing work-related demands, control and support, provide the closest fit to explain and predict key outcome variables in the workplace (Johnson & Hall, 1988; Karasek & Theorell, 1990). This Australian study supports results obtained in the United States by Royal and Rossi (1996), with higher levels of sense of community related to greater job satisfaction, lower role demands, lower levels of psychological distress and an increased likelihood of innovation.
Social and Clinical Implications

One of the most interesting results in the current study is the ability of sense of community models to predict levels of hopelessness. The strength of this association highlights the need to develop greater understanding of individual, social and contextual conditions that lead to the development of hopelessness in the workplace, and conversely, those that support hope. Prolonged feelings of hopelessness may have serious implications for the wellbeing of staff members. If they develop depressogenic inferential styles in the workplace about consequences, causes and themselves in relation to achievement events there is evidence to suggest that this may also increase their vulnerability to long-term depressive mood reactions (Abela, 2002; Abela & Brozina, 2004; Abela & Sarin, 2002).
Implications for Workplace Policies and Practices
Sense of community provides a vital link between leadership and workplace wellbeing. A sense of community among workers in schools appears to offset hopelessness that may result from stressors experienced within and outside the immediate school setting, and styles of school leaders have much to do with establishing this community. We may well ask what sorts of training or rewards are provided to enable these leaders to achieve community with their teachers. More generally, since hopelessness as a response to stress is not confined to schools, we must be concerned about how all organisations prepare and promote individuals to manage the work of others. Seniority and personal ability to carry out the specific work assigned, two typically used indicators of leadership readiness, seem only to be weak predictors of the ability to inspire, unify and encourage
295
mutually supportive work teams. Similarly, management courses that cover project planning and scheduling, and review human resources policies and procedures, may cover only superficial areas related to the necessary leadership qualifications. While more suggestive than definitive of the sorts of training that may be needed, the current study highlights the importance of preparing managers to be responsive and supportive of staff and to capitalise on the diverse talents and perspectives of all staff members. Rather than specific company policies for staff management, these results suggest that firms need to strive to develop a culture that continually motivates those in charge to seek opportunities to build community among employees.
Implications for Working With Students
Schools are unusual workplaces because the modelling provided by adults can significantly impact upon students. This study suggests that how teachers and executive staff create and maintain control within schools may be associated with important school-related outcomes. If more coercive leadership styles are related to staff outcomes such as reduced sense of community, lowered support for innovation, higher levels of hopelessness and higher attrition rates, they might have a similar impact on students. Royal and Rossi (1996) found that lower levels of a sense of community were related to higher levels of disruptiveness in class, and more thoughts of dropping out of school. The social climate impacts on the development of students interpersonal skills and attitudes now, and it impacts on those they take forward into adulthood (Vimpani, 2001). The importance of the workplace, and the school, in fostering sense of community extends far beyond their immediate boundaries. Increasingly we are learning that social cohesion is critical for societies to prosper economically and for development to be sustainable. High levels of social capital contribute to a willingness to take risks in a social context, based on the confidence that others will respond as expected and act in mutually supportive and non-harmful ways (Fukuyama, 1995; Putnam, 1995). For this reason, as much as for the immediate achievement of group goals, the values and interactions that underpin the growth of social capital, and sense of community, need to be nurtured and modelled in all aspects of a nations functioning. By creating workgroups and teams that share direction and purpose, support one another and are interdependent and inclusive, leaders contribute to national viability, as well as ensuring maximum innovation, productivity and wellbeing in workplaces and in schools.
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CHAPTER
15
The Psychology of Migration and Talent Flow: A New Zealand Perspective
Kerr Inkson, Stuart C. Carr, Nicola Allfree, Margot F. Edwards, Jill J. Hooks, Duncan J. R. Jackson, and Kaye J. Thorn
This chapter focuses on the psychology of migration as it applies to New Zealand expatriates mainly resident in Australia, the United Kingdom and North America, and the issue of brain drain or talent flow between countries. It reports an e-survey of 2208 highly-qualified expatriates who were contacted via their professional associations. Intention to return to New Zealand was related to a series of pushpull forces derived from the literature. A factor analysis of these derived two factors attracting return to New Zealand (Kiwi lifestyle and family/whanau) and two detracting from return to New Zealand (career and cosmopolitan culture). Achievement motivation of respondents was negatively, and affiliation motivation positively, related to intention to return. Results are discussed in terms of implications for New Zealands image, economic development and migration policies, and the difficulty for conventional organisational psychology in operating in contextual areas such as this is considered. In an increasingly globalised world, migration is a major issue. Multinational organisations extend from headquarters in developed western nations to include units around the world, and attempt to manage global flows of human resources (Dowling, Welch, & Schuler, 1999). Migrants leave their countries of origin in search of better lives in faraway
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places, creating brain drains of major concern to the countries that the brains appear to be draining from (Carrington & Detragiache, 1999). Young people worldwide set out on journeys of cultural and self-discovery, or simply look for better opportunities across the border, spawning global careers whose careerists are no longer citizens of their country of origin, but of the world (Inkson, Lazarova, & Thomas, 2005; Suutari & Brewster, 2000). As well as these phenomena being economic, sociological and political, they are also psychological. Macro-flows of human talent are the result of micro-decisions by individual travellers. A typical migrant from, say, Sri Lanka to the West demonstrates elements of the psychology of motivation, decision-making, learning in new settings and the effects of cultural difference on behaviour and interpersonal relationships. Migrating and multicultural labour forces are part of the context in which todays organisations, and therefore todays organisational psychologists, do their work. Yet the discipline has not overtly engaged with the issue in a meaningful way. It is true that there is an extensive literature on expatriate assignment, including psychological aspects and related human resource issues (Scullion & Brewster, 2001). There is also a substantial literature on the functioning and management of multicultural teams (Heijltjes, Olie, & Glunk, 2003; Janssens, 2001; Sderberg & Holden, 2002; Thomas, 2002). These represent areas that can comfortably be studied from within the confines of a sponsoring organisation, especially if that organisation is a multinational. We argue, however, that organisational psychologists have a responsibility to consider phenomena that take place independently of organisational action but which bear crucially on organisational context in this case labour market context and opportunity. Over the past few years, therefore, we have begun to consider some of the psychological parameters of migration, taking our own country, New Zealand, as a case in point.
The New Careers and the Big OE
Our interest in the area began with the involvement of one of us (Inkson) in a project designed to assess the effects of the deregulatory economic policies practiced by New Zealand (in parallel with many other developed countries) on the careers and career development of its citizens (Arthur, Inkson, & Pringle, 1999). This study suggested, as expected, that in the late 20th century, careers had become interorganisational rather than organisational, and were unpredictable and improvisational. A significant finding was that many study participants living in New Zealand had travelled and
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The Psychology of Migration and Talent Flow
worked overseas for substantial periods of time earlier in their careers, typically when they were in their 20s, and that these sojourns had often resulted in the acquisition of major career-relevant skills and in life-changing decisions about career direction. This caused the researchers to compare the conventional thesis of expatriate assignment within corporate frames with an antithesis of what has come to be called self-initiated foreign assignments (Suutari & Brewster, 2000). The argument being that due to the increasingly fluid organisational forms of the new millennium, self-directed migration may provide a better analogue for personal development in ambiguous circumstances than does company-controlled expatriation (Inkson, Arthur, Pringle, & Barry, 1997). This impression was confirmed by a subsequent study of the New Zealand institution known as the Big OE (Overseas Experience), which suggested that many Kiwi young people who spend on average 4 years in their twenties on working holidays abroad accrue significant benefits of personal development, particularly in soft skills such as self-confidence, adaptability, interpersonal skills and cross-cultural sensitivity more, at least in the eyes of the travellers, than if they had stayed home (Inkson & Myers, 2003; Myers & Inkson, 2003). A related study by Hudson (2004) showed similar, though less marked, effects on an older (average age 47 years) sample of Voluntary Service Abroad (VSA) volunteers from New Zealand undertaking 2-year aid assignments in Third World countries in Asia, Africa and the Pacific. This study also demonstrated that these volunteers had unusually high levels of the Big Five factor openness, thereby demonstrating a possible psychological basis for self-initiated migration and cross-cultural adaptation.
Talent Flow
However, both these studies confined their attention to New Zealanders who had come home following their foreign experience. In New Zealand, the concept of OE has strong social support and the benefits to travellers and, by extension, to New Zealand are recognised, but there is also an uneasy awareness that many who depart on the Big OE intending to travel for a couple of years before coming home to settle, in fact never return, but are instead captured by new jobs and careers, new business opportunities and new personal relationships that are tied to destination countries. This is particularly the case for those in possession of high qualifications and scarce skills, who can command a premium in economies that are significantly higher-wage than New Zealand. The loss of skilled New Zealanders overseas, particularly to Australia, the United Kingdom (UK) and North America, is part of a worldwide
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brain drain in which rich countries and their organisations are able to expropriate the skilled human resources of poorer countries by offering salaries and career opportunities that poorer countries cannot match. Concern about the alleged New Zealand brain drain is considerable (Bushnell & Choy, 2001; Choy & Glass, 2002), and conservative estimates put the percentage of New Zealanders who are abroad at any given time at 14%, with the most skilled and talented of the countrys people probably being overrepresented in this number (Bryant & Law, 2004). While the term brain drain is popularly associated with the loss of skilled people in science and technology occupations, the real loss is much wider, though probably focused most on professionally qualified people. In recent times, there has been major concern in New Zealand about skills shortages in manual trade occupations such as carpentry and plumbing, caused apparently by the emigration of trained tradesmen across the Tasman to Australia, where they can enjoy substantially higher earnings for the same work (Department of Labour, 2005a). At the same time, New Zealand makes up most if not all of its general shortfall of skilled people by encouraging immigration from countries such as China, India, Sri Lanka and South Africa (Choy & Glass, 2002), while Australians worry that their best scientists leave to enjoy the superior research funding and conditions of the United States (US) (Australasian Research Management Society, 2004). In our thinking about this issue we have replaced the alliterative sobriquet brain drain with the less memorable but more accurate term talent flow. In brain drain, the word brain has rather been captured by the physical scientists self-image that they, but not others, are brainy people (e.g., you dont have to be a rocket scientist . Why rocket scientist? Why not organisational psychologist?). We prefer the broader, more neutral concept talent. As for drain, this term suggests a unidirectional one-way loss, but as we have already demonstrated, one countrys drain is usually another countrys gain. The term flow, taken from physics, encourages us to envisage more complex formulations. What causes talent flow? There is no shortage of popular speculation and public interest in the phenomenon: indeed, popular magazines run frequent articles either bemoaning the permanent loss of our best talent due to the superior salaries or more benign tax systems overseas, or welcoming that same talents return to safe and secure or clean, green New Zealand, which has long been considered a great place to bring up children. Such articles which respond in cycles to high-profile events such as 9/11 or the recent crisis of staffing in the New Zealand building trades,
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all of whose members are now supposedly in Australia are usually well supported by selected case studies and provide, as it were, a set of urban legends about brain drain (Davenport, 2004). However, systematic evidence is hard to find. Moreover the issue has in recent years been politicised, with politicians claiming that, for example, high rates of corporate tax and personal tax, and a high-interest student loans scheme, were causing many New Zealanders to delay or cancel their returns home. Public policy relating to such factors, as well as to immigration criteria and government incentives to encourage expatriate return, needs a base in factual information. Population experts can measure some aspects of talent flow very precisely: from forms completed by migrants when they apply for immigrant status, and cards that they fill in at airports tell us how many immigrants or emigrants there are, where they are from, their age, gender, and often their qualifications, occupation, work experience, and financial assets. What they do not tell us is why. What are the motives for migration, and what kind of people, psychologically speaking, are the migrants? This is surely potentially critical information, for home and host countries and governments, for home and host organisations, and for migrants themselves. What we are pursuing here is no more, nor less, than a psychology of migration, particularly the migration of talented, economically active people.
Boundaryless International Careers
In an initial, theoretical formulation of the issues (Carr, Inkson, & Thorn, 2005), we worked from Arthur and Rousseaus (1996) concept of boundaryless career. A boundaryless career involves an emphasis on crossing boundaries, for example, intra- and inter-organisational boundaries, occupational boundaries, and industry boundaries, in pursuit of the development of personal competence and psychological success (Mirvis & Hall, 1996). In an international or global boundaryless career (Granrose & Chua, 1996), the principle is extended to the crossing of international boundaries. While a once-and-for-all decision by an individual to migrate is important, many international boundaryless careers are international on an ongoing basis. Individuals, particularly those in possession of scarce skills and a culturally intelligent outlook (Earley & Ang, 2003), may move on from country to country as their career progress and become progressively more cosmopolitan as they do. Boundaryless careers, whether international or not, involve three contrasting types of career competency: knowing-why (motivation and values), knowing-how (skills and experience), and knowing-whom
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(networks and reputation) (DeFillippi & Arthur, 1996). These provide a template for considering the competencies of global boundaryless careerists. Our initial focus here is on knowing-why. Migrants pursue international opportunities due to specific needs perceived to be better met in a foreign setting (knowing-why). Analysis of the literature on migration caused us to conceptualise five distinctive factors prominent in motivating decisions to migrate: economic (e.g., better wages in host country) political (e.g., escape from authoritarian regimes) cultural (e.g., choosing countries and cities with sizeable communities of people from the migrating culture) family (e.g., migrating in family groups, providing educational benefits for family members) career (e.g., pursuing more sophisticated professional careers or locating superior business opportunities). We noted that migration decisions were complex and might be influenced by combinations of these five factors in dynamic interaction. We also conceptualised talent flow as a global macro-level process of mass migration derived from the aggregation of myriad migration decisions made by millions of individuals worldwide.
An Empirical Study
In 2003, we commenced what we hope will be a series of studies of talent flow in and out of New Zealand. One thing that made this study unique was that, rather than looking at prospective migrants, we focused on return migration, that is the return home to ones own country following initial migration. Thus, our sample consisted of New Zealanders currently resident overseas, and our main focus was on their motivation and decision-making relating to possible return to New Zealand to settle. How many expected to return? Why did they want to return, or to remain overseas? What were the demographic and psychological characteristics of those who wanted to return and were they different from those who did not? Our first study consisted of an email survey of overseas New Zealanders, focused on their attitudes to New Zealand; their plans to return or to remain overseas, and the pros and cons they saw for each possible decision; and their basic demographic and psychological characteristics. The online survey form is available in full from http://www.newzealandersabroad.org.nz and preliminary results in Inkson, Carr, Cameron, Edwards, Jackson, Allfree, Thorn, and Hooks
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(2004). Because we wanted to look at the highly-qualified, high-value staff, we located our expatriate sample through professional associations of which they were members for example, in medicine, nursing, science, accounting, teaching and other areas. These associations directed their members attention to our website, where they were able to compete and return the questionnaire. Over a 6-week period in late 2003 we received 2208 valid questionnaires.
Sample
The main characteristics of our 2208 expatriate sample were: 63% male 85% European age 21 to 70+, median 40 years, 70% aged between 30 and 49 years median time overseas 5 years resident in a total of 72 countries 40% resident in UK, 27% Australia, 14% US/Canada 95%+ tertiary educated, 13% masters degrees, 5% doctorates 63% recruited through ICANZ the Institute of Chartered Accountants of New Zealand, which has many overseas members and went to more trouble than any other association to promote the study to its members therefore the sample had a strong bias to business professionals, although a majority were no longer working purely as accountants.
Expatriate Intention To Return
Both theory and psychological studies of migration have consistently used single-item measures of intended mobility (Abrams, Hinkle, & Tomlins, 1999; Zweig, 1997), and research exists to link intention to actual behaviour (e.g., Ajzen & Fishbein, 2000). Inferences we wished to test were also ordinal (Cliff & Keats, 2003). Thus, we chose to measure intentions to return versus stay abroad using a single item, on an ordinal response scale:
Which of the following best represents your future plans? (a) I will be returning to New Zealand permanently. (b) All things considered, I am likely to return to New Zealand permanently. (c) I have not yet decided whether to return to New Zealand permanently. (d) All things considered, I am likely to remain overseas permanently. (e) I will be remaining overseas permanently.
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FIGURE 1 Intentions concerning return to New Zealand.
As shown in Figure 1, the good news for New Zealand was that more respondents reported either intending to return to New Zealand or stated that they were likely to do so (44%), than either intending to or stating that they were likely to remain overseas (27%), while the remaining 29% said they had not yet decided. One possible reason for this was the strong sense of national identity that most respondents seemed to retain overseas. In answer to another question, over 90% said they still identified as New Zealanders, though about half of those said that they also identified with another country or saw themselves as citizens of the world as well as New Zealanders (Figure 2). We ran a test of association between intentions to return versus staying abroad and identification with New Zealand. There was a significant association between these two variables, 2 = 276, df = 20, p < .001, 2-tailed. The more clearly a participant identified with New Zealand, the more they tended to report that they intended to return home. Nevertheless, the idea that perhaps 40% or more of the sample might remain overseas permanently suggests that living offshore has major attraction to many expatriate Kiwis, and that, long-term, one might expect a huge proportion of the countrys human capital to be lost to New Zealand in this way.
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FIGURE 2 Current sense of national identity.
In order to identify core factors that could attract expatriates either to return to New Zealand or to remain overseas, we listed 26 potential items, derived from an analysis of the literature on migration. Respondents were asked to rate each item on a 5-point scale where +2 meant the factor provided a strong attraction to return to New Zealand, and 2 meant it provided a strong attraction not to return. The figures enabled us to construct an Attraction to NZ score for each factor, ranging from a possible +2 where everyone in the sample said the factor drew them strongly back to New Zealand, to 2 where everyone said the factor drew them strongly to remain overseas. The results are shown in Table 1 and tell a consistent story. The top few items pulling New Zealanders back are largely family factors, such as parents and the wish to bring up children. Next, items such as lifestyle, friends, and recreational and sports opportunities, which also draw people back, though not so strongly refer perhaps, to a relaxed Kiwi lifestyle. On the other side of the ledger, among factors with a net attraction away from New Zealand there is a range of items such as
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TABLE 1 Factors Causing Attraction to/Repulsion from New Zealand Factors (in order of attraction back to NZ) Parents/older relations Bringing up children Being close to relatives Safety and security Lifestyle Sense of identity Sports and recreational opportunities Friends Home ownership Cost of living Educational opportunities Tax system Having fun Developing new relationships Freedom to do what I like Partner (long-term) Ethnic mix Paying off my student loan Tall poppy syndrome Learning for life Arts opportunities Cultural opportunities Challenge Business opportunities Career opportunities Salaries Attraction to NZ +1.10 +0.95 +0.96 +0.73 +0.72 +0.63 +0.54 +0.39 +0.38 +0.28 +0.05 +0.02 0.08 0.16 0.17 0.22 0.24 0.26 0.34 0.39 0.43 0.48 0.68 0.70 1.27 1.31
Note: Ranges from 2 (maximum repulsion from NZ) to +2 (maximum attraction to NZ)
ethnic mix, cultural opportunities and arts opportunities, which may be thought of as attracting Kiwis to the more sophisticated aspects of life overseas. But the items acting most strongly in keeping New Zealanders abroad appear to be economic and career opportunities: these respondents perceive foreign environments as offering not just higher salaries, but better business opportunities, better career opportunities and more challenge. The overall scale formed from these items correlated highly with intention to return to New Zealand ( = .553, p < .001, 2-tailed), suggesting that these attitudinal forces have major impact in helping expatriates to frame their intentions. The division of factors suggested by these data was generally supported by an exploratory principal components analysis (PCA) of the same
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TABLE 2 Pattern Matrix for Features that Attract or Repel People to or from New Zealand Feature Lifestyle Bringing up children Sports and recreational activities Safety and security Cost of living Freedom to do what I like Home ownership Educational opportunities Partner (long-term) Parents/older relations Being close to relatives Friends Sense of identity Career opportunities Salaries Business opportunities Challenge Cultural opportunities Arts opportunities Learning for life Ethnic mix Developing new relationships Having fun Tax system Tall poppy syndrome Sums of squared loadings Cumulative per cent variance explained 1 .75 .67 .62 .59 .54 .48 .46 .42 .31 2 Component 3 4 5
.46 .31
-.90 -.89 -.42 -.33 .85 .70 .67 .48
.43
.33 .77 .73 .59 .55 .45 .44 .73 .38 1.51 46.35
4.14 21.17
2.56 29.77
2.97 35.99
3.46 41.46
Note: Principal components analysis with direct oblimin rotation and Kaiser normalisation
data (more fully reported in Jackson, Carr, Edwards, Allfree, Thorn, Hooks, & Inkson, 2005). This is shown in Table 2. We did not use principal axis factoring (PAF) for our EFA (exploratory PCA) because we wanted to retain the original variance of variables under scrutiny. We were building a new theoretical model. However, differences between results of PAF and PCA are often minor (Velicer & Jackson, 1990). The broad nature of the variables in Table 2 lends itself to some expected cross loadings. Deleting cross-loading items would nonetheless change the aim of the paper towards factorial purity, which theory suggests is not expected of variables like ours. We do not present percentage of variance
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TABLE 3 Equivalent Migration Motives according to Literature and Data Literature Review Economic Career Cultural Family Political Data Career Career Cosmopolitan Culture/Kiwi Lifestyle Family/Whanau
accounted for by each factor as well as total percentage explained. It is not possible to calculate redistributed percentage of variance explained by each factor when using an oblique form of factor rotation. We cannot present eigenvalues, since, in an oblique rotation, sums of squares loadings are presented. We labelled Factor 1 Kiwi Lifestyle, Factor 2 Family/Whanau, Factor 3 Career, and Factor 4 Cosmopolitan Culture. Factor 5, accounting for less than 5% of the variance, was uninterpretable. Given the broad nature of the constructs and the theoretical importance of the five factor variables, we feel that it would be adaptive to leave these all five components in. Other studies in different countries might use the same variables, yet may reasonably expect different loading patterns because of issues specific to their location. In Table 3, the factors emerging from our data are set against the predictions of our literature review. The comparison is generally supportive to our theoretical frame: the political factor relates most clearly to situations where migrants seek to move from repressive authoritarian regimes to democratic countries a situation clearly inapplicable to New Zealanders who have expatriated to other democratic nations.
Achievement Motivation
Economic development appears to be promoted by achievement motivation (Langens, 2001; McClelland, 1987). In a series of classic studies many years ago, McClelland (1961) showed clear links between achievement motivation and economic growth. Classically defined as seeking success in competition with a standard of excellence, achievement motivation has since been linked with variables such as entrepreneurial talent (Collins, Hanges, & Locke, 2004) and leadership and management (McNeeseSmith, 1999). Moreover, in examining travel patterns McClelland concluded that, peoples characterized by high [achievement motivation] tend to travel more (1961, p. 316). He also found a correlation of .74 between the
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achievement motivation of a sample of countries and simultaneous emigration rates from them, a conclusion more recently supported by Tidrick (1972) for Jamaica, and by Boneva, Frieze, Ferligoj, Pauknerov, and Orgocka (1998) in eastern Europe. Here, we were interested in determining whether patterns of migration from, and return to, New Zealand might cause net losses of skilled people with high achievement motivation. We speculate that failing to stimulate reverse migration amongst emigrants with high achievement motivation may be partly why New Zealand, which has very high levels of temporary migration and return, has recently lost ground in economic growth relative to other developed countries (OECD, 2004). If we are right in our relatively psychological approach to the debate, then New Zealands future progress, and possibly that of other nations, is linked to global talent flow, which will require serious attention by policymakers and business leaders. Our findings may also apply to the economic development of Third World countries seeking to base their progress on the development of educated and skilled workers (Carr, 2004; Chen et al., 2004). We are not aware of any research that has addressed directly whether achievement motivates the intentions of emigrants to return, or not to return, home. However, because high achievement motivation individuals prefer substantial challenges that are likely to be found in larger, more developed, and more heterogeneous countries abroad, we hypothesise that expatriate New Zealanders who intended to stay abroad would tend to have higher achievement motivation than would those who intended to return home. Because of recent evidence that achievement motivation is best considered as a disposition that is likely to manifest itself in particular contexts, such as the workplace (Baum & Locke, 2004), rather than as a rigid trait (McClelland, 1987), we conceptualised achievement motivation not as a need, but as an enduring work-related value (Adkins & Naumann, 2001). Values can be validly measured by the rank-ordering of single items (Meglino & Ravlin, 1998), thereby maximising parsimony and minimising social desirability and ceiling effects, while retaining validity and reliability (Rankin & Grube, 1980). Prioritising values is an inherent aspect of migration decisions. Under such conditions, ipsative measures have been recommended above normative ones (Thompson, Levitov, & Miederhoff, 1982). Hence, as a first indicator of achievement motivation, we used the following rank ordering test item:
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Which aspects of your life are generally most important to you? Please rank order the following according to how important they are generally for you in your life. Use a 1 for the most important to you through to a 6 for the least important to you: Friendship; Influence; Achievement; Lifestyle; Money; Family.
However, achievement motivation is a multifaceted construct (Carr, 2004). Based on Cassidy and Lynns (1989) widely respected 7-factor model of measurement, and to assess the nuances of achievement that were most salient to our participants, we included the following question. The respective underlying constructs from Cassidy and Lynnes subscales are indicated, for the reader, in parenthesis:
For me as a person, being overseas is about? Please rank order the following from 1 for most important, to 9, for the least important to you: The pursuit of excellence Working hard Boosting earning power Becoming a winner Being upwardly mobile Learning to solve problems Fulfilling leadership potential (Excellence) (Work ethic) (Material acquisitiveness) (Competitiveness) (Status aspiration) (Mastery) (Dominance)
In addition to these achievement motivation items, we added the following two values to the same measure: Being an ambassador for NZ, Having a good time. The item, Being an ambassador for NZ was included on the basis of Carr (2004), who argued that achievement can be defined socially (as in being motivated to achieve on behalf of, as, or through a collective group). The item, Having a good time was included as a counterpoint to achievement, and represented a specific view of Kiwi OE, that it is about personal enjoyment rather than career advancement (Mason, 2002).
TABLE 4 Motivation Scores of Likely 'Returners' to New Zealand, Undecided, and Overseas 'Stayers' Motive Family Lifestyle Friendship Achievement Money Influence NZ Returners 4.17 3.19 3.10 2.15 1.98 0.41 Undecided 3.93 3.11 2.91 2.43 2.09 0.54 Overseas Stayers 4.05 3.09 2.67 2.48 2.10 0.62
p
< .05 ns < .001 < .001 ns < .001
Note: Ranks on the values were reversed, so that the higher the scores, the more highly that value was ranked by respondents
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FIGURE 3
Facets of achievement and other values related to intention to return to New Zealand. Note: Kruskal-Wallis test, df = 4; 2 for Excellence = 91.1, p < .001; for Being a winner = 97.6, p < .001; for Having a good time = 84.3, p < .001; for Being an ambassador = 122.5, p < .001). Source: Inkson et al. (2005).
Achievement Motivation and Intentions to Return
Table 4 shows the mean rank orders of six values for three different groups: those who are disposed to return to New Zealand, those who are disposed to remain overseas, and those who have not yet decided. Overall, participants valued family highest, whereas influence (power motivation) was consistently ranked last of all. Those expecting to remain overseas had higher values for achievement and influence motivation, and lower values for family and friendship values than did those intending to return. In Figure 3, mean ranks for each of the Cassidy and Lynn facets of achievement, and our two additional items (Be an ambassador for NZ and Have a good time), are plotted against intention to return versus stay abroad. Kendalls Coefficient of Concordance () reveals that in relation to intention to return to New Zealand ranks were distributed nonrandomly, across the values as a whole, t = 0.151, = 2647.7, df = 8, p < .001. There was statistically significant variation across the intention to return measure for four functions of achievement motivation. Participants who intended to return to New Zealand perceived being overseas to be more about having a good time and being an ambassador
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for New Zealand, while those participants who intend to remain overseas are more likely to regard being overseas as about being a winner and achieving excellence. Priorities revealed by those seeking to remain overseas were close to the classic definition of achievement motivation offered by McClelland, namely the pursuit of excellence and a competitiveness to win. By contrast, participants who intended to return to New Zealand put relatively strong emphasis on friendship, having a good time while overseas and being an ambassador for New Zealand. Thus, achievement motivation was a predictor of reverse brain drain. As far as we are aware, no study has ever explicitly tested whether motivation is linked to reverse migration intentions back to a country-of-origin. Our data therefore break new ground in the psychology of global mobility and careers. In terms of McClellands original emphasis on three basic forms of motivation (i.e., including power and affiliation), power motivation (as measured by our item on influence) was relatively low in salience, perhaps due in part to New Zealander cultural values of egalitarianism (Carr, 2004), but influence tended to be valued more by those not intending to return. In contrast, our data linking reverse migration to affiliation motivation resonates both with our finding that family, social and lifestyle factors are attributed the greatest power in attracting expatriate New Zealanders home (Table 1), and with recent business-related research in New Zealand (GIAB, 2004), which suggests that New Zealanders are generally satisfied with their countrys image as familyand lifestyle-oriented.
Discussion
We suggest that attraction toward and away from New Zealand may represent alternative self-reinforcing cycles. The image of New Zealand among sample participants, local residents and probably foreigners, is most likely that it is clean and green, relatively safe from terrorism, has a relatively slow pace of life, has good recreational opportunities and enhances social, particularly family, relationships. This image is actively promoted to expatriates as the lure to draw them back (Department of Labour, 2005b). However, arguably, that is exactly opposite to what achievement-oriented people, potentially the most potentially productive, want to hear. Thus, the way that New Zealand is promoted may attract the less economically active and discourage the active. This kind of process in personnel selection in organisations has been termed ASA, for Attraction, Selection, and Attrition (Schneider, Smith,
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Taylor, & Fleenor, 1998). In ASA, recruits are attracted to organisations whose values they share; while those with weaker affinities are alienated, and decide not to join, or leave if they do join. As this cycle intensifies, the organisations culture becomes increasingly homogenous. An analogous process may take place at the level of national economies (Stark, 2003). Thus, according to our data macro-level processes of brain drain (and gain) may be driven by psychological tensions between achievement and affiliation motivation. To an extent therefore, the motivational axes we have investigated may be fundamental both to issues of brain drain and economic development (Carr et al., 2005).
Conclusions, Limitations and Future Research
We believe our studies show complexities in the flow of migrants between nations that are not captured by conventional head-counts of migration. Consideration of temporary OE migrants, for example, as against conventional images of permanent migrants, draws attention to the shifting psychological dynamics of the phenomena. Our results demonstrate some clear psychological antecedents of migration behaviour, in respect of the immediate attitudes and reasons for migration and the underlying values and motivational make-up of migrants. They are also of interest in terms of our unique focus on return migration to the country of origin. In relation to the specific issues of OE and brain drain as applied to New Zealand, our findings provide information of potential value to public and private sector organisations and to government policy makers as they grapple with problems of retention and re-attraction of high-quality members of the workforce. Some organisations, for example, encourage promising employees to travel, and provide them with support and introductions, on the understanding that if and when they return they will seek to resume employment with their benefactors. Other efforts focus on creating and developing an active diaspora network of expatriate Kiwis willing and able to provide expertise to New Zealand and its enterprise by virtual means, without actually going back (Gamlen, 2005). Knowledge of incentive structures enhancing travel provides a basis for policy above and beyond the urban myths that sometimes pass for facts when such contentious topics are debated. Results relating to achievement motivation require follow-up, for the measures on which they are based are unsophisticated; but if validated they would provide a peculiar paradox for national decision makers. If we are correct, then in seeking to progress itself into the top rank of the OECD, New Zealand is most likely to lose permanently those who can do most to assist, and to attract back those who can do least.
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The analyses reported in this chapter are exploratory only. Our data also include participant perceptions about perceived strengths gained while overseas and qualitative analysis has highlighted key areas as work experience, along with growth in personal and socio-cultural skills, beliefs and attitudes. Initial analysis of the perceived strengths data provides strong evidence that overseas experiences lead to an increase in global literacy as discussed by Sderberg and Holden (2002). Increasing recognition of transnationalism, and the advantages of being internationally mobile, was further confirmed by a small number of semistructured interviews, conducted with 31 of the original participants, about decisions to stay away or return home. In subsequent research, we expect to report regression analyses of various demographic and attitudinal factors to the key dependent variable, intention to return. We also seek to extend our focus on emigrants from New Zealand, to the immigrants who replace them (Bryant & Law, 2004). The motivation of this group, as well as their counterparts who have never left New Zealand, needs to be tested. Systematic comparisons across the three groups will enable us to check more closely whether, and how precisely, ASA and other variables such as age and maturity influence reverse migration and the brain drain. Reverse migration is complex, but it is nevertheless only a subsystem within a much more complex migratory macrosystem. The psychological basis of that system is fundamental to understanding the whole system and, in New Zealand, our group looks forward to completing further such studies.
Acknowledgments
This research was possible by a research grant awarded to Inkson, K., Carr, S. C., Rigby, S. M., and Toulson, P. (2002). Brain drain and brain gain in New Zealand. Academy of Business Research Strategic Funding Group (ABRSFG). Massey University, New Zealand.
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CHAPTER
16
The Top Ten Reasons Why Everyone Should Know About, and Study, Organisational Justice
Jerald Greenberg
In this chapter, I propose 10 reasons why I believe social scientists need to understand and study organisational justice. These are: (10) everybodys doing it (the topic is very popular); (9) there is solid theoretical history (well-developed theories exist that can aid researchers); (8) we agree on what it is (social scientists have converged upon an understanding of what is meant by various forms of justice); (7) justice perceptions are measurable (a carefully-validated rating scale measuring organisational justice is in use); (6) justice perceptions predict organisational attitudes and behaviour (the connection between organisational justice and other areas of organisational psychology are well developed); (5) conceptually, justice is versatile (it may be an independent variable, a dependent variable, or a moderator variable); (4) many conceptual parking spaces remain available (exciting new ideas are left to be considered); (3) justice concepts can be applied (justice is applicable to many organisational phenomena); (2) justice is fundamental (justice is closely connected to several basic psychological phenomena); (1) justice concerns are universal (despite differences in the way justice is defined and reacted to around the world, concerns about justice prevail everywhere). In 1987, I coined the term organisational justice to refer to peoples perceptions of fairness in organisations (Greenberg, 1987). I conceived of
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it as being composed of two major forms. Distributive justice, following in the tradition of Homanss (1961) theory of social exchange and Adamss (1965) theory of inequity, focuses on perceived fair distributions of outcomes (e.g., pay). Procedural justice, following in the tradition of sociolegal studies (Thibaut & Walker, 1975), focuses on the perceived fairness of the procedures used to determine those outcomes. Those constructs were already popular in social psychological research and in legal research when I wrote that article, but there I introduced them to the organisational sciences under the organisational justice brand. My objective was to promote the idea that matters of fairness are of considerable concern to people in organisations and that existing conceptualisations could be used to explain them. Since that time, the study of perceived fairness in organisations has grown considerably in volume, sophistication and significance to our understanding of organisations in general. Accordingly, I believe that anyone interested in organisations should know about organisational justice, and have good reasons to study it. Here, I describe 10 such reasons. Specifically, in this chapter, I will demonstrate that organisational justice is not a mere abstraction. Indeed, it is a key concept that plays important roles in the lives of individual employees and the functioning of the organisations that employ them. With this in mind, I present my opinions as to why all industrial/organisational psychologists indeed, management scholars in general should understand organisational justice and how the field stands to benefit from studying it. Although admittedly arbitrary in nature, I present a round number of reasons, ten in all. In the tradition of some popular radio and television programs, I present them in descending order from the tenth to the first most compelling reason. Although my selections for this countdown and their ordering reflect my personal opinions, with all the attendant bias and lack of objectivity one might expect, my opinions themselves are not uninformed. Indeed, my points themselves are based on sound observations of the literature, which I draw on to support my claims.
Reason 10: Everybodys Doing It

The synergy essential for science to advance is facilitated when scholars work within a community whose members contribute to common issues jointly and in active fashion. In the case of organisational justice, it is clear that the level of activity has been tremendous in recent years, thereby allowing synergies to abound. The popularity of organisational justice may be documented in several ways. First, consider citations to articles in the Web of Knowledge database described using the keyword organisational justice. As shown in
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Organisational Justice: The Top 10 Reasons

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Frequency
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0 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
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FIGURE 1 Frequency of citations to the keyword 'organizational justice' in the Web of Knowledge database (19902005).
Figure 1, these rose dramatically in the 16-year period from 1990 to 2005. Considering that I only coined the term 3 years before the first year noted on this graph, this growth is impressive. Although I have not gathered comparable data for other key terms, rendering interpretation casual, I would speculate that few other nascent topic areas, if any, have seen so rapid a rise in popularity. Despite the absence of comparative data, my confidence in the fields growing popularity is boosted by anecdotal reports that it regularly has been among the most popular topics of papers submitted to the most prestigious professional meetings in our field. Reviewers of papers submitted for consideration at the annual programs of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology and the Organizational Behavior Division of the Academy of Management can now register their preference for reviewing papers on this topic by ticking boxes labelled organisational justice. Only a decade or so ago, however, indicating such a preference required completing a response in the other category. By this standard, organisational justice now stands side-by-side with such venerable topics as leadership, job satisfaction and motivation. Although this is an imperfect metric, the presence of a topic category in an index of the topics covered in a fields professional meetings is a legitimate archival indication of that topics popularity. Speaking of professional meetings, a particular session held at the 2005 meeting of the Academy of Management, in Honolulu, Hawaii, also
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marked the special status of organisational justice. A symposium chaired by Russell Cropanzano marked the 20-year anniversary of the publication of a chapter in which Robert Folger and I first introduced the concept of procedural justice to the field of human resources management (Folger & Greenberg, 1985). Beyond the personal fulfilment that session offered me, its true value was in documenting the many ways in which procedural justice grew from the fledgling concept we borrowed from socio-legal scholars, to its current status as a staple in the cupboard of management researchers and practitioners. Further evidence of the popularity of organisational justice is provided by the presence of several landmark publications. If there is any one type of book that signals the arrival and legitimacy of a field, it is surely a handbook. In 2005, my Handbook of organisational justice, co-edited with Jason Colquitt, was published by Erlbaum (Greenberg & Colquitt, 2005). Its 20 chapters include contributions by virtually all of the fields luminaries and reflect the vibrant state of the field today. In addition to this handbook, the volume of conceptual advances has also merited the launch of a new annual series of books that I am editing, Research in organisational justice. Published by Elsevier under the JAI imprint, this series highlights the most recent, cutting-edge advances in the field. The inaugural issue is scheduled for publication in 2007. With its own annual series dedicated to it, it is clear that organisational justice has arrived.
Reason 9: There is Solid Theoretical History

The notion of justice is far from new, of course. The writings of Aristotle, particularly in the Nicomachean ethics (1925) and Plato (Parry, 1996) provided a solid philosophical foundation for examining notions of justice. Analyses of justice remain spirited among philosophers (for a review, see Buchannan & Mathieu, 1980), with modern classics by Rawls (1999, 2001) and Nozick (1974) receiving the bulk of the attention. Despite this rich tradition, a more descriptive approach to justice generally is adapted by social scientists. Theoretical conceptualisations of justice have been popular among psychologists for some time (e.g., Furby, 1980), and it is upon this work that most of the current conceptualisations of organisational justice have been based. However, conceptualisations of justice also have been prominent in such social science fields as economics (Worland, 1980), political science (DiQuattro, 1980), sociology (Rytina, 1980), anthropology (Nader & Sursock, 1980), and public policy (Soltan, 1980). Although organisational psychologists studying justice in organisations have a vast store of interdisciplinary perspectives available, the
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wealth of current theorising does not require going beyond our own fields books and journals. Notably, todays organisational justice scholars have moved beyond the individual silos of distributive, procedural and interactional justice to far more integrative approaches (for an overview, see Colquitt, Greenberg, & Zapata-Phelan, 2005). Three such approaches may be identified. First, there are counterfactual conceptualisations, which conceive of justice in terms of what might have been. These include Folgers (1986) referent cognitions theory, and its successor, fairness theory (Folger & Cropanzano, 2001). Second, there are group-oriented conceptualisations, which conceive of justice in terms of the importance they place on acceptance by members of the various groups to which people belong. These include Lind and Tylers (1988) group value model, and subsequent refinements such as the relational model (Tyler & Lind, 1992) and the most recent incarnation, the group engagement model (Tyler & Blader, 2003). Third are various heuristic conceptualisations, so-called because they focus on the mental shortcuts involved in forming and using judgments of fairness. These include fairness heuristic theory (Lind, 2001) and its successor, uncertainty management theory (Lind & Van den Bos, 2002). Although this maze of theories may be bewildering to the uninitiated (or sometimes even to insiders), it paints a vivid picture of a literature that is not only active, but also theoretically rich. And this, I believe, will help the field develop further. After all, research conducted without the guidance of theory is unlikely to provide much insight into underlying psychological processes. Clearly, this cannot be said of the field of organisational justice.
Reason 8: We Agree on What It Is

As Locke (2003) has asserted, for scientific constructs to develop, there must be agreement regarding their fundamental nature as based on clear definitions. I am pleased to report that this indeed is the case with respect to organisational justice. When management scholars refer to justice in organisations they generally share an understanding of what is meant or, at least, they have a widely accepted basis for doing so. In first introducing the concept of organisational justice (Greenberg, 1987), I drew a distinction between distributive justice (the perceived fairness of the manner in which outcomes are distributed) and procedural justice (the perceived fairness of the procedures used to determine those outcomes). This distinction has received widespread empirical support (Colquitt, 2001; Greenberg, 1986) and it has become understood more fully and deeply over the years, such as in research focusing on the interaction
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between them (Brockner & Weisenfeld, 1996). Although complexities regarding their nature have come to the fore (Brockner & Weisenfeld, 2005), as may be expected in any rapidly advancing field, such insight has enriched rather than challenged our understanding of these fundamental concepts. As these forms of justice became prominent, a third form, interactional justice, was introduced by Bies and Moag (1986). This refers to the perceived fairness of the manner in which procedures are communicated. Subsequently, I conceptualised interactional justice more narrowly, consisting of two major components (Greenberg, 1993b) informational justice, the quality of the information used to explain procedures, and interpersonal justice, the dignity and respect shown in the course of offering these explanations. Subsequently, the validity of this conceptualisation was established empirically (Colquitt, 2001). Although there has been some controversy regarding the nature of interactional justice vis--vis procedural justice, and the role of informational justice and interactional justice therein (Bies, 2001), this reflects the fields efforts to understand the nature of organisational justice in a more fully nuanced manner. In no way does it undermine scientists fundamental understanding of organisational justice itself. An analogy strengthens this point. Just as medical research enhances our understanding of the human body without making it difficult to recognise the body when we see it, so too do social scientists efforts to understand justice in organisations enhance our understanding of it without casting doubts on the core of the concept itself. Bottom line: some conceptual fine-tuning notwithstanding, scholars coming onboard to study organisational justice may find a relatively stable conceptual foundation upon which to build.
Reason 7: Justice Perceptions Are Measurable

Few things escalate interest in studying a concept more rapidly than a rating scale to measure it. After all, capturing the essence of a construct through a complex validation process is an onerous psychometric undertaking. Once such an instrument has been developed, however, using it is merely a matter of pulling it off the shelf. With the work of measurement already done, scientists using prevalidated scales are freed to concentrate on relationships between variables, rather than on the more fundamental matter of how to measure them (assuming, of course, that they have selected the measurement instrument appropriately). That this description is applicable to the field of organisational justice is a reflection of my previous point (Reason 8) about conceptual agreement. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to develop a measure of a
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construct whose basic meaning is uncertain. After all, a measure cannot be construct-validated if we do not have a clear sense of what it is. Then, once a measure of a construct has been developed, its meaning tends to be defined in terms of the instrument(s) used to measure it. So, for example, if one were to ask a psychologist what is meant by intelligence, s/he may reply by saying, intelligence is whatever an intelligence test measures. As circular as this logic may be and as flippant as this psychologist may seem, his/her point about the underlying association between construct development and measurement is entirely sound. Through widespread use, measures of psychological constructs do indeed come to be operational-level proxies for the very constructs themselves, as implied. This is precisely why the health of a field depends on the development of construct-valid measures. Unless what we are measuring and calling some construct adequately reflects the essence of that construct, our understanding of it will suffer. It was this in mind that, in the early 1990s, I issued pleas for the creation of an organisational justice scale. Notably, in commenting on this, I said that, A sure sign of the immaturity of the field of organisational justice is the lack of a standardized instrument with which to measure perceptions of distributive and procedural justice (Greenberg, 1990a, p. 143). Even more explicitly, I noted that, the time is ripe for such an endeavor to be undertaken (Greenberg, 1990b, p. 423). Subsequently, Jason Colquitt (2001) took the lead by developing a carefully validated measure of organisational justice. And, in keeping with my suggestion that scientists like to use ready-made scales, Colquitts measure has been used widely in recent years. Colquitt is aware of translations of his scale into Spanish, French and Portuguese (personal communication, March 14, 2006). Colquitts scale consists of separate measures of each of the various types of organisational justice. Responses are marked on 5-point scales in which 1 equates with to a small extent and 5 indicates to a large extent. The scale dimensions are: Procedural justice seven items ( = .93) based on Thibaut and Walker (1975) and Leventhal (1980). A representative item is, To what extent have you been able to express your views and feelings during those procedures? Distributive justice four items ( = .93) based on Leventhal (1976). A representative item is, To what extent does your (outcome) reflect the effort you put into your work? Interpersonal justice four items ( = .92) based on Bies and Moag (1986). A representative item is, To what extent has (the authority figure who enacted the procedure) treated you with respect?
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Informational justice five items ( = .90) based on Bies & Moag (1986) and Shapiro, Buttner, and Barry (1994). A representative item is, To what extent has (the authority figure who enacted the procedure) explained the procedures thoroughly? Before the publication of Colquitts (2001) scale, researchers relied on either more specialised measures (e.g., Donovan, Drasgow, & Munson, 1998) or, more frequently, ad hoc measures. Although, as I have argued elsewhere (Greenberg, 1993a), ad hoc measures of justice have value insofar as they may capture the unique qualities of the setting in which they are used, such measures have done little to stimulate follow-up research. For this, Colquitts (2001) scale has been quite useful. Indeed, now that scientists can measure perceptions of organisational justice, they are well-positioned to study it. And, as the growing popularity of organisational justice attests (see Reason 10), they have been doing precisely this.
Reason 6: Justice Perceptions Predict Organisational Attitudes and Behaviour

One of the most telling and, to many, most compelling aspects of organisational justice is that it is closely related to a wide variety of organisational attitudes and behaviours. Whether the relationships have been found to be causal or merely correlational, it is clear that the connection between organisational justice and other variables of interest to organisational scientists is vast. This is noteworthy because it highlights the fundamental role that justice perceptions play in the world of work. In fact, it is with this in mind that I have been known to proclaim that you cannot study organisations for long before stumbling upon matters of justice. Although the relationships are complex, a number of well-established links between justice and work-related attitudes serve to illustrate this point. For example, research has shown that distributive justice is predictive of outcome satisfaction, whereas procedural justice is predictive of system satisfaction (for a review, see Greenberg, 1990b). Procedural justice has been found to be associated with such key variables as turnover intention and trust in management (Kernan & Hanges, 2002). Lind, Greenberg, Scott, and Welchans (2000) found that laid-off workers perceptions of the interactional justice of their former employers were predictive of their interest in bringing lawsuits against them. I also found that high levels of interactional justice caused high levels of endorsement with organisational policies, even when these were aversive to the workers involved (Greenberg, 1994).
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Many organisational scientists find themselves attracted to organisational justice because of its connection to various measures of job performance. These include standard productivity measures (e.g., units produced), as well as indices of extra-role performance (e.g., pitching-in to help others), and even deviant behaviour (e.g., employee theft). For example, job performance has been found to improve, at least temporarily, in response to encounters with overpayment inequity (Greenberg, 1988) and to decline in response to underpayment inequity (Greenberg, 1990a). Of course, although people may be unwilling (or even unable) to adjust their job performance either upward or downward in response to perceptions of distributive injustice, they may find it readily acceptable to express themselves by altering their extra-role performance. Indeed, measures of organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB; Organ, 1990) have been linked with organisational justice (Moorman & Byrne, 2005). People who feel unfairly treated by their organisations are unwilling to go the extra mile needed to be good organisational citizens. Of key interest to me over the years has been another form of behaviour related to organisational injustice, deviant behaviour. My research has shown that employees engage in theft because they are motivated to right the perceived wrongs brought upon them by being underpaid by their organisations (Greenberg, 1990a, 1993c, 2002). Also of considerable interest, is that organisational justice has recently been found to be related to various measures of personal health. For example, my own research has linked organisational justice with insomnia in an interesting fashion (Greenberg, 2006). Nurses whose pay was reduced were found to suffer insomnia, although this reaction was dramatically lower among those whose supervisors were trained in interactional justice. In other research, perceptions of injustice were linked to a wide variety of critical health reactions, such as emotional exhaustion (Kalimo, Taris, & Schaufeli, 2003), depression (Tepper, 2001) and burnout (Janssen, 2004).
Reason 5: Conceptually, Justice is Versatile

Although it may not be obvious what I mean when I refer to the conceptually versatile nature of organisational justice, this actually is a key characteristic of the field of organisational justice. What I am saying is that organisational justice plays many different roles in scientific studies. Justice has been treated as an independent variable, as in studies showing the effects of justice or injustice on different variables (e.g.,
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Greenberg, 1990a). Justice has also been found to be a dependent variable, as in studies showing that various factors affect perceived fairness (Greenberg, 1986). Justice also has been found to be a moderator variable, such as in studies showing that certain overall (i.e., main) effects are qualified by perceptions of justice (e.g., Brotheridge, 2003). The versatility of organisational justice may also be understood in terms of how it is used in research. For example, some investigations dig deeper into interrelationships between various justice forms and variables. Although there are many examples, nowhere is this more apparent than in research exploring the relationship between distributive justice and procedural justice. Indeed, over a decade ago, Brockner and Weisenfeld (1996) summarised the findings of 45 studies bearing on this interrelationship. Another approach is represented by many studies examining justice in conjunction with variables within contexts of interest. I refer to these as investigations of, the justice of . For example, justice has been examined as it relates to a vast array or organisational phenomena, such as pay (e.g., Greenberg & McCarty, 1990), performance appraisal (e.g., Greenberg, 1986), stress management (e.g., Vermunt & Steensma, 2005), employee selection (e.g., Gilliland & Hale, 2005), discrimination and prejudice (Stone-Romero & Stone, 2005), and consumer behaviour (Schwind & Conlon, in press). These are only a few such areas in which justice angles have been examined. A complete list of topics examining the justice of would be lengthy. Why does this conceptual versatility matter? The answer is straightforward: it highlights the depth and breadth of the manner in which justice is embedded into the literature. In view of this, it is little wonder that organisational justice has gained such widespread popularity among management scholars (see Reason 10).
Reason 4: Many Conceptual Parking Spaces Remain Available

There is no mistaking the fact that some areas of research have developed more thoroughly than others. When I first introduced the concept of organisational justice to the field of management, development was almost nonexistent. Foraging in relative darkness, I borrowed heavily from social psychological research and theory (where development was much further along) and applied this work to organisational settings and issues (e.g., Folger & Greenberg, 1985). In this sense, then, because my earliest efforts in this area were extrapolations, there was not much on this topic already published. Or, to draw on a metaphor, there were plenty of parking spaces available in the lot. Driving through an empty lot,
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there were few chances that I would bump into existing work, but at the same time, there also were few road markers to guide me. The opposite situation exists in some areas of management research that have a longer history and that have been more thoroughly developed, as a result. The voluminous research on goal setting is a good example (e.g., for an overview, see Latham & Pinder, 2005). Because there has been so much careful research in this field, some may complain that all the good ideas have been taken. Although this surely is debatable, it is clearly more challenging in a well-developed area to find a contribution that is not merely incremental in nature a spin-off on something that has already been done. This is not bad, of course, because it reflects the relative maturity of this field. I hope that organisational justice will be there one day. This is not yet the case, however. Currently, the field of organisational justice is housed neither in an empty garage nor in one approaching capacity. Today, it lies between these two extremes, which is why I say that there are still good parking spots available. For newcomers to this field, there are exciting implications. Because the topic has not been overmined there still are plenty of opportunities for major new ideas to develop. At the same time, however, those working in this field no longer have to toil in the dark. As I noted in conjunction with Reason 9, there are many conceptual guideposts to help newcomers to the field. And, given its rapidly growing popularity (see Reason 10), it is clear that scientists are finding their visits most welcome.
Reason 3: Justice Concepts Can be Applied

To me, one of the most fascinating and important characteristics of the study of organisational justice is that it can be applied to understanding a variety of different organisational phenomena. In my discussion of Reason 5, for example, I noted that organisational scientists study the, justice of various phenomena, suggesting that a lively literature has connected organisational justice to a variety of settings. However, examining justice in a certain context does not necessarily involve application in that context per se. Application of justice concepts that is, using justice notions to improve organisational functioning has been a key basis for its investigation over the years. Let us consider some examples. We know, for example, that promoting justice in organisations helps to improve organisational functioning. One of the most compelling studies to show this was conducted by Simons and Roberson (2003). These researchers studied the connection between perceptions of two forms of justice, interactional and procedural, among hotel employees relative to
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the turnover of those employees and the satisfaction of guests staying in that hotel. Their findings were compelling. Fair treatment of employees was linked with high levels of employee retention and perceptions of high customer service among guests. Apparently, perceived fairness increased the hotels capability to address the needs of its customers. To quote the authors, the results of this study highlight the potential bottom-line impact of organisational justice. Thus, the fair treatment of employees may enhance organisational competitiveness (p. 442). Another interesting study shows that procedural justice has important effects on the complex world of strategic alliances. Yadong (2005), studying 124 cross-cultural alliances in China, found that the profitability of these alliances was higher when parties shared the belief that procedural justice was high, but lower when they differed in their perceptions of procedural justice. Shared perceptions of procedural justice were particularly high when conditions were challenging, such as when cultural differences between the groups were great or when uncertainties prevailed about the industries in question. Yadongs (2005) findings suggest that procedural justice perceptions operate as attitudes that bring positive and in this case, profitable results when they are in alignment. Beyond these studies, it also is noteworthy that organisational justice has proven extremely practical as a basis for managerial training interventions. Several studies have examined the effectiveness of techniques in which managerial training in organisational justice has been used to promote various forms of desirable organisational behaviour (for a review, see Skarlicki & Latham, 2005). Notably, studies have shown that compared with those who have gone untrained, employees trained in organisational justice engage in higher levels of OCB (Skarlicki & Jones, 2002; Skarlicki & Latham, 1996, 1997), promote lower levels of theft among their subordinates (Greenberg, 1999), follow fairer organisational discipline practices (Cole & Latham, 1997) and attenuate stress reactions among subordinates who feel underpaid (Greenberg, 2006).
Reason 2: Justice is Fundamental

Much as justice is related to a variety of organisational concepts (Reason 5), so too is it related to a wealth of basic psychological constructs. My idea is that justice is a thread that runs through a variety of psychological phenomena. Studying justice thereby provides insight into these phenomena. Likewise, understanding these phenomena informs the study of justice. In this manner, the fundamental nature of justice is readily apparent. How, then, is justice related to fundamental psychological constructs?
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Although many examples abound, several of these are particularly germane to the study of organisations. A fascinating line of research has been emerging linking organisational justice with various forms of emotional reactions. For example, Barclay, Skarlicki, and Pugh (2005), studying reactions of layoff victims, found that attributions of blame mediated the relationship between fairness perceptions and outward-focused negative emotion (i.e., anger and hostility) and that these emotional reactions, in turn, mediated the relationship between fairness perceptions and retaliation. This investigation appears to be the first of several studies in progress (including some I have on the drawing board, myself) examining emotional reactions to injustice. Given that organisational justice theories have a long history of merely assuming, but not measuring, emotional reactions (Greenberg, 1984), it is encouraging to see this link being established in current research. A second interesting connection between organisational justice and basic psychological concepts may be seen in the area of morality. It is interesting that although issues of fairness and morality long have been linked in the writings of developmental psychologists (e.g., Kohlberg, 1969) and philosophers (e.g., Rawls, 2001), issues of morality are only now coming to the attention of psychologists studying organisational justice. We see this most clearly in the work of Folger and his associates (e.g., Folger, 1998, 2001; Folger, Cropanzano, & Goldman, 2005). This line of research and theorising argues that peoples senses of fairness are grounded on the ethical assumption of normative treatment. Injustice, therefore, involves a deliberate transgression of acceptable conduct, which triggers various strong emotional responses. Folger et al. (2005) argued that peoples interest in behaving fairly often involves transcending their short-term personal interests. Their basic idea is that people have a sense of moral accountability that accounts for their behaviour in ways that have been ignored by much of the literature on organisational justice. This remains a very active stream of research today, especially in view of some challenges that have been raised about the inherently instrumental and self-serving nature of justice behaviour (e.g., Gillespie & Greenberg, 2005). A third fundamental psychological construct being examined by justice researchers is trust. Because social psychologists (e.g., Deutsch, 1958) and management scholars (e.g., Barnard, 1938) have long been interested in examining interpersonal relationships between people, it is not surprising that issues of trust have arisen in their work. In recent years, matters of trust also have entered into the literature on organisational justice. In
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reviewing this work, Lewicki, Wiethoff, and Tomlinson (2005) have noted that justice researchers have treated trust as a consequence of justice, as an antecedent of justice and as a factor that develops jointly with perceptions of justice. These perspectives, they claim, are not completely distinct they also criticise the approach to justice taken by trust researchers as overly simplistic. As an alternative, they suggest that understanding the justicetrust relationship depends on whether the context in question involves what they call calculusbased trust (the belief that trust will be maintained because the benefits of maintaining trust outweigh the consequence of violating trust) or identification-based trust (the belief that ones own and anothers values coincide such that each party can rely on the other as an agent to act in his or her best interest). Specifically, Lewicki et al. (2005) noted that parties involved in traditional market relationships (e.g., buyers and sellers) are likely to focus on calculus-based trust and therefore frame fairness in terms of distributive justice. Although distributive justice is also of concern to individuals in communal relationships (e.g., friends), they noted that in such situations trust is likely to be framed in interactional justice terms. Research on this approach is now just emerging, and insights that it offers promise to provide a useful adjunct to the literatures on both trust and justice. This work is also noteworthy insofar as it taps additional fundamental psychological research on justice, particularly with respect to matters of control (Cropanzano, Byrne, Bobocel, & Rupp, 2001) and the use of psychological contracts in work relationships (Rousseau, 1995). Separately, research lines connecting emotions, morality and trust with organisational justice are interesting and promising. Jointly, however, they are even more vital insofar as they illustrate the close relationship between notions of justice and fundamental areas of psychology.
Reason 1: Justice Concerns Are Universal

Now that I have reached the top of my list I am pleased to note what I believe is the most important reason to study organisational justice the fact that it is universal. No matter where you travel in the world, people in workplaces are concerned about fairness. They will bristle at the thought of not being treated fairly, be it with respect to the way they are paid, the way they are treated, or procedures used in their organisations. What is particularly fascinating is that there is evidence of cultural differences in triggers of injustice and expressions of injustice. In other
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words, different things are perceived to be unfair in different countries and people express their feelings of injustice in varied ways in different countries. Such evidence is fascinating because it reveals both a great deal about the nature of justice and characteristics of people in different cultures. With this in mind, it would be a mistake to suggest that everything we know is the same across cultures. Writing about this topic several years ago (Greenberg, 2001a, 2001b), I referred to the idea that justice is universal as a canon of organisational justice, but one about which great care must be exercised. Specifically, I noted that whereas reactions to distributive injustice differ between cultures, concerns about distributive justice appear to be universal. This is because (a) culture dictates the importance of justice in any given society, (b) people in various cultures define justice very differently, (c) cultural norms dictate what is perceived to be fair in any given society and (d) culture permits some groups to dominate others in society and the interests of these dominant groups tend to be served by prevailing beliefs about distributive justice. These points are in reference to distributive justice, but what about procedural justice? In that case, I noted that there appears to be far greater agreement about what constitutes fair procedures. Finally, although there is less research on cross-cultural differences in interactional justice, it appears that reliable distinctions do indeed exist. For example, Itoi, Obhuchi, and Fukuno (1996) noted that when it comes to using social accounts, people from Japan relied more on interpersonally sensitive forms (e.g., apologies and excuses) whereas Americans relied on more assertive forms, such as justifications. I noted the following when first commenting on this work, Although these findings have not been replicated in other cultures, I suspect that they reflect a general tendency for the interpersonal facets of justice to be highly sensitive to differences in culture (Greenberg, 2001b, p. 263). This conclusion applies as well today. The matter of the universality of concerns about justice continues to interest justice scholars. In examining this work, Leung (2005) proposed a 3-stage model differentiating between justice rules (abstract principles that guide justice decisions), justice criteria (specifications for implementing justice rules), and justice practices (concrete standards for operationalising justice criteria). In reviewing this literature, Leung (2005) reported cultural differences in all three criteria. These make sense, insofar as they reflect a great deal about cultural norms regarding justice in various societies. However, it is important not to mistake the fact that such differences exist as evidence of differential importance of justice across the world. This could not be farther from the truth. That rules, criteria and practices exist
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and that people are highly sensitive to them suggests that underlying concerns about justice are not only universal, but that as a construct, justice is universally valued.
Conclusion: Extending Webster

By now, my primary motive certainly must be clear: to promote the study of organisational justice. I believe that I have made a credible case for doing so. Hopefully you, the reader, will agree and follow up on my invitation to contribute to this vital and growing literature. In closing, allow me to quote Daniel Webster (1845/2001), who said, Justice, sir, is the greatest interest of man on earth (p. 300). Although I agree with this sentiment, allow me to extend it by saying that, justice, ladies and gentlemen, should be the greatest interest of organisational scientists.
Author Note
Preliminary versions of this chapter were presented as keynote addresses at the Workshop on Organizational Justice at the Academy of Management Conference (New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, 2004) and at the 6th Annual Industrial/Organisational Conference of the Australian Psychological Society (Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, 2005).
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SECTION
IV
Work Performance: Individual and Organisational Factors
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Introduction to Section IV
The six chapters comprising this section address a variety of topics that span both organisational and individual level variables. They include a research review (Jordan), a methodological exposition (Fisher), conceptual contributions based upon both qualitative and quantitative research (Lau, Au, & Ho; Restubog & Bordia), and practitioner oriented reviews (Mylonas & Carstairs; West, White, & Thomas). An underlying theme of the chapters in this section is their focus upon various aspects of work performance. The extensive range of factors that impact upon work performance that are addressed by these contributions extends from a macro (cultural) level (Restubog & Bordia on familism and the psychological contract), to experiences at a micro (individual) level (Fisher on experience sampling). Also close to an individual level approach is the chapter by Jordan on emotional intelligence (EI). Contrasting motivations for productive and counterproductive work behaviours described by Lau et al. extends the perspective into the wider workplace, and is located at the interface between individual, workgroup, and organisational level variables. The Mylonas and Carstairs chapter addresses a meso-level topic that is rarely considered by organisational psychologists that of physical work space design and its impact upon peoples ability to be productive or to experience negative outcomes, thereby adding a further important dimension to some of the contributions from Section II on workplace health. West et al.s contribution extends the meso-level of analysis beyond the workplace by considering the impact of referee reports upon HR and other workplace practices.
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Jordans paper addresses an issue of considerable topicality, and one that was identified as one of organisational psychologys misses by Murphy in his chapter 2 compilation of organisational psychologys greatest hits and misses. As an established researcher and author within the field, Peter Jordan is well qualified to review recent literature in the emotional intelligence (EI) field and to expand upon Murphys brief critique of this topic. Using a memorable illustration of EI within a high profile sporting arena as a springboard, Jordan deftly develops a case for rigorous research into EI, reviewing relevant contemporary research literature. Through addressing EIs brief history, Jordan proceeds to unpack contributions to this field to distinguish between genuine research on the one hand, and attempts to popularise and commercialise the EI concept on the other. This discussion of some of the models that have been developed leads to a consideration of some of the better-known attempts to measure EI, and to a more detailed exposition of some recent EI research in the Asia-Pacific region. Jordans fitting conclusion is that while the EI road has been widened by the popular appeal of this concept, this has served to highlight the need for more rigorous research into EI a task for which Peter Jordan himself has a developing reputation. At least a couple of important implications for organisational psychology practitioners arise from this chapter. First, while EI has undoubtedly captured the attention of many managers within organisations, it is incumbent on scientistpractitioners to ensure that any measure that they use, or recommend others to use, has the most definitive basis that is available from contemporary scientific knowledge. This is particularly the case with instruments that can be associated with popularised concepts like EI. A second important issue for practitioners is to ensure that managers and other potential users of these instruments are aware of the importance of validity when using them, and of their limitations for example, as potential tools used in selection, recruitment, promotion, and other HR decisions. The EI field is a prime example of the fundamental importance of the organisational psychologists scientistpractitioner role in relation to clients.
Familism and the Psychological Contract

While familism might not be a term that springs readily to mind to a great majority of organisational psychology researchers or practitioners, the notion of a psychological contract between worker and organisation has a much more definitive pedigree within the field. However, as noted by Restubog and Bordia, our conceptualisation of the psychological contract concept is limited by the literature on this topic being almost exclusively
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Introduction Section IV
focused upon workers and organisations in western individualistic cultures. Seeking to remedy this deficiency within the research and conceptual literature, these authors deliver a fascinating exposition of the relevance of this concept within a collectivist culture (the Philippines). Restubog and Bordia skilfully juxtapose their review of some of the more traditional literature on the psychological contract with their research-based cultural knowledge of the Philippine context. Unpacking some of the relevant socio-cultural values of this society particularly the notion of familism, leads the authors to develop new insights into the role and importance of the psychological contract. This chapter reinforces the notion that organisational psychologists need to consider broader cultural, social and economic contexts for a more complete appraisal of some of their favoured concepts. Organisational psychology practitioners can also acquire useful insights from Restubog and Bordias contribution. First, there may be opportunities to practice in cultures other than the one that they are most familiar with. This chapter highlights the reality that cultures differ along key dimensions, and that if you are working in a different culture then you will almost certainly have to revise at least some of your preconceptions about how organisations operate within different cultural environments and how the wider social environment can fundamentally impact upon an organisations culture. For practitioners who remain committed to working within their own culture, a prime lesson arises from the cultural diversity represented within organisations in predominantly western cultures. Although its extent differs between countries, all are experiencing increasing levels of cultural diversity both as a broader community phenomenon, and in organisations within those countries. Therefore all organisational psychology practitioners will be exposed to some extent to cultural diversity among their organisational and individual clients. Restubog and Bordias chapter is an important reminder that organisational parties values, motivations and relationships are at least as much a function of their cultural background as they are of a particular organisations culture. Indeed an interpretive approach to the concept of culture would insist that cultural diversity within an organisation is critical in shaping that organisations culture. Awareness of the complexity of cultural relationships, as revealed in this chapter, is essential for organisational psychology in practice.
Productive and Counterproductive Workplace Behaviours

The chapter by Lau, Au, and Ho extends the cross-cultural organisational psychology theme into China (Hong Kong), again addressing a concept
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whose research focus has hitherto been seen primarily through the lens of western societies. From the vantage point of a study employing both qualitative and quantitative analyses, the authors describe an investigation of factors that promote both productive and counterproductive workplace behaviours. Their well-designed methodology reveals an exhaustive list of antecedents of both types of behaviours. While many of these antecedent factors would almost certainly be comparable with those derived from a similar study based in a western individualist culture, the order of factor extraction would almost equally certainly be different and there would also be some factors that would probably be unique to one or the other cultural milieu. Like the previous chapter, this paper reinforces the need for extreme caution when describing concepts that were derived from a predominantly or exclusively western organisational cultural context in quite different cultures. This study offers an ideal opportunity for comparative research into the origins of productive and counterproductive workplace behaviours. Lau et al.s chapter also holds valuable insights for organisational psychology practitioners. First, the sheer number of factors that can affect work performance, both positively and negatively, may be an eyeopener for at least some practitioners. A real challenge for practitioners becomes how to incorporate such a range of factors within recommendations for policy and practice within organisations in whatever culture they may be located. A second issue revolves around the complexity of workplace issues raised by Lau et al.s chapter. Some items appear in more than one list, while others appear to be unique to either the motivating or suppressing productive and counterproductive work behaviours. How is the organisational psychology practitioner to untangle the complex of issues that can lead to positive and negative work behaviours, many of which could be critical to an organisations successful performance? This would be true not only for the performance of private sector organisations within their respective market places, but also for the effective functioning of all organisations. These are important matters for practitioners to address.
Experience Sampling
Fishers excellently documented chapter challenges a fundamental assumption about organisational life that of presumed (relative) stability both of individuals moods and feelings, and how these relate to the jobs that they perform. Her research clearly indicates that, contrary to normal expectations, an individuals job experience can vary from
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moment to moment. One is reminded of a central tenet of reversal theory, which postulates that an individuals focus can switch between the content of an event and the process through which the event is experienced, which can change from one moment to the next (e.g., Apter, 1982). The chapter also raises important issues about the reliability and validity of nomothetic organisational research methodologies, particularly those that rely upon cross-section designs, or that otherwise swamp individual variation within various forms of aggregated data. At one level it is an appeal to use idiographic longitudinal approaches not only to enhance the depth and accuracy of more traditional forms of data collection, but also to complement the increasingly ubiquitous cross-sectional one-shot design. Research cited by Fisher also illuminates aspects of cognitive biases, specifically how an optimistic bias can operate in retrospect to sustain positive self-enhancing attributions, as well as the importance of individual differences in making these attributions. Lessons for practitioners from Fishers insightful chapter are potentially profound. One typical assumption to be challenged is that a single interview session is all that is required for example, because a practitioner is confident in their judgements. However, interviewing a client at time 1 might generate quite different outcomes from interviewing the same client at time 2. A second important insight from Fishers work, and one that is increasingly recognised, is the importance of feelings and emotions within the workplace. This recognition argues the case for a better understanding of the relationship between an individuals emotional strengths and weaknesses and the emotional demands of the work that they do. It also has potentially important implications for our understanding of how human error can operate within organisational contexts and for consequent safety, particularly in large complex systems.
Referee Reports
For organisational psychologists whose primary orientation is research, an important contribution of West et al.s well-crafted chapter is to highlight the relative dearth of research on what is probably the most widely-used selection technique references a surprising finding on purely objective grounds. This becomes less surprising when problems of studying this performance predictor are considered. These include variations in delivery mode (e.g., free-form written letter, completion of standard forms, interactive by telephone), and the possibility of multiple interpretations and biases from those both requesting and providing references. All of us will have been the subject of multiple requests
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for references, and will also have been the object of many such requests in the course of our careers. Yet do we ever stop to question their validity? The answer will be yes in many instances, but how many of us are then motivated to research this topic? West et al.s systematic review of the literature on this topic provides a valuable platform for future research in this important field. For practitioners who deal with referee reports, which is likely to include all those who operate in the recruitment and selection field, lessons from West et al.s chapter are even more evident. Leniency bias and low interrater agreement are among many potential pitfalls of this technique, rendering it highly problematic as a performance predictor. Legal and ethical factors can also operate to compromise the utility of referee reports. In their comprehensive review West et al. make several useful suggestions as to how the validity of referee reports can be enhanced, including using structured checklists, relative ratings, and behaviourallyanchored scales. They incorporate these in a series of best practice principles, which will be of considerable value to practitioners in this field. The authors of this chapter also provide useful guidance in respect of evaluating referee reports.
Open Plan Offices

The chapter by Mylonas and Carstairs highlights the importance of an often neglected aspect of organisational life the physical space in which people work. This feature shapes many aspects of our working lives, from the micro-level (e.g., ergonomic aspects of our immediate work station) to macro (e.g., the visible structure of the building or site that is our primary work location). The authors of this interesting chapter focus on the meso-level of the office environment, reviewing literature that links organisational psychology with a sister area of the discipline environmental psychology. Mylonas and Carstairs systematically identify sources of benefit and disbenefit of open plan offices, including issues of productivity, distraction, privacy, communication, person density, control, job type and complexity, adjustment, and ambient conditions, including carefully identifying from the research literature those that are and are not key factors. These issues demonstrate the complexity of addressing work space and how this organisational psychology topic overlaps not only with environmental psychology, but also with human factors and social psychology. Using appropriate methodology (including eschewing the ever-popular but dubiously valid questionnaire) is key to designing office environments
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that appropriately match user needs. There is a wealth of useful information for practitioners in this wellwritten review. Mylonas and Carstairs provide valuable guidance on how office design can be improved to enhance job satisfaction and increase productivity. The chapter has implications for practitioners who make recommendations about workplace design, and demonstrates the value of a multi-disciplinary approach (e.g., including human factors and environmental specialists) in respect of how work space is likely to be used by clients. While some of the principles involved appear to be simple and even obvious (e.g., providing adequate storage space and working surfaces), their absence in many work environments is testimony to the fact that such guidance as is provided by these authors is either frequently unavailable or unheeded. Genuine and appropriate user involvement in work space design is among the most critical factors.
Conclusion
The chapters in this section reflect a rich and varied source of expertise, with valuable material for organisational psychologists at all points on the scientistpractitioner continuum.
Reference
Apter, M. J. (1982). The experience of motivation. London: Academic Press.
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CHAPTER
17
Emotional Intelligence at Work: A Review of Research
Peter J. Jordan
All I knew is I didnt want to say anything negative. I didnt want to go to the team with a series of dont do this and make sure we dont do that. I wanted to provide a positive message. (Michael Lynagh, September 13, 1998, Sportscene. Television interview. Brisbane Channel 7.)
While the term emotional intelligence is relatively new, the skills that make up emotional intelligence are not. Around the time when Salovey and Mayer were first publishing their 1990 seminal work, which gave the world the term emotional intelligence, and quite a few years prior to Dan Goleman (1995) making the term popular, Michael Lynagh, while leading the Australian Rugby Union team, was using emotional intelligence skills to guide his team through a crisis at the 1991 Rugby Union World Cup against the Irish team. I will come back to this theme shortly, but first let me explain the purpose of this chapter. The construct of emotional intelligence has undergone a boom in popularity over the last decade, and in line with other booms in real estate and the stock market, there have been speculators and long-term players in the field. I do not wish to be a zealot, however, many organisations have been entranced by pop psychologists using the rubric of emotional intelligence. Few organisations have been exposed to well-designed research into emotional intelligence that can reveal the contribution that
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this construct can make within the workplace. Indeed, in his chapter in this collection, Kevin Murphy notes two major difficulties with pop psychologists who use the term emotional intelligence. First, he notes the broad and sometimes incompatible constructs of emotional intelligence that are used by this group, and second, he refers to the dramatic, yet unsubstantiated claims that are made regarding the efficacy of emotional intelligence. The purpose of this chapter is to outline the current state of emotional intelligence research in the academic community, and to acknowledge the role of researchers in expanding our understanding of emotional intelligence in organisational psychology. The surge of interest in emotional intelligence is no different from booms in other industries. As with most booms, individuals want to ride the wave and the easiest way to ride the wave is to take something you already have and relabel it. In this case, we have some pop psychologists taking existing personality traits, existing communication and interpersonal competencies, and relabelling the package as emotional intelligence. At the same time, researchers have been prominent in seeking answers to the core question that hounds the emotional intelligence construct Can emotional intelligence provide incremental validity over existing personality variables in predicting behaviour and enhancing performance? In this chapter, therefore, I want to distinguish between the findings of emotional intelligence researchers and some claims of pop psychologists.
As indicated in my opening statement, the emotional abilities associated with Mayer and Saloveys (1997) emotional intelligence model are not new. Rather, their model draws together previous knowledge about the link between emotion and cognition and coalesces this work into a comprehensive model. More specifically, the model acknowledges that emotion and cognition are virtually inseparable in our reactions to situations and in our decision-making processes, and defines emotional intelligence as the ability to be aware of and modify our reactions to situations. Four emotion-related processing abilities are proposed. They are: (a) Awareness of own and others emotions, (b) Knowledge of emotional cycles and patterns, (c) Emotion facilitation or creating the right emotional environment to achieve goals and (d) Managing emotions in self and others (Mayer & Salovey, 1997). An example of how these abilities work in practice may be useful. So back to the Michael Lynagh story how is this story linked to
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Emotional Intelligence at Work
emotional intelligence? In order to understand this example let me set the scene. It is the quarter finals of the Rugby Union Football World Cup in 1991, a game involving Australia, an acknowledged contender if not one of the favourites to win the tournament, and the Irish, a good competitive team, but certainly not at the peak of their form. The game is being played at Lansdowne Road, the home ground of Irish Rugby. Australia is leading and has the match under control and is probably looking forward to the preliminary final in the following week. Then, four minutes from full-time and against the run of play, the Irish mount an attack that leads to a length of the field try by Gordon Hamilton putting them ahead for the first time in the match. Gordon Hamilton becomes a national hero and the spectators invade the pitch to congratulate their hero chaos reigns on the field. The regular Australian captain was off the field injured, so the decision of how to respond to this crisis was left to stand-in captain Michael Lynagh. The regular captain Nick Farr-Jones recalls:
Michael Lynagh treated the situation very differently to how I would. I would have read the riot act but he asked the ref how long was left and then said he would kick long. That took guts and the rest is history as he went on to score. (Majendie, 2003)
Lynagh knew that there were probably two plays left in the game, and wanted to avoid the possibility of 4 years work being wasted by losing a game they were supposed to win. With football fans on the field, emotions were running high in both teams. So what thoughts were running through Lynaghs head at that stage and how does his behaviour epitomise emotional intelligence skills? Reports from his fellow team members on the day stated that he calmed everyone down and provided a positive plan for winning the game (Fitzsimons, 2005). First, he showed emotional awareness. In his own words following the Irish try, I thought oh no but I didnt want to think of all the negatives. He then showed emotional understanding, by knowing that his team could fall into a negative mindset following this crisis, and demonstrated the ability of emotional facilitation, that is, getting the mood right for the task at hand. Lynaghs response when the team gathered together was to say,
Ok this is what we are going to do first we get possession of the ball and then we kick the ball long and left close to their try-line. The forwards must gain clean possession. If you find your self in possession of the ball and dont know what to do just head in the direction of the try line. (Fitzsimons, 2005, p. 211)
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Lynagh had set the right mood to give the team the chance to win the game. In doing this, he had demonstrated the ability to manage his own emotions by changing his initial emotional reaction (panic) to a positive emotion (calm). At the same time, his calm approach when he gathered the team together resulted in him managing the emotions of other team members. The outcome the plan was followed as set out and the record shows the Australians won the game on the final whistle and subsequently went on to win the World Cup final. In doing this, a combination of football skills and luck probably had more to do with the final outcome than did emotional intelligence, but without an emotionally intelligent approach to dealing with the crisis, the team would not have been in the position to use those skills nor to take advantage of the luck. Indeed, when team members were asked to recall the final moments of that game, their overwhelming memory is of panic when the Irish scored; then a calm determination in the following plays (Fitzsimons, 2005; International Rugby Board, 1991). I contend that Lynagh was the person who made the difference between those two emotional states. But if these skills already existed, the question needs to be asked: Why do we need emotional intelligence research? The answer lies in the need for a stream of research that links emotion and cognition in a coherent way and provides explanatory power for existing research areas in emotion.
The Need for Emotional Intelligence Research

Many new streams of emotions research have emerged since Ashforth and Humphreys (1995) initial call for researchers to pay more attention to emotions in organisational behaviour. Recent publications draw attention to the impact of factors not considered previously in organisational behaviour, such as a leaders ability to use emotional contagion (Sy, Cote, & Saavedra, 2005), emotional contagion within groups (Barsade, 2002), the impact of emotionality on conflict resolution (Yang & Mossholder, 2004), the effects of toxic emotions in the workplace (Frost, 2003; Lubit, 2004) and the emotion skills involved in authentic leadership (Ilies, Morgeson, & Nahrgang, 2005). Despite the broad nature of this research, all these authors display a common theme. They note that the production of emotions in the workplace may be best understood and explored using the emotional intelligence construct. Even more mainstream research areas draw on the emotional intelligence construct for its explanatory power in understanding coping with stress (Ashkanasy, Ashton-James, & Jordan, 2004) and the impact of job insecurity (Jordan, Ashkanasy, & Hrtel, 2002a). Research into emotional
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intelligence has reached a stage of maturity where critiques (Zeidner, Matthews, & Roberts, 2004) and reviews of emotional intelligence area emerging (Ashkanasy & Daus, 2005; Jordan, Ashkanasy, & Ascough, in press; Jordan, Ashkanasy, & Ashton-James, 2006). Entire volumes of emotional intelligence research are being published (Druskat, Sala, & Mount, 2006; Matthews, Zeidner, & Roberts, 2006), and even metaanalyses are emerging (Van Rooy & Viswesvaran, 2004).
A Brief History of Emotional Intelligence

While emotional intelligence was initially described by Salovey and Mayer in 1990, a plethora of emotional intelligence definitions has emerged since then. One of the defining explanatory articles in this area was when Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso (2000) identified a distinction between mixed models of emotional intelligence, which include personality variables as a part of the emotional intelligence construct, and ability models of emotional intelligence, which specifically examine abilities linking emotion and cognition. As indicated in Jordan, Ashkanasy, and Hrtel (2003), I have concerns over evidence provided by researchers who use mixed models of emotional intelligence, as I consider that the efficacy of emotional intelligence research may be diminished by confounding the construct with existing personality variables (e.g., empathy, self confidence, conscientiousness). While there is considerable research and interest in these mixed models, I agree with Daus and Ashkanasy (2005) and Mayer et al. (2000) that the efficacy of the results of research using these alternative models is questionable unless the results are disentangled from personality effects. Indeed, this has been a basis for many popular authors making extravagant claims for the benefits of emotional intelligence. For instance, in a simple Google search, I found consultants who claim that training in emotional intelligence will increase sales, improve empathy and tolerance, increase resilience and assist in delaying gratification and displaying a strong character (Australian Business Training, 2006). Another web site offers emotional intelligence training to address workplace issues such as failure, staff turnover, job dissatisfaction, stress, burnout, absenteeism, sexual harassment and bullying (ONeill & ONeill, 2006). A third suggests that by doing re-birthing you can increase your emotional intelligence (Lifequest, 2006). While these programs may provide benefits for individuals who undertake such training, the question remains: Is there evidence of these benefits or links between these variables and emotional intelligence? The definition of emotional intelligence used in these cases does not fit the academic researchers interpretation of the emotional
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intelligence construct. A quick review of the literature reveals that many of these claims are unsubstantiated. This leads me to conclude that most of this work would be in a category of pop psychology. At the same time, I do not want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. A number of these mixed models of emotional intelligence do have factors that closely conform with the Mayer and Salovey (1997) ability model of emotional intelligence (e.g., emotional self-awareness and management of emotions). Consequently, in reporting research in this chapter, I will include these data in my analysis, but note where possible, whether the results have unique variance from personality variables. Let me make my position clear. I do not object to consultants and organisations selling or promoting personality variables or interpersonal and communication competencies as being of use in organisations. Indeed, some of these variables provide greater value to organisations than emotional intelligence does. For instance, Goleman (1995, 1998) lists empathy and self-motivation as core emotional intelligence competencies. Clearly, if you use a definition of emotional intelligence as the abilities used when emotion meets cognition, these are not emotional intelligence abilities. Self-motivation has a goal orientation or internal need component (McClelland, 1987). Similarly, there is a broad range of empathic reactions such as personal distress (taking on others emotional distress) and fantasising (Davis, 1994), which are not consistent with descriptions of emotional intelligence. Are self-motivation and empathy factors related to emotional intelligence? Jordan, Ashkanasy, Hrtel, and Hooper (2002b) found that empathy, or specifically perspective taking (Davis, 1994), is a shadow construct to emotional intelligence, but is not a factor of emotional intelligence. In an empirical study, Christie and Jordan (2004) showed that motivation is not a part of the emotional intelligence construct, but is linked to emotional awareness and emotional management. Are empathy and motivation useful to organisations? The answer has to be undoubtedly yes. Do these emotional intelligence competencies provide incremental validity on existing personality measures in industrial and organisational psychology? The answer based on Christie and Jordan (2004) and Jordan et al. (2002b) is no. Yet given a choice between using an established measure of motivation or using an established measure of empathy, and a measure of emotional intelligence, managers and organisations will generally show interest in the emotional intelligence product even if it is more expensive. Why? The only explanation I can come up with is that emotional intelligence sounds sexier.
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A good example of this tendency is the decision by the New South Wales prison service in announcing that their selection process for prison officers would include an emotional intelligence measure (Newby, 2002). I want to be fair here and also point out that this decision is not unique to the New South Wales prison service and has also been adopted by prison services in Ireland and England, and I am sure elsewhere. My initial reaction on reading this report was to ask: Why not use existing measures that suit the competencies of the job? Again the only answer is that when faced with the problem of identifying skills required in a difficult job involving interpersonal competencies, emotional intelligence is seen by managers as a magic bullet. To address this tendency, it is incumbent on researchers to make clear the constructs that they are measuring when testing emotional intelligence. Therefore, a central issue that needs to be addressed is measurement, as a discussion of the efficacy of emotional intelligence research cannot be separated from a discussion of the methods used to measure emotional intelligence.
Measuring Emotional Intelligence

At present there is a substantial debate between the efficacy of self-report and ability measures of emotional intelligence (Mayer, Salovey, Caruso, & Sitarenios, 2003). I take no firm stance on the debate between ability measures and self-report measures. Although traditional intelligence research supports ability testing as the most appropriate method of testing (Mayer et al., 2003), emotions are generally very personal experiences. From this viewpoint, although I acknowledge potential for self-assessment bias, I consider that self-report can be an appropriate measurement method in particular contexts, especially in field and group applications (e.g., Jordan & Troth, 2004). In terms of assessing emotional intelligence in teams for instance, Jordan and Ashkanasy (2006) demonstrated the efficacy of selfreport measures, if the accuracy of self-awareness can be determined through a comparative analysis of self- and peer-report measures. Consequently, at this relatively early stage of the development of emotional intelligence measures, I accept self-report as a valid method of assessment, as long as the measure is psychometrically validated. Research examining the efficacy of emotional intelligence has been dominated by the use of three generic (general, rather than work-focused) commercial measures of emotional intelligence. While the Mayer Salovey Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) is based on Mayer and Saloveys (1997) ability model of emotional intelligence, the remaining two measures (Bar-On, 1997; Boyatzis & Goleman, 1998) are based on
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mixed models of emotional intelligence in that they combine emotional intelligence variables with personality variables. The first measure of emotional intelligence, the MSCEIT, was developed by Mayer, Caruso, and Salovey (2000). The MSCEIT uses an ability testing format such as recognising emotions in faces to test four different aspects of emotional intelligence; Perceiving emotions ( = .91), Facilitating emotions ( = .79), Understanding emotions ( =.80), and Managing emotions ( =.83) (Mayer et al., 2000). The total measure has an alpha reliability of .91 and a testretest reliability of .86 after three weeks (Brackett & Mayer, 2003). The MSCEIT has been shown to predict a range of workplace behaviours such as emotional labour (Brotheridge, 2004), the quality of social interactions (Lopes, Salovey, Ct, & Beers, 2005), and inspirational motivation, idealised influence, and individual consideration components of transformational leadership (Leban & Zulauf, 2004). Day and Carroll (2004), however, found no links between this measure and citizenship behaviours. Another well-used measure of emotional intelligence is Bar-Ons (1997) EQi. This is described as a self-report measure of emotional intelligence; however, researchers have questioned its factor structure (Matthews, Zeidner, & Roberts, 2002; Palmer, Manocha, Gignac, & Stough, 2003) and have argued that it more accurately measures neuroticism and emotional wellbeing (the emotional health of an individual) than emotional intelligence (Newsome, Day, & Catano, 2000). Bar-On (1997) noted that the EQi contains 15 measurable factors. These factors include General mood (optimism and happiness), Independence and Reality testing. In line with my earlier comments, this is a case of a very useful measure that seems to have used the nomenclature of emotional intelligence when it does not really describe what the measure is about. Indeed, Dawda and Hart (2000) pointed to a significant overlap with existing personality constructs. Consequently, I will not detail the structure or psychometric qualities of this measure. The broad nature of the EQi can be seen in the number of variables that it predicts. For example, research has found links between the EQi and employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction and profit performance (Langhorn, 2004), health, wellbeing and performance (Slaski & Cartwright, 2003), and conscientiousness and self-monitoring (Douglas, Frink, & Ferris, 2004). Clearly, this measure captures something more than emotional intelligence, and indeed has strong links with personality variables.
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Goleman has developed a self- and peer measure of emotional intelligence called the Emotional Competencies Index (ECI 360; Boyatzis & Goleman, 1998). Goleman skirts around the issue of the emotional intelligence construct, by identifying emotional competencies that crossover significantly with existing personality measures (Mayer et al., 2000). The ECI 360 measures four broad areas: Self-awareness, Social awareness (including empathy), Self-management (including conscientiousness and optimism), and Relationship management (including inspirational leadership and being a change catalyst). I will not detail the psychometric properties of the ECI 360 as I consider that this model is clearly confounded with personality variables. All three measures have been shown to be psychometrically sound and able to predict a broad range of work-related behaviours (for a metaanalysis of these measures, see Van Rooy & Viswesvaran, 2004). As noted earlier, with the exception of the MSCEIT, these measures are confounded with existing measures of personality (Mayer et al., 2000). While this may enhance their efficacy in measuring variables that are useful in business, they are not strictly emotional intelligence tests. Arguably, the incremental validity of these measures over existing personality variables is significantly reduced.
Emotional Intelligence Research

While there are volumes of information about the commercial measures of emotional intelligence discussed in the previous section, my focus in this section is profiling researchers in the Asia Pacific Region who have developed measures of emotional intelligence in use by the research community. Researchers have developed a range of measures from self-reporting general measures of emotional intelligence, to team-based and workbased self- and peer assessment measures. One of the first self-report emotional intelligence measures (and probably the most broadly used public domain measure) was developed by Nicola Schutte (Schutte, Malouff, Hall, Haggerty, Cooper, Golden, & Dornheim, 1998) who is currently working at the University of New England in Armidale. The Schutte et al. (1998) test is a 33-item measure of emotional intelligence that produces a single measure of emotional intelligence ( = .91). Some concerns have been noted over the unifactoral structure of this measure (Austin, Saklofske, Huang, & McKenney, 2004) and Petrides and Furnham (2000) suggested that this measure has four factors (Optimism and mood regulation, Appraisal of emotions, Social skills, and Use of emotions). Brackett and Mayer (2003) noted that the Schutte measure has strong
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links with existing personality measures, however, Chapman and Hayslip (2005) found that this measure provided unique variance beyond a measure of personality. The Schutte emotional intelligence measure has been linked with a range of workplace factors such as affective commitment, job satisfaction (Abraham, 2000; Carmeli, 2003) and better handling of workfamily conflict (Carmeli, 2003). A successful and widely used commercial measure of emotional intelligence has been developed by Ben Palmer and Con Stough (2001) at Swinburne University in Melbourne. Gardner and Stough (2002) reported that the Swinburne University Emotional Intelligence Test (SUEIT) involves 65 items measured on a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from Never to Always. The five factors of the SUEIT include Emotional recognition and expression ( = .91), Emotions direct cognition ( = .70), Understanding of emotions ( = .89), Emotional management ( = .83), and Emotional control ( = .77). As a commercial test, I was unable to get sample items from the extant literature. Testretest reliability is .82 over 1 month and Palmer and Stough (2001) argued that this measure provides incremental validity in predicting performance over existing personality variables. Palmer and Stough (2005) also reported that a 360-degree version of this measure is currently in use. Gardner and Stough (2002) demonstrated that the SUEIT predicted all aspects of transformational leadership and was negatively related to laissez faire leadership. Looking at a more specific workplace measure of emotional intelligence, Jordan et al. (2002b) reported on the Workgroup Emotional Intelligence Profile (WEIP), a public domain measure of group emotional intelligence. This 36-item self- and peer-reporting measure of emotional intelligence employs a 7-point response format ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree) with items such as, I am aware of my own feelings when working in a team, and, I am able to describe accurately the way others in the team are feeling. The WEIP captures two dimensions of emotional intelligence: Ability to deal with own emotions (Scale 1: 18 items, = .79) and Ability to deal with others emotions (Scale 2: 12 items, = .80) discerned by Jordan et al. (2002b). The two scales were significantly correlated, r = .43, p < .01. Scales 1 and 2 can further be delineated into five subscales. Scale 1 comprises the subscales: Ability to recognise own emotions (perception) (5 items, = .75); Ability to discuss own emotions (knowledge/assimilation) (5 items, = .78); and Ability to manage own emotions (8 items, = .71). Scale 2 comprises the subscales: Ability to recognise others
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emotions (perception) (7 items, = .80) and Ability to manage others emotions (5 items, = .77). These scales conform with Mayer and Saloveys (1997) description of the emotional intelligence construct (Jordan et al., 2002b). Jordan and Ashkanasy (2006) also reported on a peer-reporting version of this measure. The WEIP has been shown to predict longitudinal performance in teams (Jordan et al., 2002b) problemsolving performance in teams (Jordan & Troth, 2004), conflict resolution behaviours (Jordan & Troth, 2002, 2004), learning team processes (Moriarty & Buckley, 2003) and team playing behaviour (Sue-Chan & Latham, 2004). University of Hong Kong researchers, Wong and Law (2002) have developed a short (16-item) public domain measure of emotional intelligence, called the Emotional Intelligence Scale (EIS). This measure uses a 7point Likert scale ranging from strong disagreement to strong agreement. The scale has been psychometrically validated (Law, Wong, & Song, 2004; Wong & Law, 2002) and consists of four dimensions of: Self-emotion appraisal ( = .89, e.g., I really understand what I feel), Uses of emotion ( = .88, e.g., I am quite capable of controlling my own emotions), Regulation of emotion ( = .76, e.g., I would always encourage myself to try my best), and Others emotion appraisal ( =.85, e.g., I am a good observer of others emotions). The measure appears to have a degree of overlap with personality with strong links to Neuroticism (r = .40, p > .01), Extraversion (r = .27, p > .01) and Conscientiousness (r = .50, p > .01), however, the authors noted that it provided incremental validity over these measures (Wong & Law, 2002). The measure has been shown to be linked with emotional labour as assessed by both supervisors and peers, job performance and job satisfaction (Wong & Law, 2002). In other research, the Wong and Law measure has been linked with subjective reports of experiences of negotiation (Foo, Elfenbein, Tan, & Aik, 2004). In summary, researchers from the Asia-Pacific region have contributed to the ongoing debate surrounding the emotional intelligence construct and its workplace correlates. Significantly, measures have explored and addressed the issue of an overlap between emotional intelligence and existing personality variables.
Conclusion
Based on my review, there is clearly a need for well-structured and clearly defined emotional intelligence research. While pop psychologists may offer emotional intelligence as a panacea for the worlds problems and, in particular, as a cure-all for work performance, this is clearly not the case.
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There is growing evidence that emotional intelligence provides incremental validity over existing psychological constructs in explaining human behaviour. The challenge for emotional intelligence researchers is to determine the exact nature of this incremental advantage and to provide empirical evidence outlining the level of this incremental contribution to workplace behaviour and to work performance. As can be seen in the research outlined in this chapter, we have started down that road but we now need to ensure that research rigor is maintained.
Acknowledgments
This chapter was partially funded by a grant from the Australian Research Council. I would like to thank Sandra Lawrence for her valuable comments on an earlier version of this chapter.
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CHAPTER
18
One Big Happy Family: Understanding the Role of Workplace Familism in the Psychological Contract Dynamics
Simon Lloyd D. Restubog and Prashant Bordia
Over the past decade, there has been an exponential growth of empirical and theoretical investigations on psychological contracts in organisations (Kickul, Neuman, Parker, & Finkl, 2001; Kickul, Lester, & Finkl, 2002; Lester, Turnley, Bloodgood, & Bolino, 2002; Restubog & Bordia, 2006; Restubog, Bordia, & Tang, 2006; Restubog, Bordia, & Tang, in press; Restubog, Bordia, Krebs, & Tang, 2005a; Robinson & Morrison, 1995, 2000; Turnley, Bolino, Lester, & Bloodgood, 2003). Interest in this domain has been significantly influenced by the changing nature of the employment relationship arising from changes in how organisations plan and implement their operations and processes (George, 2003; Rousseau, 1995). A psychological contract comprises of the terms and exchange agreement between a worker and the employing organisation (Rousseau, 1995). In short, a psychological contract is a mental model representing workers perceived understanding of the employment relationship. Most research on psychological contracts has been conducted in countries whose cultures have been designated as individualistic (Hofstede, 1997). With some exceptions (Hui, Lee, & Rousseau, 2004; Lo & Aryee, 2003), research on the applicability of the psychological contract framework in cultures with a more collectivistic and personal orientation has
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been limited. For example, the form of organisational governance in collectivist cultures emphasises harmonious and strong interpersonal relationships between management and workers. Leaders are often involved in both the professional and personal lives of their workers. Evidence suggests that leaders in collectivist cultures display strong parental care-taking attitudes in which they provide both professional and personal direction to their constituents (Lincoln, Hanada, & Olsen, 1981). That is, workers have an expectation that they will be taken care of and helped in ways similar to a parental relationship (Aycan, 2006; Aycan, Kanungo, Mendonca, Yu, Deller, Stahl, & Kurshid, 2000; Hofstede, 1997). We term these family-like interactions as workplace familism or, the extent to which workers consider their organisation and supervisor as a parental figure and also treat them in ways similar to a family (Restubog & Bordia, 2006, p. 2). In this chapter, we examine the psychological basis of employment relationships in the Philippine context through the lens of psychological contract theory. In doing so, we address three central questions: (a) What is the nature of employment relationships in the Philippines? (b) Does workplace familism predict worker behaviours? and (c) What is the role of workplace familism in the psychological contract dynamics? As a first step, we review the literature on psychological contracts and consequences of breach. Next, we provide background information about our research context. We also describe the nature of employment relationships and how workplace familism relates to workplace behaviours. Finally, we explain in more detail the role of workplace familism in the psychological contract dynamics.
Nature of Psychological Contracts and Consequences of Breach

A psychological contract is generally understood as, individuals beliefs regarding the terms and conditions of a reciprocal exchange agreement between the focal person and another party (Rousseau, 1995, p. 9). A key attribute in this definition includes the, belief that a promise has been made and a consideration offered in exchange for it, binding the parties to some set of reciprocal obligations (Rousseau, 1989, p. 123). This definition sets the limit that perceived obligations or commitments are taken solely from the perspective of the worker. As such, organisations cannot be viewed as entering into a psychological contract because it only provides the context by which workers psychological contracts are formed (Rousseau, 1995). For example, psychological contracts are created and eventually shaped as a result of pre-employment interactions (Dunahee &
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Understanding the Role of Workplace
Wangler, 1974; Shore & Tetrick, 1994) and organisational culture, goals and policies (Rousseau, 1995; Shore & Tetrick, 1994). Rousseau (1989) further clarified that, when an individual perceives that the contribution s/he makes obligates the organisation to reciprocity or vice versa, a psychological contract emerges it is the individuals belief in an obligation of reciprocity that constitutes the contract (p. 124). In other words, it suggests that each worker has his/her own perceived understanding of reciprocal obligations that exists between him/herself and the organisation. Thus, a psychological contract is inherently perceptual (Rousseau, 1995) and, exists in the eye of the beholder (Rousseau, 1995, p. 6). Research on psychological contracts has adapted MacNeils (1985) typology of contracts as a means of categorising the different nature of employment obligations. Psychological contracts lie along a continuum, ranging from transactional to relational dimensions. These contracts can be differentiated based on length of employment expected and performance required for continued employment (Rousseau, 1995). Transactional contracts are at one end of the continuum and constitute monetary resources as a primary unit of exchange. They are also characterised as inflexible and short-term with clear economic parameters, limited time duration and little emotional investment on the part of the organisation (Rousseau, 1989, 1995). In contrast, relational contracts are based on less specific exchanges and a long-term relationship with the organisation (Rousseau, 1989, 1995). They are flexible and dynamic where there are unspecified monetary and nonmonetary parameters, and more often emphasise loyalty and mutual benefit of the two parties. The distinction between the transactional and relational dimensions of the psychological contract has been empirically established (Restubog & Bordia, 2006; Robinson & Rousseau, 1994). Transactional contracts generally include rapid advancement, attractive benefits, competitive wage rates and merit pay based on current performance, while relational contracts consist of career growth opportunities, organisational and supervisor support and harmonious working environments (Restubog & Bordia, 2006; Robinson & Rousseau, 1994). Psychological contract breach takes place when one party in a relationship perceives that the other party has neglected to fulfil what has been committed or promised (Rousseau, 1995). Several theoretical perspectives have been used to explain why breach occurs. Social exchange theory (SET) suggests that when one party provides something to another, it expects the other party to reciprocate by providing some contributions in return (Blau, 1964). Similarly, the norm of reciprocity (Gouldner,
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1960) obligates an individual to respond positively to favourable treatment from others. An increasing body of research has demonstrated that psychological contract breach has several negative consequences for workers and organisations. It is positively related with anti-citizenship behaviours (Kickul et al., 2001; Restubog, Bordia, & Tang, 2005b), intentions to quit (Robinson & Rousseau, 1994) and negative affect towards the organisation (Kickul & Lester, 2001). In addition, breach is negatively associated with job satisfaction (Lester & Kickul, 2001; Robinson & Rousseau, 1994), civic virtue behaviour (Robinson & Morrison, 1995; Robinson & Rousseau, 1994), organisational trust (Robinson, 1996; Robinson & Rousseau, 1994), organisational commitment (Coyle-Shapiro & Kessler, 2000), and self-reported worker performance (Robinson, 1996; Robinson & Morrison, 2000). In our own research, we examined whether the negative effects can also be generalisable in the Philippine context. Using independent samples of workers from a wide variety of occupational groupings, we found that both global perceptions of contract breach and facet-based measure of breach (i.e., breach of relational obligations) were negatively related to civic virtue behaviour (Restubog & Bordia, 2006; Restubog et al., in press; Restubog et al., 2005a), in-role performance (Restubog et al., 2006; Restubog et al., in press), helping behaviours (Restubog et al., 2005b), leadermember exchange (Restubog et al., 2005a), organisational trust (Restubog, Bordia, Esposo, & Krebs, 2005c); organisational identification (Restubog et al., 2005c), and positively associated with workplace deviant behaviours (Restubog et al., in press; Restubog et al., 2005b). Overall, we found support that psychological contract breach and its negative ramifications do exist in a collectivist culture.
The Philippines as a Research Context

In understanding the nature of workplace relationships in the Philippines, it is useful to consider the sociocultural and socioeconomic background of our research context.
Sociocultural Perspective
The Philippines is an archipelago with more than 7100 islands. Geographically, it is divided into three main groups of islands: Luzon in the north, where the national capital region is located; Visayas at the centre; and Mindanao in the south. The country is a democratic nation and is the only predominantly Christian country in Asia. Cross-cultural research has characterised the Philippines as typically collectivist, scoring slightly below the median rank on Hofstedes (1980) individualism scale.
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From a long history of western colonisation (e.g., Spain, and the United States of America) and frequent trade with merchants in neighbouring Asian countries, the Philippines has evolved into a nation with a distinctive mix of eastern and western cultural values and practices (Church, 1987; Enriquez, 1994). The value orientation of Filipinos is characterised as personal and collectivist-oriented having a subjective, euphemistic orientation emphasising group interests against the objective, concrete orientation of the West valuing personal gains (Jocano, 1999a, 1999b). Such orientation places great emphasis on harmonious interpersonal relations in various aspects of interaction whether in the family, community, or the organisation (Andres, 1999; Coward, 1978). It also translates to the Filipinos viewing their membership in organisations as being part of a social system similar to that of the family (Jocano, 1999a, 1999b). In other words, they view their organisations in a patriarchal manner providing them with means to maintain an acceptable standard of living and personal and professional development. Another value orientation is a high regard for the family which is considered as, the core of all social, cultural and economic activity (Quisumbing, 1964, p. 137). As Guthrie explains (1961, p. 55):
If there is one aspect of Philippine life that impresses a western observer, it is the role of the family in the life of the individual. Filipinos inculcate a strong sense of family loyalty, which spreads beyond the nuclear family of parents and children. Family obligations extend to cousins, to in-laws and to others who are made a part of the family by such ceremonies as sponsors at a marriage or a baptism.
Loyalty comes first to the immediate Filipino family and identity is deeply entrenched in the web of kinship (Church, 1987). Interestingly, ones kin can also include a large number of people such as grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins and so on beyond the nuclear family. In addition, Filipinos have been described as respectful of parents, elders and any individual that resembles an authority figure. Social values that reflect deference and obedience are expected from children (Liwag, De La Cruz, & Macapagal, 1998). There is also a strong regard for what has been termed as palabra de honor literally translated as keeping ones word or keeping ones promises (Jocano, 1999b). The fulfilment of promises leads a person to develop katapatan or commitment. There is evidence to suggest that promises in some cultures may be interpreted as binding (Rousseau & Schalk, 2000) and may also serve as a building block of psychological contracts
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(Rousseau, 2001). A promise is defined as, a spoken or written assurance made to another, a commitment made to ones self or conditions that create expectations on the part of another (Rousseau, 2001, p. 525). In the Philippine context, failure on the part of the other party to fulfil its palabra de honor suggests that the other party does not have honour and thus cannot be trusted. Overall, these value orientations are likely to shape employment relationships and psychological contracts in the Philippine context.
Socioeconomic Perspective
Mirroring global trends in the employment context, the Philippines has also been significantly influenced by dynamic changes (Skene, 2002). In the 1990s, several amendments in labour regulation were implemented to respond to economic liberalisation and achieve competitive advantage in the global market (Quisumbing, 1997; Sardaa & Tana, 1997, Skene, 2002). For example, an increasing number of Philippine organisations adopted alternative employment schemes (e.g., minimum wage setting, corporate mergers, subcontracting) to accrue benefits such as reduced worker entitlements, increased organisational expansion and improved operational efficiency. The workforce with temporary and nonsecure employment contracts (i.e., contractual, part-time, paid-on-commission) has also noticeably increased by 28% (Illo, 1999). As a consequence, approximately 75,000 workers were affected by work stoppage, downsizing, and work shift changes (Quisumbing, 1997; Sardaa & Tana, 1997). These changing labour practices and the escalating number of labour infringements are likely to result in varied forms of psychological contract breach of employment expectations (Rousseau, 1995).
What is the Nature of Employment Relationships in the Philippine Context?

A review of the cross-cultural literature suggests that the nature of employment relationships in collectivist societies is characterised as familial such that there is much emphasis on the role of strong interpersonal relationships (Hofstede, 1997). The notion that a group or members of a society is like a family constellation is intimately linked with the concept of paternalism or patriarchal-caring leadership (Aycan, 2006; Aycan et al., 2000) or the belief that people of authority should take care of their constituents as they would take care of their children. Paternalism is particularly inherent in a number of Asian, Latin American and MiddleEastern countires (Aycan et al., 2000; Aycan, Kanungo, & Sinha, 1999; Restubog & Bordia, 2006) or high power distance cultures (Hofstede,
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1997). Power distance is generally understood as the degree to which a society accepts the notion that power is distributed unequally (Hofstede, 1997). The level of power distance varies from one society to another. For example, the Philippines is characterised as a high power distance culture in which people believe that superiors have greater power over their subordinates (Church, 1987; Gupta, Surie, Javidan, & Chhokar, 2002; Hofstede, 1997). In high power distance cultures, workplace familism may manifest itself as paternalism. This idea is supported by Hofstedes (1997) view that a good leader is also a benevolent autocrat or a good father. In a paternalistic relationship, the role of the supervisor goes beyond the traditional workeremployer relationship. The supervisor is portrayed as a parent, providing guidance, nurturance and protection in professional as well as personal affairs of his/her subordinates. In exchange, subordinates demonstrate loyalty and obedience to their supervisors. The parental role of the supervisor is clearly demonstrated in the Philippine context. For example, subordinates consult their supervisor not only on matters related to their work, but also on issues involving family and social life. Including the supervisor in the subordinates personal affairs is also exemplified when supervisors are invited to serve as sponsors in ceremonial occasions (e.g., marriage, baptism of the first born child) and social events (e.g., birthday celebrations, family events). Attending these events solidifies personal alliances and strengthens the personal relationship between the supervisor and the subordinate. We conducted an interview study to understand the nature of employment relationships in the Philippines (Restubog et al., 2005b). Thirty professional workers from a diverse range of occupational clusters were interviewed. The main objective of our research was to develop a deeper understanding of the nature of employment relationships in the Philippines. In addition, we examined workers expectations toward their organisation. An examination of these expectations is vital because it sets the foundation for building workeremployer relationships. For example, the notion of employment relationships in Japan is based on the expectation that workers are warmly received as part of a group or an organisation (Kashima & Callan, 1994; Morishima, 2000; Redding, Norman, & Schandler, 1990). Workers have expectations relating to the different facets of their job (Lester & Kickul, 2001; Robinson & Rousseau, 1994). These expectations may come in the form of tangible rewards (e.g., organisational benefits) or intangible ones (e.g., training and development). Some scholars
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have classified these expectations as either relational (e.g., socio-emotional and developmental aspects of the job) or transactional (e.g., monetary rewards; Robinson & Rousseau, 1994; Rousseau, 1990). Others described them in terms of whether these expectations were intrinsicallyoriented (e.g., challenging and fulfilling job) or extrinsically-oriented (e.g., organisational benefits and monetary remuneration; Lester & Kickul, 2001). We asked our participants to describe their relationship with their organisation and the expectations that they had upon hiring. Our qualitative analysis revealed two dominant themes. First, most participants perceived their organisation and supervisor as parental figures and treated them as family members. In particular, they described how their organisation and supervisor demonstrated parental concern and support for their welfare. For example, one senior level administrator from a top private university in the Philippines described her organisation as a good father because it provided her with good financial rewards. Another participant from the largest telecommunications organisation in the country described it as a caring organisation that treats him with importance like one of its children. Other participants referred to their organisation as a family because of the familial climate provided for them. Second, a closely related theme is supervisor-related familism, which depicts a family-oriented relationship shared between workers and supervisors. For example, participants described their supervisors as possessing parent-like characteristics (e.g., being caring and nurturing) and demonstrating parent-like behaviours (e.g., providing counsel, listening to problems, giving advice on personal concerns). These results are particularly interesting when compared with how employment relationships are viewed in western societies. In western countries like Australia and the United States, employment relationships are adjudged on the basis of the costs and benefits of ones actions. In other words, there are defined parameters or boundaries that each party is obligated to fulfil. For example, exceptionally performing workers may be rewarded through fast-tracked promotions or career development opportunities, while underperforming workers may be demoted or sacked. Another interesting point of comparison is that employment relationships in the Philippines emphasise hierarchy, obedience and respect for supervisors, whereas working relationships in western cultures are governed by egalitarianism, fairness, task-orientedness and decentralised authority (Gupta et al., 2002; Hofstede, 1997). Filipinos are generally portrayed as respectful of parents, elders or any
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individual who represent authority. This submissiveness may be traced from traditional child-rearing practices, which have been characterised as authoritative and overprotective (Liwag et al., 1998). Another objective of our research was to gather data on worker expectations. Once again, guided by the psychological contract literature, we collated a total of 95 comments regarding worker expectations, with most participants providing more than one response to the question. Eight themes were revealed: compensation; job security; harmonious and favourable working environment; organisational benefits; support for personal concerns; supportive leadership and mentoring; career growth and advancement; and fairness and respect. Most of these themes are comparable with previous research in western countries examining content and features of the psychological contract (Herriot, Manning, & Kidd, 1997; Lester & Kickul, 2001). An interesting theme that has not been found in the western context is support from supervisor regarding personal problems. This finding further supports the notion of workplace supervisor familism. Workers expect their supervisors to provide them with emotional support for their personal concerns. This is consistent with previous research finding that Filipino workers seek counsel from their immediate supervisor regarding their problems and personal life (Mathur, Zhang, & Neelankavil, 2001). In the next section, we further elaborate on workplace familism and how it relates with workplace behaviours.
Does Workplace Familism Predict Worker Behaviours?

By now, we have seen that the employment relationship in the Philippine context is grounded in a family-oriented approach. The next question to ask then is whether perceptions of workplace familism contribute to effective organisational functioning. When workers feel that their needs are adequately and properly addressed and that their organisation and supervisor have been a good provider and source of support, they are more likely to identify themselves as belonging to the organisation that they work for. Thus, workers are more likely to reciprocate desirable behaviours that help their organisation and supervisor. These theoretical ideas were part of our investigation of 267 full-time workers working in a wide variety of business sectors in the Philippines (Restubog & Bordia, 2006). In order to measure workplace familism, we developed items based on the results of our interview study. A principal components analysis was conducted. The analysis supported the two underlying dimensions of workplace familism: Organisational familism (i.e., familial affinity with
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the organisation) and Supervisor familism (i.e., relationship quality shared between workers and supervisors that resemble a familial relationship). We also asked participants to report the extent to which they participated in non-compulsory organisational activities (i.e., civic virtue behaviour) and the degree to which they fulfilled the performance requirements stipulated in their employment contract (i.e., in-role performance). Results showed positive relationships between organisational and supervisor familism and civic virtue behaviour. In addition, workplace supervisor familism was positively related to in-role performance. However, no relationship was found between workplace organisational familism and in-role performance. In another study, we further examined the impact of workplace familism on supervisor reports of civic virtue behaviour and helping behaviour using 206 staff from small-sized pharmaceutical firms (Restubog et al., 2005b). The use of an additional data source (e.g., supervisor ratings of performance) is likely to provide a better measure of performance as it minimises same-source bias (Podsakoff & Organ, 1986) and offers a fuller picture of how workplace familism relates to worker behaviours. We also measured workplace deviant behaviour which is generally understood as, voluntary behaviour that violates significant organisational norms and in so doing threatens the re-employment of an organization, its members, or both (Robinson & Bennett, 1995, p. 556). As predicted, results showed that both workplace organisational and supervisor familism were positively related to civic virtue and helping behaviours, and negatively associated with workplace deviant behaviours. Overall, our studies suggest that a high level of workplace familism drives workers to contribute more desirable behaviours and also to refrain from engaging in workplace deviant behaviours that can hurt the organisation. The negative relationship between workplace familism and workplace deviant behaviour may be explained by the idea that workers tend to consider the organisation and their supervisor as their in-group (Hofstede, 1997). Thus, they are not likely to inflict harm on their organisation or supervisor if they value them as part of their family.
What is the Role of Workplace Familism in the Psychological Contract Dynamics?

The previous sections discussed the role of psychological contracts and the nature of employment relationships in the Philippine context. In this section, we provide a more detailed discussion of how workplace familism may influence negative effects of psychological contract breach on
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worker behaviours. In other words, we elaborate on the strength of the relationship between breach and worker behaviours at varying levels of workplace familism. In order to better understand the potential moderating influence of workplace familism, we proposed two competing perspectives. The first perspective conceptualises workplace familism as a form of social support because it is characterised as parental concern for the wellbeing of workers. On the basis of previous research on the buffering role of social support (Cohen & Wills, 1985), we would expect that workplace familism will mitigate the impact of psychological contract breach on worker performance. An alternative explanation is that workplace familism can be taken from the betrayal perspective (Elangovan & Shapiro, 1998; Jones & Burdette, 1994). Drawing from prior research in social and organisational psychology, betrayal has been conceptualised as a serious violation of the norms and expectations of a relationship (Elangovan & Shapiro, 1998; Jones & Burdette, 1994). Workers expect that their organisation and immediate supervisor will provide them with material and emotional support. This expectation would be higher among workers with high workplace familism. While the two frameworks suggest that workplace familism can function as a moderator variable, the pattern of relationships differs between these two perspectives. Thus, from a social support perspective, we would expect a weaker relationship between breach and worker behaviours for workers with high levels of workplace familism compared to those with low levels of workplace familism. In contrast, following a betrayal perspective, it would be expected that negative effects of breach on worker behaviours would be stronger for those workers with high levels of workplace familism compared to those with low levels of workplace familism. We tested these ideas using 267 full-time workers enrolled in a parttime MBA program (Restubog & Bordia, 2006). These participants were employed in diverse business sectors, including educational and training institutions, government agencies, financial institutions, service and hospitality, information technology and telecommunications. Using hierarchical moderated regression, we tested the moderating role of the two types of workplace familism between breach (breach of relational obligations and breach of transactional obligations) and worker behaviours (civic virtue behaviour and in-role performance). Evidence for moderating effects was noted by a statistically significant increment in R2 in the third step where interactive terms were entered.
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To fully test for the moderating effects, information (e.g., unstandardised beta weights) from the regression equations were extracted to plot the effect of the independent variable (e.g., breach) on each outcome variable (e.g., civic virtue behaviour) at low and high levels of workplace familism (i.e., low and high levels of supervisor and organisational familism). Our results suggested that both workplace supervisor familism and workplace organisational familism influenced the relationship between breach of relational obligations and civic virtue behaviour. Simple slope analysis was carried out to examine the nature of interactions. The slope for high workplace supervisor familism was statistically significant. In particular, negative effects of breach in relational obligations were stronger for those with high workplace supervisor familism compared to those with low workplace supervisor familism. In other words, the level of civic virtue behaviour had a sharper drop for those with high workplace supervisor familism, compared to those with low workplace supervisor familism. A similar pattern of results was observed for workplace organisational familism. These results provide evidence for the betrayal framework. However, the hypothesised relationship involving breach of transactional obligations and workplace familism in predicting civic virtue behaviour was not supported. Further, workplace organisational familism did not have any moderating effects between breach of transactional and relational obligations and in-role performance. Overall, our results suggested that a perception of breach may be construed as a form of betrayal, especially for those workers with a high degree of workplace familism. The reverse-buffering effects of workplace familism may be interpreted in the light of the expectancyviolation hypothesis which posits that, people react more strongly to another partys actions that violate their previous expectations of how the other party is likely to behave (Brockner, Tyler, & Cooper-Schneider, 1992, p. 258). In the context of this study, workers reporting high workplace familism have an expectation that their supervisor and organisation would safeguard them against any form of injustice. Breach of the psychological contract is a form of injustice (Morrison & Robinson, 1997; Rousseau, 1995). As a result, this produces feelings of anger because the familial-oriented relationship that they expected to protect them failed to fulfil its purpose.
Conclusion
In this chapter, we have addressed three central questions pertaining to workplace familism and its role in the psychological contract dynamics.
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We proposed that the nature of employment relationships in the Philippine setting is grounded in family-like relationships that are closely linked with Filipino values such as utang na loob (debt of gratitude), pagmamalasakit (concern), and pagbibigayan (mutual sharing). If an organisation shows concern (pagmamalasakit) and lives up to its promises and obligations (palabra de honor) to its workers, typical of a parent of a good family, its organisational members will reciprocate positive behaviours by demonstrating the same concern (pagmamalasakit) and loyalty (katapatan) towards the organisation. Within the context of a collectivist culture like the Philippines, interpersonal relations and communication are integral to organisational functioning. Indeed, our research has acknowledged the positive benefits of workplace familism for both in-role and extra-role performance. That is, workplace familism enhances productivity and facilitates extra-role performance, which benefits both the organisation and its members. However, workplace familism can also hurt if the organisation does not keep its part of the bargain. We found that workers with high levels of workplace familism are more likely to react negatively to breach, compared to those with low levels of workplace familism. That is, psychological contract breach had stronger negative effects on civic virtue behaviour, especially for those with high levels of workplace familism. At a practical level, the question to ask is, how can organisations promote workplace familism to bolster positive worker behaviours and reduce workplace deviant behaviours? Implementing programs aimed at improving employerworker relationships or effective communication channels between supervisors and workers may signal to workers that they are valued members of a community. To maintain an effective system of communication in the Philippine context, Jocano (1999a, 1999b) presents a 3-step model leading to pagkakaunawaan (understanding) when conflict and misunderstanding arise in employment relationships. These are pagsasanguni (consultation), paghihikayat (persuasion), and pagkakasundo (consensus). These, in turn, would result in tiwala (trust), sigla (enthusiasm), and kakayahan (capability) producing kagalingan (peak performance or excellence). There are also benefits to be derived from setting up organisational activities (e.g., team building, familycompany outings) that allows the employment relationship to be personalised. By fostering a sense of solidarity and family-orientation among managers and workers, organisations can reap the benefits from workers working in a one big happy family.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Dr Elizabeth V. Hobman for her helpful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. Please address correspondence to Dr Simon Lloyd D. Restubog, School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, 4072 QLD, Australia, simonr@psy.uq.ed.au.
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CHAPTER
19
A Qualitative Study of Motivators and Suppressors of Counterproductive and Productive Workplace Behaviours
Ruby Man-wa Lau, Wing-tung Au, and Jane Ming-chun Ho
The present study explored reasons behind productive and counterproductive behaviours at work. In-depth interviews were conducted with 45 workers from diverse occupational backgrounds and age groups to solicit causes of positive and negative work behaviours. Content analyses and exploratory factor analyses were conducted to investigate the underlying structure of motivators and suppressors of productive and counterproductive work behaviours. Interestingly, the factor Collegial relationships was a common reason motivating and suppressing both positive and negative behaviours. We also found that Maintaining face was a suppressor of counterproductive behaviours. The present results provided a comprehensive list of motivators and suppressors for future systematic investigation of antecedents of productive and counterproductive work. Counterproductive behaviour (CPB) refers to any voluntary behaviour that violates significant organisational norms and in doing so threatens the wellbeing of the organisation, its members, or both (Robinson & Bennett, 1995). According to past research, CPB not only leads to significant annual losses but also to business failures (e.g., Arthur, 1994; Jones, Arnold, & Harris, 1991). Hence, no matter whether negative workplace
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behaviours are CPBs that purposely damage employers properties, or just doing little work, which may mean producing poor quality output, CPBs are certainly harmful to organisations. This chapter takes a qualitative approach to explore underlying reasons why workers engage in counterproductive (negative) behaviours at work. We also consider antecedents of productive (positive) workplace behaviours so as to compare and contrast them with those of negative behaviours. As well as identifying motivators behind these behaviours, factors suppressing workers engagement in productive and counterproductive behaviours at work are also investigated. We interviewed workers and content analysed the scripts in order to develop a list of motivators and suppressors of productive and counterproductive behaviours. A separate group of respondents judged similarity among these factors and exploratory factor analyses were used to examine their factor structures.
Method
Participants
The 45 participants were recruited on a quota sampling basis according to age group and classification of occupations in the 2001 Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) census. Twenty-six participants (58%) were women. Twelve participants (27%) were aged 15 to 30 years, 26 participants (58%) were aged 31 to 45 years, and seven participants (16%) were aged 46 to 60 years. Participants were mostly service workers and shop sales workers (N = 17, 38%), managers and administrators (N = 13, 29%), and clerks (N = 7, 16%). The sample also included professionals (N = 3, 7%), associate professionals (N = 2, 4%), and civil servants (N = 2, 4%).
Procedure
Each interview followed a standard protocol to solicit motivators and suppressors for both positive and negative workplace behaviours. The first author conducted all the interviews in Cantonese. The first part of the interview focused on positive work behaviours. The interviewer gave some examples of positive behaviours in order to explain to participants what constituted positive behaviours for example, coming to work on time, or maintaining good collegial relationships. The participant was then asked, According to your work experience, have you or your colleagues ever engaged in any positive behaviours? Participants were required to describe each of these positive work behaviours in detail. For instance, if a participant said that his or her colleagues were very helpful,
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Counterproductive and Productive Workplace Behaviours
then the participant would also be asked to describe critical incidents that characterised helpfulness. The participant would also be asked to explain why someone would or would not engage in such behaviours. The second part of the interview focused on negative work behaviours. Participants were given examples of counterproductive behaviours and reminded that some of these behaviours might be quite minor and common for example, gossiping or coming to work late, whereas others might be quite serious and infrequent for example, bribing or stealing merchandise. Participants could discuss any negative behaviours engaged in by themselves or by other workers. Specifically, they were asked, According to your work experience, have you or your colleagues ever engaged in any negative work behaviours? Participants described each negative work behaviour in detail, and reported why people would or would not engage in each of these behaviours. Interviews lasted between 30 and 45 minutes. Each participant received a cake coupon of about US$5 in monetary value as a token of thanks. All interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed for content coding.
Coding Procedure
Reasons for positive and negative work behaviours were separated into four groups: (a) reasons for engaging in positive behaviours, (b) reasons for not engaging in positive behaviours, (c) reasons for engaging in negative behaviours and (d) reasons for not engaging in negative behaviours. Consider a positive work behaviour for example, being punctual at work, reported by a toy designer. The toy designer claimed that he and his co-workers were usually punctual at work. When he was asked why he was punctual, he said that, In this contemporary world, if one is not punctual at work, one would be fired. This reason was coded as Avoid being fired. The toy designer also said that, He can get things prepared in advance in order to organise what he needs to do today or to plan tomorrows work schedule. This reason was coded as Striving for better job performance. The first and second authors went through the list of reasons removing duplicate entries and combining psychologically similar explanations. The result was a list of unique reasons containing 92 motivators and 17 suppressors of productive behaviours, and 129 motivators and 26 suppressors of counterproductive behaviours. The complete list can be obtained from the second author.
Sorting Reasons Into Clusters
In order to examine the factor structure underlying the reasons for these positive and negative work behaviours, each of the four sets of
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reasons (for engaging and not engaging in positive and negative behaviours, respectively) was sorted by a new group of 30 participants, all of whom were undergraduate or postgraduate students. Each reason was printed on an index card. The participants task was to separate these reasons into piles such that, (a) reasons within the same pile were very similar to each other and (b) reasons in different piles were very different from each other. There were no limits on the number of piles. Participants could use as many piles or as few piles as they wished.
Results
For the 92 motivators of productive behaviours, a 92 92 similarity matrix was constructed following Rosenberg and Sedlaks (1972) procedure by pooling reasonsimilarity information across participants. It involved computing for each pair of reasons the proportion of participants sorting both reasons into the same category. An indirect similarity index was derived for each reason-pair by computing the correlation of these proportions for each of the two reasons and the 92 other reasons. When one reasons pattern of similarities with other reasons corresponds closely with a second reasons pattern of similarities with these same other reasons, then the indirect similarities correlation between these two reasons will be high. The matrix of pooled indirect similarity correlations was analysed by a principal components analysis with varimax rotation. Clustering among the reasons was in turn interpreted through rotated factor pattern (standardised regression coefficients). The same analyses were performed on the other three sets of reasons.
Motivators of Productive Behaviours
Originally, there were 92 motivators of productive behaviours. After trimming motivators with weak loadings (< .4) or with loadings (> .4) on more than one factor, 60 motivators were left and 14 factors with eigenvalues larger than 1 were retained. The total variance explained by these 14 factors was 75.8%. Table 1 shows factors and item loadings for motivators of productive behaviours. The 14 categories of motivators of productive behaviours were: (1) Good relationships with colleagues (e.g., colleagues understand each others expectations and needs), (2) Colleagues positive dispositions (e.g., righteousness), (3) Striving for improvement (e.g., to strive for a sense of being successful), (4) Conformity with authority (e.g., supervisor makes the final decision), (5) Job satisfaction (e.g., the task is significant), (6) Meeting job demands (e.g., do not have enough workers), (7) Saving time and money, (8) Avoiding negative
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TABLE 1 Factors and Item Loadings of Motivators of Productive Behaviours Factor Factor 1: Good relationships with colleagues Colleagues understand each others expectations and needs Have a common (superordinate) goal Close relationships among colleagues Good colleague relationships No conflicts of interest among colleagues Colleagues can affect each other Similar age or hobbies among colleagues Colleagues behaviours will affect ones benefit Different workers play different roles and complement each others roles Conform with colleagues behaviours Want colleagues to make improvements Small number of colleagues (e.g., easy to accommodate to each other) Competition among colleagues Factor 2: Colleagues positive dispositions Righteousness Responsibility Self-discipline Forethought Personality (e.g., being considerate) Not calculative Enterprising Able to analyse from a positive aspect Critiques on issues but not about individuals Deal with others with an optimistic point of view Work according to ones ability Habit Factor 3: Striving for improvement Strive for a sense of success Strive for self actualisation Enjoy challenges (e.g., competition with oneself) Strive for better job performance (e.g., to make work more efficient) To meet personal standards Self motivation Strive for better living standard Factor 4: Conform with authority Supervisor makes final decision Follow supervisors order Supervisors instructions and pressure Believe ability of supervisor Supervisor listens to subordinates opinions Follow organisations rules and regulations Item loading .94 .93 .93 .91 .88 .82 .81 .75 .71 .71 .70 .64 .61 .92 .91 .90 .83 .80 .75 .73 .71 .70 .68 .54 .45 .91 .89 .83 .81 .72 .62 .55 .91 .90 .89 .84 .82 .44 (continued over)
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TABLE 1 (continued) Factors and Item Loadings of Motivators of Productive Behaviours Factor Item loading .87 .83 .75 .63 .92 .81 .75 .93 .93 .92 .90 .95 .90 .42 .94 .94 .91 .82 .74 .67 .81 .80
Factor 5: Job satisfaction Task identity (e.g., take ownership of work done) Task significance Like and enjoy current job Job satisfaction Factor 6: Meeting job demands Not enough workers No fair treatment in workplace Colleagues will not share work with you Factor 7: Saving time and money Save time Save money Factor 8: Avoiding negative consequences Avoid being punished Avoid getting fired Factor 9: Intangible rewards Non-monetary compensation for the inadequate salary Getting non-monetary rewards (e.g., time-off) for positive job behaviours Positive reinforcement (e.g., appreciation from supervisor or clients) Factor 10: Leading others Act as a role model for others Act as an instructor Factor 11: Conformity with norms Affected by the culture Religion encourages ones positive behaviours Factor 12: Maintaining harmonious relationships Maintain harmony Treat supervisors, colleagues, and clients as friends Factor 13: Duty As a duty Factor 14: Job nature Job nature
consequences (e.g., avoid being punished), (9) Intangible motivation (e.g., positive reinforcement like appreciation from supervisors or clients), (10) Leading others (e.g., act as a role model for others), (11) Conform with norms (e.g., religion encourages positive behaviours), (12) Maintaining harmonious relationships (e.g., treat supervisors, colleagues, and clients the same as friends), (13) Duty, and (14) Job nature (e.g., it is the nature of the job).
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Suppressors of Productive Behaviours
The original list contained 17 suppressors of productive behaviours. After trimming multiple and weakly loading items, 15 items were left and five factors with eigenvalues greater than 1 were retained. The total variance explained by these five factors was 77.0%. Table 2 shows factors and item loadings for suppressors of productive behaviours. The five categories of suppressors were: (1) Colleagues negative dispositions (e.g., lack of ambition), (2) Poor relationships with colleagues (e.g., competition among colleagues), (3) Self-centred (e.g., concern for own job performance only), (4) Poor relationship with supervisors (e.g., not getting support from senior colleagues), and (5) Worry about job performance (e.g., negative work experience).
Motivators of Counterproductive Behaviours
The original list contained 129 motivators of counterproductive behaviours. After trimming multiple and weakly loading items, 78 items were left and 19 factors with eigenvalues greater than 1 were retained. The total variance explained by these 19 factors was 72.9%. Table 3 shows factors and item loadings for motivators of counterproductive behaviours. The 19 categories of motivators were: (1) Colleagues negative dispositions (e.g., lazy or selfish), (2) Gossiping is functional (e.g., as a way of collecting information about the firm), (3) Self-interest (e.g., to raise ones position in company), (4) Poor relationship with supervisor (e.g., cannot accept bosss working style), (5) Flawed bureaucratic structure (e.g., formal reporting procedure too complicated), (6) Poor relationships with colleagues (e.g., different working styles among colleagues), (7) Self-centred (e.g., not considering the effect of ones behaviours on others), (8) External factors (e.g., cannot resist strong social norms), (9) Work stress, (10) Saving time and money (e.g., for convenience), (11) Tolerance of minor wrongdoings (e.g., minor wrongdoings are acceptable), (12) Compensation for inequity (e.g., as a kind of compensation for unpaid overtime), (13) Benevolence (e.g., [not pointing out others mistakes in order to] avoid colleagues being fired), (14) Maintaining harmonious relationships (e.g., avoid conflicts among colleagues), (15) Do not care about the job (e.g., not afraid of being fired), (16) Job dissatisfaction (e.g., lack a sense of belonging to the job), (17) Needing rest (e.g., [not working hard because people] need to rest), (18) Small likelihood of detection (e.g., there is no evidence to prove a particular wrongdoing is done by a certain person), and (19) Not understanding others job (e.g., [have unintentionally done something wrong because of] not clearly understanding others job nature).
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TABLE 2 Item Loadings of Suppressors of Productive Behaviours Factor Factor 1: Colleagues negative dispositions Lack of ambition Lack of responsibility Lack of working experience Unable to consider from a macro perspective Only work to rule Factor 2: Poor relationship with colleagues Competition among colleagues Have an age-gap with colleagues Provide opportunity for colleagues to learn Strive for a sense of superiority Factor 3: Self-centred Only concerned about own job performance Only concerned about ones own business Factor 4: Relationship with supervisor No support from supervisor Poor relationship with supervisor Factor 5: Worry about job performance Affects job performance and efficiency Negative work experience Item loading .93 .87 .82 .76 .51 .86 .82 .82 .53 .96 .94 .98 .98 .84 .67
Suppressors of Counterproductive Behaviours
The original list contained 26 suppressors of counterproductive behaviours. After trimming multiple and weakly loading items, 22 items were left and seven factors with eigenvalues greater than 1 were retained. The total variance explained by these seven factors was 73.8%. Table 4 shows factors and item loadings for suppressors of counterproductive behaviours. The seven categories of suppressors were: (1) External constraints (e.g., existence of a surveillance system), (2) Prudence (e.g., too risky), (3) Busy at work (e.g., too busy [and have not time to do bad things]), (4) Face (e.g., to protect ones image and reputation), (5) Not being tempted (e.g., not greedy), (6) Protect organisations image (e.g., protect the firms image), and (7) Relationships with colleagues (e.g., there are no conflicts of interest among colleagues).
Discussion
This study identified a variety of motivators and suppressors of productive and counterproductive behaviours at work. Among the list of motivators of counterproductive behaviours, we replicated constructs
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TABLE 3 Factors and Item Loadings of Motivators of Counterproductive Behaviours Factor Factor 1: Colleagues negative dispositions Lack of ambition Personality (e.g., lazy, selfish) Lack of responsibility No self-reflection Not patient enough Greedy Personal values Too passive Different personalities for individuals No clear separation between work and leisure Not willing to disclose oneself Curiosity Physiological need Factor 2: Gossiping is functional A way of collecting information about the organisation Should point out others mistake A channel of expressing opinions A kind of sharing A channel to reveal others wrongdoings Let others know some colleagues wrongdoings A channel to understand colleagues A means of self-reflection Maintain harmony Factor 3: Self-interest Raise ones position in the organisation Raise ones self esteem Strive for chance of promotion Protect ones self interest (e.g., reputation and status) Gain approval and support Impression management Factor 4: Poor relationship with supervisor Cannot accept supervisors working style Not trusted by supervisor Supervisor does not listen to colleagues opinions Follow supervisors behaviours Poor relationships with supervisor and colleagues Factor 5: Flawed bureaucratic structure Too many distracters in the organisation Redundant personnel Formal reporting process too complicated Organisations regulations are unclear Promotion depends on seniority, not on job performance Item loading
.96 .95 .93 .89 .88 .81 .73 .73 .68 .58 .55 .54 .53 .91 .86 .83 .78 .78 .76 .68 .62 .50 .94 .86 .80 .72 .56 .50 .92 .91 .86 .71 .69 .78 .76 .72 .68 .64 (continued over)
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TABLE 3 (continued) Factors and Item Loadings of Motivators of Counterproductive Behaviours Factor Factor 6: Poor relationships with colleagues Colleagues have different working styles Large number of colleagues (e.g., complicated interpersonal relationships) Colleagues have a long gathering time and thus spend more time more gossiping Factor 7: Self-centred Unable to consider from a macro perspective Unable to consider the impact of ones behaviours on others Concern for personal benefit only It is not ones duty Will not be concerned about others business Concern for short-term goals while overlooking long-term goals Factor 8: External factors Cannot resist strong social norms Affected by the culture Poor economic condition Good economic condition Factor 9: Work stress Heavy workload High job pressure Clients too demanding Factor 10: Saving time and money Save money Save time Convenience Factor 11: Tolerance of minor wrong doings Wrongdoings are acceptable if there are valid excuses Minor wrongdoings are acceptable Unintentional Factor 12: Compensation for inequity Compensate for excessive working hours Compensate for inadequate salaries or fringe benefits Factor 13: Benevolence Do not want to affect innocent individuals Avoid colleagues being fired Give colleagues a chance Factor 14: Maintaining harmonious relationships Avoid conflicts among colleagues Avoid being isolated Avoid direct confrontation (e.g., with clients) Escape from boredom Item loading
.83 .80 .68 .72 .71 .64 .61 .58 .58 .83 .81 .80 .76 .92 .90 .60 .82 .82 .76 .84 .82 .45 .90 .89 .83 .78 .70 .75 .71 .54 .46 (continued over)
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TABLE 3 (continued) Factors and Item Loadings of Motivators of Counterproductive Behaviours Factor Factor 15: Do not care about the job Not afraid of being fired Dont care about salary Factor 16: Job dissatisfaction Lack of sense of belonging to the job Have no interest in the job Factor 17: Needing rest Need more rest Not enough rest Factor 18: Small likelihood of detection Lack of evidence to trace perpetrator of a particular wrongdoing Nobody knows ones counterproductive behaviours Factor 19: Not understanding others job Do not have a clear understanding of others job nature Item loading
.82 .78 .91 .88 .81 .74 .82 .77 .85
(like tolerance for dishonest behaviours, compensation for inequity, job dissatisfaction and likelihood of detection) that are often used in overt integrity tests to predict deviant behaviours (e.g., Sackett, 1994). More interestingly, we also identified new factors like face and relationships with colleagues that serve to suppress counterproductive behaviours. Perhaps the Chinese context, within which this exploratory study was conducted, allows discovery of these relational constructs that are often neglected in western and individualistic cultures (Cheung et al., 1996). Our findings suggest a plausible hypothesis that a person who emphasises face is less likely to engage in counterproductive behaviours in order to maintain his or her reputation and self-image. Future theoretical research and practical applications may consider incorporating face in covert integrity tests to predict counterproductive behaviours. The list of motivators and suppressors of counterproductive behaviours is also an essential empirical database for item development of an overt integrity test indigenous to Chinese culture. Another insight from these exploratory qualitative results is identification of Relationships with colleagues as a factor for both motivators and suppressors of productive and counterproductive behaviours. Many participants mentioned that in order to maintain a harmonious relationship with colleagues and supervisors, on the one hand, they are compelled to help each other. On the other hand, in order to avoid direct confrontation with others, they are reluctant to point out others counterproductive behaviours and they might also conform with these behaviours.
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TABLE 4 Factors and Item Loadings of Suppressors of Counterproductive Behaviours Factor Factor 1: External constraints Surveillance system Strict regulations Under the surveillance of supervisors and colleagues Obey orders (from higher authority) Social pressure Factor 2: Prudence Too risky Long-term goal more important than immediate gain Avoid trouble Avoid getting fired Concern about aversive consequences Factor 3: Busy at work Too busy Busy at work Time passes faster when one is working instead of idling Factor 4: Face Maintain reputation Protect self image Factor 5: Not being tempted Not being tempted Stable economic condition of employee Not greedy Factor 6: Protect organisations image Protect organisations image Maintain harmony Factor 7: Relationships with colleagues No conflict of interest among colleagues Colleagues are not dependable Item loading
.94 .92 .91 .75 .46 .76 .73 .72 .72 .54 .96 .93 .80 .93 .92 .89 .76 .53 .88 .78 .80 .77
Having a cohesive workgroup and harmonious collegial relationships can be both a blessing and a curse. Another notable finding related to negative work behaviours is motivation for workplace gossiping. Participants reported that gossiping is a way to understand more about the organisation, colleagues and oneself. In addition to maintaining harmony, gossiping also serves as a channel for sharing and giving opinions, and to reveal colleagues wrongdoings. These reflections or justifications suggest that workers believe that they can benefit from gossiping. Gossiping is like a mirror, remarked one participant. Virtues of gossiping may warrant further investigation.
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The present study identified a comprehensive list of motivators and suppressors of productive and counterproductive work behaviours indigenous to Chinese culture. Although the exploratory nature of the current findings does not allow any firm conclusions, results provide stimuli for further systematic research using the conceptual framework of antecedents of productive and counterproductive workplace behaviours at the workplace (e.g., Martinko, Gundlach, & Douglas, 2002).
References
Arthur, D. (1994). Integrity testing. In D. Arthur (Ed.), Workplace testing: An employers guide to policies and practices (pp. 120141). New York: Amacom. Cheung, F. M., Leung, K., Fan, R. M., Song, W. Z., Zhang, J. X., & Zhang, J. P. (1996). Development of the Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory. Journal of Cross Cultural Psychology, 27, 181199. Jones, J. W., Arnold, D. W., & Harris, W. G. (1991). Integrity testing: The debate continues. Security Management, 35, 7174. Martinko, M. J., Gundlach, M. J., & Douglas, S. C. (2002). Toward an integrative theory of counterproductive workplace behavior: A causal reasoning perspective. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 10, 3650. Robinson, S. L., & Bennett R. J. (1995). A typology of deviant workplace behaviors: A multidimensional scaling study. Academy of Management Journal, 38, 555572. Rosenberg, S., & Sedlak, A. (1972). Structural representation of perceived personality trait relationship. In A. K. Romney, R. N. Shepard, & S. B.Nerlave (Eds.), Multidimensional scaling (pp. 134162). New York: Free Press. Sackett, P. R. (1994). Integrity testing for personnel selection. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 3, 7376.
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CHAPTER
20
Experience Sampling Methodology in Organisational Psychology
Cynthia D. Fisher
Individuals experiences while working (e.g., affect, effort, performance) fluctuate substantially within-person over short time periods. This within-person variation presents a number of challenges for researchers. First, collecting data on fleeting experiences in real time requires new approaches. Second, opportunities are available to obtain greater understanding of the nature, causes and consequences of momentary experiences while working. Third, within-person variation raises concerns about the accuracy of retrospective global reports of the type often used in organisational research. Can individuals correctly report their typical standing on a construct when it is highly variable? In this chapter, experience sampling methodology is recommended for obtaining measures of real time experiences for purposes of studying momentary processes, as well as for constructing accurate summary measures of the experience of work. Organisational psychology research to date has focused almost exclusively on the study of chronic conditions attributes that are thought to vary largely between rather than within individuals or jobs. For instance, researchers predict why person A is more satisfied, works harder, or performs better than person B, or why job 1 is more intrinsically motivating than job 2. The assumption made is that satisfaction, motivation and performance are fairly stable properties of people, and that job characteristics are fairly stable properties of jobs. This convenient assumption may be an over-simplification. Research using
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experience sampling methodology (ESM) to capture repeated reports of momentary experiences has shown that individuals and jobs do vary considerably over short periods of time on constructs that organisational researchers have tended to treat as stable. Fisher (2003; Fisher & Noble, 2004) collected reports of momentary mood, task satisfaction, effort, task performance, task skill and task difficulty from 120 respondents 5 times per day for 10 working days. The variance in the momentary reports was partitioned into that which was within-person over time (around each individuals own mean), and that which was between-persons (between means across all observations for each person). Given that respondents came from 65 different organisations and worked in a wide variety of jobs from blue-collar through the professions, considerable between-persons variance would probably be expected. However, 61% of the variance in mood at work and 76% of the variance in task satisfaction was within-person, suggesting that individuals fluctuate considerably over time in how they feel while working. Much of the variance in how hard and effectively people believed they were working was also within-person. Specifically, 73% of variance in effort was within-person, 72% of variance in task skill was within-person, and 77% of variance in self-rated performance was within-person. Miner (2001) found similar proportions of within-person variance in affect and performance in an ESM study of call centre employees. Job satisfaction has always been treated as a stable between-person variable, but Ilies and Judge (2002) reported that 36% of the variance in 4 times a day reports of momentary job satisfaction was within-person. Fishers respondents also perceived substantial variability in their jobs over time, with 77% of the variance in task difficulty being within-person. This result may be surprising in view of job analytic assumptions that jobs are relatively stable entities over the short term. The existence of substantial within-person variance over time poses several challenges for researchers. First, there are data collection challenges for those wishing to access short-term within-person variation. The next section of this chapter provides an overview of a technique developed for this purpose, called experience sampling methodology or ecological momentary assessment (EMA). A second challenge involves developing and testing theory about momentary processes. Individuals experience and interact with their world in real time. Events and conditions at the moment influence affect, cognitions and behaviour at the moment, and vice versa. There are both theoretical and practical reasons to seek to understand, for instance, why and how effort fluctuates over the course
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Experience Sampling Methodology
of a work day. A case will be made that ESM/EMA research can greatly enhance our understanding of important processes in daily work life. Awareness of within-person variation presents a third challenge to researchers who have traditionally relied upon one-time surveys of work behaviour or perceptions. Can individuals accurately provide global retrospective reports of their typical or average level on inherently variable phenomena? For instance, are individuals capable of accurately reporting their mood at work over the past week or month when mood fluctuates considerably within a single day? The issue of accuracy of retrospective self-reports of experience will be discussed, and the potential of ESM/EMA to provide greater accuracy demonstrated.

When researchers are interested in the flow of experience as it occurs in daily life, they may choose to break into this flow to collect measurements of current or recent occurrences from a sample of respondents repeatedly over time. While still rarely used in organisational research, methods for collecting multiple real-time reports have been developed and successfully applied in several disciplines. Daily diary methods are often used for collecting repeated reports of recent experience at the daily level (Bolger, Davis, & Rafaeli, 2003). Much of the remainder of this chapter will focus on a method for obtaining yet more frequent reports of momentary experiences. Affect and personality researchers call their technique experience sampling methodology (DeVries, 1992; Hormuth, 1986; Larson & Csikszentmihalyi, 1983; Scollon, Kim-Prieto, & Diener, 2003; Wheeler & Reis, 1991). They have used ESM to study mood, motives, stressful events and the occurrence of a wide variety of behaviours in peoples everyday lives. Behavioural medicine researchers have also embraced real-time assessment of momentary phenomena, calling their method ecological momentary assessment (Hufford, Shiffman, Paty, & Stone, 2001; Shiffman & Stone, 1998; Smyth, Wonderlich, Crosby, Miltenberger, Mitchell, & Rorty, 2001; Stone & Shiffman, 1994). They have used these methods to collect accurate data on perceptual variables such as pain, stress and affect; behaviours such as smoking, eating and alcohol consumption; and physiological indicators such as heart rate, blood pressure and salivary cortisol from moment to moment in daily life. ESM/EMA data collection can be interval-contingent, signal-contingent, or event-contingent. Interval-contingent designs request responses to surveys at fixed times during the day, such as 10:00 am, 3:00 pm., and 8:00 pm. Signal-contingent studies prompt participants to respond to a short
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questionnaire with a signal, most often from a pager, programmable alarm watch, or palm top computer. Random time-based signals are appropriate when the aim is to obtain a representative sample of experiences. Event-contingent studies require participants to respond each time an event of a designated type occurs. An example would be a study of anger in the workplace, wherein a brief survey is completed each time a participant feels angry over the course of a week or month. Event-contingent sampling is appropriate when the target events occur infrequently. It is possible, but rare, to use both signal- and event-contingent sampling in the same study. An important design consideration for ESM research involves sample size, in terms of both number of participants and number of signals. ESM studies often have relatively few respondents, due in part to the difficulty of recruiting participants and the time- and equipment-intensive nature of data collection. If within-person analyses are planned, large numbers of participants may not be necessary. However, there must be enough reports by each person, allowing for missed signals, to detect relationships within-person over time. If lagged analyses are planned, yet more signals should be scheduled because only pairs of consecutive signals can be used in the analyses. The number of signals in a study (how many signals per day, for how many days) must also take into account respondents willingness to cooperate and the timeframe over which the variables of interest fluctuate (Affleck, Zautra, Tennen, & Armeli, 1999; Delespaul, 1992). For instance, mood research has used from one to ten reports per day, blood pressure studies may obtain readings from ambulatory monitoring devices every 30 minutes and a study of the effect of hours of sleep on job performance might feature one morning and one afternoon measurement. There is often a trade-off between report frequency and study duration. Studies requiring responses every 30 minutes seldom run for more than 2 days, while those requiring three to five reports per day may run several weeks or longer. If between-persons hypotheses are to be tested, then there must be enough individuals in the sample to provide sufficient power for those tests. When the purpose of ESM is to produce an accurate average measure on some variable for each person for between-persons hypothesis testing, the variability of the phenomenon determines how many reports are needed to provide a reliable aggregate (cf., Llabre, Ironson, Spitzer, Gellman, Weidler, & Schneiderman, 1988). For instance, Ilies and Judge (2004) found that ten experience-sampled reports of momentary job satisfaction were necessary to create a composite that predicted overall satisfaction well.
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Recruitment and motivation of participants is often an issue in ESM studies. There is a substantial burden on participants, who should best be considered partners in the research process. Incentives and frequent follow-up are important to gain and maintain compliance with signal protocols. In the case of paper surveys, problems have been reported with individuals not responding to signals in a timely fashion, but completing multiple reports from memory at a single time (Broderick, Schwartz, Shiffman, Hufford, & Stone, 2003). This may result in lower quality data, as memory for fleeting experiences degrades quickly. Use of hand-held computers or web sites for data collection solves this problem by not permitting late responses. While a full tutorial on ESM/EMA is beyond the scope of this chapter, further advice on technical considerations is available in Affleck et al. (1999), Beal and Weiss (2003), Brown and Moskowitz (1998), Christensen, Barrett, Bliss-Moreau, Lebo, and Kaschub (2003), DeVries (1992), Reis and Gable (2000), Shiffman (2000), and Stone, Shiffman, and DeVries (1999). Use of experience sampling methodology is more difficult, time-consuming, and expensive than is cross-sectional data collection using retrospective measures. One might wonder why researchers should undertake such an arduous procedure. As mentioned above and detailed further below, there are at least two reasons for organisational researchers to add this methodology to their arsenal. The first, discussed immediately below, involves opportunities for theory-driven examination of substantive variability and the processes that produce it in real time. The second involves the potential of ESM/EMA to provide more accurate summary data than might be obtained from single retrospective reports of the same phenomena.
Understanding Within-Person Processes in Context

The nomothetic approach traditionally pursued by organisational scholars focuses on predicting stable differences between persons, for instance, whether trait positive affectivity is related to total number of organisational citizenship behaviours performed, across persons. In contrast, an idiographic approach seeks to understand and explain within-person variation, or how and why individuals fluctuate around their own baseline over time (Jaccard & Dittus, 1990). For instance, one might ask whether an individual is more likely to perform a citizenship behaviour while in a more pleasant mood state than usual. There are many reasons for industrial psychologists to become interested in the relatively transient phenomena experienced by individuals at work and assessed by experience sampling methodology.
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Conceptually, this is the level at which quality of work life actually occurs individuals feel good or bad, competent or incompetent, bored or engaged, and energetic or sluggish from moment to moment. Understanding the genesis and consequences of these feelings should have relevance for designing work settings and predicting behaviour. Hektner and Csikszentmihalyi (2002) identified the workplace as one of the two most untapped yet promising areas for the application of ESM, suggesting that, ESM research will be needed to examine the dynamics and processes behind productivity, creativity, time use, and individual wellness at work (p. 240). ESM allows individuals to be studied in context, in the environments they choose to inhabit, experiencing and responding to naturally occurring stimuli. Both the content (feelings, behaviours) and context (time of day, place, task type, social setting) of peoples work lives can be assessed. ESM research provides data with the greatest possible ecological validity, in contrast with that gained in laboratory studies or possibly flawed recollective reports of past situations (Hektner & Csikszentmihalyi, 2002). Within-person variation is not simply random error or noise. It is often lawfully related to other experiences assessed at the momentary level. Relationships among experience sampled variables can be assessed either concurrently or at a slight lag. In the latter case, inferences of causality can be stronger than in cross-sectional research. Some theory relevant to momentary processes at work already exists in the organisational literature. For instance, Seo, Barrett, and Bartunek (2004) combined control theory with the literature on mood effects on cognition to suggest that momentary affect impacts proximal motivation by influencing expectancies, utility judgments about exerting effort, progress judgments, goal levels and goal commitment in real time. Csikszentmihalyis work on flow or optimal experience (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Csikszentmihalyi & LeFevre, 1989) drew attention to within-person variations in task challenges and personal skills for meeting challenges that create states of flow, boredom, apathy, or anxiety. There is much opportunity to develop and test further theory about real-time phenomena in the workplace. Several specific examples of what can be studied and learned from organisational ESM research are discussed below. In the first modern ESM study reported in the organisational literature, Williams, Suls, Alliger, Learner, and Wan (1991) found that incidents of inter-role juggling between work and family roles were associated with immediate negative affect in working mothers. However, role juggling during the day reduced end-of-the-day work satisfaction only if
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it followed days without juggling, as individuals habituated to juggling by the second day. This study shows the power of repeated measurements of individuals over time to illuminate processes, such as habituation, that are simply not accessible with cross-sectional designs. A diary study by Sheldon, Ryan, and Reis (1996; see also Reis, Sheldon, Gable, Roscoe, & Ryan, 2000) tried to predict when individuals would experience good days (higher positive affect, wellbeing and vitality) compared with their own baselines. They concluded that good days occurred when individuals experienced higher than usual levels of competence and autonomy during the performance of important daily activities. This research was not aimed at the workplace per se, but suggested that perceptions of competence and autonomy may also be important determinants of short-term affective reactions at work. Fishers (2003) ESM study provided some support for this idea. She found strong within-person correlations between momentary perceptions of task performance (similar to competence) and concurrent task satisfaction and affect, indicating that most individuals felt happier than usual for them when they felt they were performing better than usual for them. Similarly, Totterdell (1999) found that mood varied with performance across periods of play among cricket players. It is left to future researchers to explore the effects of autonomy on momentary affect at work. Miner, Glomb, and Hulin (2005) studied the effect of positive and negative events (e.g., hassles and uplifts) due to supervisors, co-workers and the work itself on mood at work. As expected, pleasant events generally contributed to positive mood, while unpleasant events were associated with negative mood at the next signal. An interesting finding was the disproportionate effect of negative events on affect. The relationship between negative events and mood was approximately five times stronger than that between positive events and mood, even though positive events were reported three to five times more frequently than negative events (p. 171). Two variables that have been largely neglected by organisational researchers are task interest and effort. We tend to think of some jobs as being more interesting than others, but not much introspection is required to realise that ones interest level and attention vary substantially from task to task within a job, and from moment to moment even on the same task. Effort is usually measured as a between-person variable, and it is true that stable between-persons differences exist, with some employees consistently displaying a higher mean effort level than others. In contrast, attribution theory usually treats effort as an unstable cause of performance, one that can and does fluctuate within-person over the short term.
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Very few organisational studies have assessed fluctuations in interest or effort during a working day. Fisher and Noble (2004) provided an exception. They found that perceived momentary task difficulty, task skill, task interest and task effort all contributed to the prediction of within-person momentary performance, and that interest but not effort also had direct effects on affect while working, regardless of current performance level. In sum, there is a great deal to be learned about the momentary experience of work, and ESM is the method of choice for this purpose. Further examples of ESM applications in organisational behaviour include Alliger and Williams (1993), Ilies and Judge (2002, 2004), Teuchmann, Totterdell, and Parker (1999), Totterdell (2000), and Weiss, Nicholas, and Daus (1999). Another reason to use ESM is to obtain accurate reports of work experiences from respondents, as discussed further below.
Accuracy of Retrospective Reports of Behaviour and Affect

Most self-report measures in organisational behaviour ask respondents to report on their feelings, beliefs, intentions, behaviours, or experiences either over a defined period of time (mood over the past month, performance over the past year) or on average (frequency of performing citizenship behaviours, typical leadership style, satisfaction with the work itself). Even when on average is not explicitly requested, respondents seem to understand that they are being asked to report on their normal or typical status. Given some variability in the phenomenon being reported, this is a sophisticated recall and integration task. There is a great deal of evidence that autobiographical recall, even of specific factual events, is far from perfect (cf., Eisenhower, Mathiowetz, & Morganstein, 1991; Henry, Moffitt, Caspi, Langley, & Silva, 1994; Matlin & Strang, 1978; Schwarz & Sudman, 1994; Stone, Turkkan, Bachrach, Jobe, Kurtzman, & Cain, 2000). There is even more reason to wonder about how well individuals can recall multiple and mundane incidents of past affect or behaviour and then mentally average them to produce an accurate report of typical standing (Means & Loftus, 1991; Menon, 1994). The amount of cognitive processing as well as the memory demands involved in such a task almost guarantee that errors will occur (Robinson & Clore, 2002; Shiffman, 2000). Further, these errors may be systematic rather than random. Schacter (1999) identified and reviewed evidence for the seven sins of memory. Those most relevant to retrospective self-reports are transience, absent-mindedness and bias. Transience refers to the tendency of memories
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to fade over time, especially if they are not accessed regularly. Direct access to affective experiences vanishes when the affect ends, though memories about the event and feeling may remain (Robinson & Clore, 2002). In general, specific detail is lost first, with the gist of the event remaining longer (Conrad, Brown, & Cashman, 1998). Memories fade especially quickly when the original event was not carefully encoded. Absent-mindedness occurs either when memories are not encoded carefully at the outset, meaning that there is little to recall when asked to do so later, or at recall when a superficial or flawed search strategy is used for retrieving information. Part of absent-mindedness is change-blindness, in which individuals do not notice changes in situations after the initial perception and categorisation process occurs. Bias refers to the tendency of current recollections of past events to be coloured by present feelings, opinions and situations (Levine, 1997; Ross, 1989). Each of these tendencies has important implications for the accuracy of retrospective reports of behaviour and affect at work, particularly when the phenomena in question vary over time.
Recalling Behaviour Frequency
Consider first the case in which respondents are asked to report on the frequency of past behaviours or experiences. For example, Fox, Spector, and Miles (2001) asked employees to report how often they encountered a number of work conflicts and constraints, how often each of ten work events caused them to feel anxiety or anger, how often their job made them feel each of 30 emotional states and how often they performed each of 22 counterproductive behaviours on the job. Answering such questions seems to require that respondents not only correctly retrieve and count all or most of the relevant incidents from memory, but then apply identical standards when converting incident frequencies into judgments on a scale from almost never to extremely often (Schwarz & Oyserman, 2001). For rare and important events, individuals may be able to apply a recalland-count strategy, as these events may be distinctly encoded in memory. However, it seems likely that distinct memories for many discrete events or experiences are simply unavailable, making a recall-and-count strategy impossible. This is especially likely to be true for incidents that are mundane, frequent in occurrence and relatively similar to one another each time they happen (Means & Loftus, 1991; Menon, 1994; Schwarz, 1990). Such events are encoded superficially, if at all, and are seldom accessed or rehearsed after encoding, and so are likely to fade quickly. When incidents number more than about six, respondents tend to abandon the recall-andcount strategy (Menon & Yorkston, 2000). For instance, Menon (1994)
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found that individuals could not use a recall-and-count strategy when asked how many times they had washed their hair in the past month. Smith and Jobe (1994) found less than a 50% match rate between recalled dietary intake and daily food diaries kept over 2- and 4-week periods. Respondents made both errors of omission (failing to list items that appeared in their diaries) and commission or intrusion (listing items retrospectively that were not reported in the daily measure). Intrusions were thought to be due to recalling a meal that happened prior to the recording period (telescoping see Bradburn, Huttenlocker, & Hedges, 1994), or drawing on semantic memory beliefs about the things one typically eats. Because recall-and-count strategies are the exception rather than the rule in reporting on past behaviour, respondents must use other strategies in constructing retrospective reports of behaviour (Conrad et al., 1998; Schwarz, 1990). For common events, individuals may consult semantic memory and retrieve an inference rule or belief about what I usually do that can subsequently be adjusted for recalled abnormalities. For instance, one may know that one usually washes ones hair every other day, but sometimes waits 3 days, so the number of times in the past month is probably about 13 or so. This method can be quite accurate if behaviour occurs on a regular cycle and the inference rule is correct (Menon & Yorkston, 2000). It is much harder to use semantic memory to report on events that occur unpredictably. An example might be reporting on the frequency with which ones superior has displayed each of a number of leader behaviours. While individuals may have general beliefs about how good or bad their leader is, they are unlikely to have either detailed recollections of many actual behaviours or accurate inference rules about the frequency of occurrence of specific leader behaviours. Another method of constructing questionnaire responses when full memory of all events is not accessible is to use the availability heuristic by scanning memory for easily accessible examples of the behaviour (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973). If examples can be readily retrieved, the event is judged to be a frequent or likely occurrence. Unfortunately, availability is determined by attributes such as recency and vividness, as well as frequency. For mundane events occurring on an irregular schedule over time, availability may not be diagnostic of actual frequency. In summary, retrospective accounts of past behaviour are likely to be inaccurate due to memory and inference errors. Another reason for inaccuracy of retrospective reports is between-subject differences in interpreting scale anchors (Schwarz & Oyserman, 2001).
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Consider the task of reporting the frequency of counterproductive behaviour. Retrospective respondents need to decide if recalling two repetitions of the same behaviour constitutes rare, occasional, or frequent performance, and may not apply the same criterion to this task. Errors due to imperfect memory and differing definitions of scale points can be overcome by asking individuals to report immediate behaviour over the short term. For instance, respondents may report which counterproductive behaviours they have displayed at the end of each working day. Researchers can then count the total number of incidents across daily reports to form an accurate aggregate. A number of studies have documented just how inaccurate retrospective reports of behaviour can be. In these studies, individuals global reports of their use of strategies for coping with stress were compared with real-time reports of actual coping strategies. Two studies found that only about 25% of the variance was shared between daily coping reports in the week leading up to a stressful event and recalled coping strategies a week after the event (Ptacek, Smith, Espe, & Raffety, 1994; Smith, Leffingwell, & Ptacek, 1999). Errors generally involved overestimating the extent of use of a coping mechanism. Respondents who reported high stress levels were especially inaccurate in recalling how they had coped. In a third study, Schwartz, Neale, Marco, Shiffman, and Stone (1999) used palm top computers to collect actual coping reports every 40 minutes for 2 days. They constructed aggregated coping measures from the momentary reports and then predicted these with one-time reports of general coping style assessed with two widely used trait coping scales. Selfreports of coping style were very poor predictors of real-time coping, accounting for 22% of the variance in religious coping behaviour, 12% of the variance in escape/avoidance coping and less than 10% of the variance on 15 other coping dimensions. The authors concluded that for research purposes, general trait coping scales are far too inaccurate to be used as proxies for actual coping. Inaccuracy of retrospective reports of behaviour was also found in a study of alcohol consumption that compared daily reports of drinking to a time line follow-back interview over the same 90-day period. Drinking was significantly underreported by retrospective accounts (Searles, Helzer, & Walter, 2000). Correlations between daily and retrospective measures of drinking ranged from .47 to .60 depending on the measure used (e.g., drinks per day, days on which any alcohol was consumed), and there were considerable and unpredictable differences across respondents in the accuracy of retrospective reports. Ekholm
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(2004) found that reports of alcohol consumption last Saturday declined systematically each day for a week, with those reporting 1 day after the event claiming the greatest consumption and those reporting 7 days later the least. Another example of retrospective inaccuracy in reporting behaviour was documented by Shiffman (2000). He found that smokers global selfreports of typical smoking behaviour, such as whether they smoked more when upset, drinking, or socialising, had correlations of less than .10 with actual smoking behaviour when the circumstances of each cigarette were recorded in real time using EMA. Nevertheless, smokers global selfreports showed high reliability over time and the expected consistent factor structure, just as self-reports of coping style tend to do. This is an object lesson that reliability does not imply validity. Apparently individuals are quite capable of reliably reporting their beliefs or implicit theories about the way they behave, without being aware that these do not necessarily parallel their own actions in real time.
Recalling Affect Intensity
We have seen that retrospective reports of past behaviour are less than perfectly accurate. There is reason to expect similar problems with retrospective reports of past affect, as when researchers ask for a global report of satisfaction with ones co-workers, or a report of mood at work over the past week or month. Moods by nature are relatively transitory and diffuse states. Robinson and Clore pointed out that, any delay between an [affective] experience and its report necessarily means a loss of information (2002, p. 935). Most affective experiences may not be distinctive enough to merit being stored in memory, with the exception of particularly intense and discrete emotional episodes (Frijda, 1993). For instance, one may recall an incident of being extremely angry with a co-worker, but fail to recall many other periods of feeling mildly pleased, neutral, or displeased with this individual or other co-workers. Thus, it is extremely unlikely that individuals will be able to use a recall-and-count strategy to produce an accurate report of average mood or typical attitude. A number of studies have investigated the accuracy of retrospective reports of affect. Most studies compare the average of frequent real-time reports to retrospective reports of affect intensity from the same respondents for the same time period. The real-time reports have been collected from 2 to 7 times per day, with retrospective reports covering periods as short as a day to as long as 3 months. Note that these designs provide respondents with an unusual and probably powerful treatment in the form of requiring them to think consciously about their affect and to
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record it many times prior to making the final retrospective report. This should make affect information much more available in memory at the time of the retrospective report than it normally would be, suggesting that these studies present an optimistic upper bound on the validity of retrospective measures compared with real-time measures. In terms of absolute accuracy, a large number of studies have shown that people systematically and often grossly overestimate the frequency and intensity with which they have experienced both positive and negative affect when reporting retrospectively, compared with the aggregate of multiple real-time reports during the same time period (Cutler, Larsen, & Bunce, 1996; Diener, Smith, & Fujita, 1995; Hedges, Jandorf, & Stone, 1985; Thomas & Diener, 1990). Parkinson, Briner, Reynolds, and Totterdell (1995) reported retrospective over-estimation of positive affect but not negative affect. Pain researchers have found that pain is often recalled as having been more severe than it was when assessed repeatedly in real-time (Peters, Sorbi, Kruise, Kerssens, Verhaak, & Bensing, 2000; Redelmeier & Kahneman, 1996; Salovey, Sieber, Jobe, & Willis, 1994; Stone, Broderick, Shiffman, & Schwartz, 2004). A propensity to carefully encode and rehearse only more extreme instances would mean that these experiences were more available in memory, thus explaining retrospective overestimation of the intensity of past affect. Consistent with this mechanism, several studies have found that peak affect adds to the prediction of recalled affect over and above average momentary affect (Barrett, 1997; Fredrickson, 2000; Parkinson et al., 1995). Kahneman (1999) reviewed a number of studies which found that retrospective affect ratings for a single unpleasant event were best predicted by a combination of peak (worst) momentary affect plus affect during the last period of the experience, suggesting both recency and availability effects. Similarly, Baumgartner, Sujan, and Padgett (1997) found that consumer reactions to advertisements were better predicted by peak and final period affect than by average affect recorded from second to second during viewing. There is evidence for a number of other contaminants of recalled affect. Recall may be biased by current states. For instance, mood at the time of reporting can influence accessibility of memories, with those more consistent with current mood being recalled most readily. Mood at the time of reporting can also be taken as diagnostic of the information being requested, such that a positive current mood implies positive feelings about the object being rated (see Martin & Clore, 2001, for reviews). In the organisational literature, studies by Brief, Butcher, and
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Roberson (1995) and Kraiger, Billings, and Isen (1989) showed that induced mood at the time of reporting could influence ratings of job and task satisfaction, even though current mood was not due to the job or task being rated. Levine (1997) found that supporters of presidential candidate Ross Perot inaccurately recalled their previous feelings about him as a function of their current opinions of the candidate. Implicit theories also colour reporting of past states. In an excellent review, Ross (1989) explained that individuals may use their current state as a starting point for reference, because the current state is readily available. They then either assume consistency (no change from the current state change blindness) when reporting on past states, or adjust the current state for assumed changes to construct a report of previous states. In many cases, the implicit theory suggests stability, so that the past is reported as being more like the present than it actually was. In other cases, the implicit theory suggests change, so the past is reported as being more different from the present than it was. For instance, individuals who have undertaken selfimprovement programs often retrospectively describe themselves as worse off before the program than they actually were at the time. Expectations prior to an event can also influence retrospective recall of affect or opinions during the event. Mitchell, Thompson, Peterson, and Cronk (1997) presented three studies demonstrating that individuals anticipated more pleasure on vacations than they actually experienced when assessed repeatedly during the vacation, and subsequently recalled having enjoyed themselves more than they actually did. In the case of a cycling trip, 5% of respondents anticipated before the trip that they might be disappointed, 61% reported that they were disappointed during the trip, and only 11% recalled having been disappointed a week after the trip. Mitchell et al. attributed this rosy retrospection to the consistency effect in aligning memories with expectations, and also to the likelihood that minor inconveniences on the trip were unpleasant at the time but not sufficiently so to warrant being stored in memory and used later to construct a retrospective evaluation of the trip.
Implications of Retrospective Inaccuracy
The above review documents that absolute accuracy of retrospective reports of behaviour and affect is poor. One might wonder how much of a problem this is for organisational researchers. This depends on the nature of the research question and the extent and consistency of the inaccuracy. If retrospective reports of typical affect or behaviour are biased to
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the same extent and in the same direction for all respondents, these reports may still correctly rank individuals against each other. For correlational research questions, the data may be good enough. The range of published correlations between retrospective affect measures and aggregated realtime measures of the same affect variables is about .60 to .76 (Barrett, 1997; Cutler et al., 1996; Diener et al., 1995; Hedges et al, 1985; Parkinson et al., 1995; Thomas & Diener, 1990), indicating that aggregated real-time and retrospective reports of affect share 36% to 58% of their variance. While far from perfect, these results suggest that one-time retrospective measures may sometimes yield marginally acceptable data for between-person correlational analyses. Unfortunately, however, there is evidence that retrospective reporting errors are not consistent across people. Neuroticism seems to result in greater exaggeration in the recall of past negative affect and health symptoms, while extraversion is associated with overestimation of past positive affect (Barrett, 1997; Larsen, 1992). Repressive coping style and trait anxiety also influence the accuracy of retrospective reports of past unpleasant affect (Cutler et al., 1996). It seems that retrospective reports of experiences and affect may be particularly suspicious in research on stress, hassles, or mood (Brief, Burke, George, Robinson, & Webster, 1988). When accurate point measurements are needed, inaccurate retrospective reporting could cause erroneous conclusions to be reached. If a researcher were attempting to determine a safe level of alcohol intake for pregnant women, for instance, the underreporting typically found in retrospective accounts of drinking would be problematic (Searles et al., 2000). Research on the effectiveness of drug treatments on pain or psychiatric disorders must obtain accurate real-time reports of effects, rather than retrospective reports, which are more likely to be contaminated by expectations of change, peak and end effects and retrospective exaggeration (Moskowitz & Young, 2006; Ross, 1989). A study of the effect of major depression on work performance provides an organisational example of when ESM can assist in making accurate point estimates. While prior research had shown that depressed workers tend to miss 2 more days of work per month than did non-depressed workers, it was not clear whether or to what extent their job performance was compromised when they were at work. Wang, Beck, Berglund, McKenas, Pronk, Simon, and Kessler (2004) wanted to estimate the actual cost of lost productivity attributable to depression, so that they could compare it with the cost of treatment.
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ESM was used, as depressed individuals may be quite inaccurate at retrospective reporting, and accuracy was critical to answer the research question. Employees were signalled to report task focus and productivity 5 times per day for 7 days. Those suffering major depression reported a 0.4 standard deviation lower mean on task focus and 0.3 standard deviation lower mean on productivity than did their nondepressed peers. Wang et al. (2004) calculated that this was equivalent to 2.3 days of time lost per month, in addition to the 2 days lost to absenteeism. They concluded that the cost of lost productivity considerably exceeded the cost of treatment for depression. If the researchers purpose is to design interventions to facilitate or inhibit certain actions based on retrospective reports of the immediate causes or triggers of those actions, the data must also be accurate so that processes can be correctly understood and interventions appropriately addressed. For instance, interventions to prevent relapses among smokers or bulimics must be based on actual triggers of lapses, rather than inaccurately recalled triggers of lapses (Shiffman, 2000; Smyth et al., 2001). In organisational behaviour, it is possible that retrospective accounts of decisions to leave a job or to accept a job offer will not describe the decision process accurately, and hence will not produce effective advice for retention or recruitment interventions. Real-time data collected at the same time as these decisions were being made would prove more useful. Note, however, that if the purpose of the research is to predict future behaviour, individuals current recollections of past feelings and events, however flawed, may be more predictive than absolutely accurate information on past occurrences. The above review leads to several conclusions. First, organisational researchers should be very wary of assuming that retrospective or global reports of typical behaviour, attitudes, or affect are accurate. To offset these concerns, researchers might choose retrospective measures or procedures that have been successfully validated against aggregates of multiple real-time reports, or perform such validation themselves. Schwartz et al. (1999) pointed out that ESM data are the gold standard against which to evaluate retrospective reports. An example of such validation is Fishers (2000) finding that a retrospective faces scale (Kunin, 1955) measure of global job satisfaction better captures real-time affect on the job than does a traditional verbal scale of job satisfaction, such as the Job in General Scale (Ironson, Smith, Brannick, Gibson, & Paul, 1989). Retrospective measures that are found to be relatively highly correlated with aggregated real-time measures and that show no systematic
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over- or under-estimation for different subgroups may be acceptable for correlational research. However, researchers who need high accuracy could simply adopt ESM rather than retrospective data collection methods, particularly when raw experiences vary over time and in consequence are difficult to report accurately after the fact. Robinson and Clore (2002) confirmed that real-time reports of affect are of much higher quality than any form of retrospective report. Having collected repeated real-time reports of a large number of randomly sampled moments of relevant experience, researchers can create accurate person-level aggregations. Most often this is simply the mean across all reports for each respondent. However, repeated measurements allow researchers to construct a variety of summary variables for each person. These might include the most recent experience, most intense experience, the trajectory or pattern of change over time (e.g., increasing or decreasing) and the variability of experiences over the sampled time period (Brown & Moskowitz, 1998; Eaton & Funder, 2001; Moskowitz & Zuroff, 2004). These more fine-grained measures allow for more sophisticated hypotheses to be tested and greater understanding to be obtained. In fact, researchers have demonstrated that intra-individual variability in momentary states is a stable trait in itself that is related to personality and other important outcomes (cf., Butler, Hokanson, & Flynn, 1994; Eaton & Funder, 2001; Eid & Diener, 1999; Eizenman, Nesselroade, Featherman, & Rowe, 1997).
Conclusion
People vary. They have emotional ups and downs, attentional peaks and troughs and more and less energetic moments. They sometimes display citizenship behaviour and sometimes display dysfunctional behaviour. They work on tasks that vary in difficulty, with other people and alone, and with or without recent hassles and uplifts. Many interesting theoretical questions remain to be explored at the within-person momentary level. A better understanding of relationships among transient states and events may allow for better advice to be given regarding design of work settings and tasks to maximise affective quality of work life, motivation and performance. Experience sampling methodology offers the means to explore this interesting new level of phenomena at work. Further, ESM allows for much more accurate measurement of behaviour and affect at work. I suggest that organisational psychologists consider adding experience sampling methodology to their toolbox.
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Acknowledgment
This research was supported by grants from the Australian Research Council, projects number A79801016 and A00104726.
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Reis, H., & Gable, S. (2000). Event-sampling and other methods for studying everyday experience. In J. Reis & C. Judd (Eds.), Handbook of research methods in social and personality psychology (pp. 190223). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Reis, H. T., Sheldon, K. M., Gable, S. L., Roscoe, J., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). Daily wellbeing: The role of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 419435. Robinson, M. D., & Clore, G. L. (2002). Belief and feeling: Evidence for an accessibility model of emotional self-report. Psychological Bulletin, 128, 934960. Ross, M. (1989). Relation of implicit theories to the construction of personal histories. Psychological Review, 96, 341357. Salovey, P., Sieber, W. J., Jobe, J. B., & Willis, G. B. (1994). The recall of physical pain. In N. Schwarz & S. Sudman (Eds.), Autobiographical memory and the validity of retrospective reports (pp. 89106). New York: Springer. Schacter, D. L. (1999). The seven sins of memory: Insights from psychology and cognitive neuroscience. American Psychologist, 54, 182203. Schwartz, J. E., Neale, J., Marco, C., Shiffman, S. S., & Stone, A. A. (1999). Does trait coping exist? A momentary assessment approach to the evaluation of traits. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 360369. Schwarz, N. (1990). Assessing frequency reports of mundane behaviors: Contributions of cognitive psychology to questionnaire construction. In C. Hendrick & M. S. Clark (Eds.), Research methods in personality and social psychology: Review of Personality and Social Psychology: Vol. 11 (pp. 98119). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Schwarz, N., & Oyserman, D. (2001). Asking questions about behavior: Cognition, communication, and questionnaire construction. American Journal of Evaluations, 22, 127160. Schwarz, N., & Sudman, S. (Eds.) (1994). Autobiographical memory and the validity of retrospective reports. New York: Springer. Scollon, C. N., Kim-Prieto, C., & Diener, D. (2003). Experience sampling: Promises and pitfalls, strengths and weaknesses. Journal of Happiness Studies, 4, 534. Searles, J. S., Helzer, J. E., & Walter, D. E. (2000). Comparison of drinking patterns measured by daily reports and timeline follow-back. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 14, 277286. Seo, M. G., Barrett, L. F., & Bartunek, J. M. (2004). The role of affective experience in work motivation. Academy of Management Review, 29, 423439. Sheldon, K. M., Ryan, R., & Reis, H. T. (1996). What makes for a good day? Competence and autonomy in the day and in the person. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22, 12701279. Shiffman, S. (2000). Real-time self-report of momentary states in the natural environment: Computerized ecological momentary assessment. In A. A. Stone, J. S. Turkkan, C. A. Bachrach, J. B. Jobe, H. S. Kurtzman, & V. S. Cain, (Eds.), The science of self-report: Implications for research and practice (pp. 277296). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Shiffman, S., & Stone, A. A. (1998). Introduction to the special section: Ecological momentary assessment in health psychology. Health Psychology, 17, 35. Smith, A. F., & Jobe, J. B. (1994). Validity of reports of long-term dietary memories: Data and a model. In N. Schwarz & S. Sudman (Eds.), Autobiographical memory and the validity of retrospective reports (pp. 121140). New York: Springer.
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Smith, R. E., Leffingwell, T. R., & Ptacek, J. T. (1999). Can people remember how they coped? Factors associated with discordance between same-day and retrospective reports. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, 10501061. Smyth, J., Wonderlich, S., Crosby, R., Miltenberger, R., Mitchell, J., & Rorty, M. (2001). The use of ecological momentary assessment approaches in eating disorder research. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 30, 8395. Stone, A. A., Broderick, J. E., Shiffman, S. S., & Schwartz, J. E. (2004). Understanding recall of weekly pain from a momentary assessment perspective: Absolute agreement, between- and within-person consistency, and judged change in weekly pain. Pain, 107, 6169. Stone, A. A., & Shiffman, S. (1994). Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) in behavioral medicine. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 16, 199202. Stone, A. A., Shiffman, S., & DeVries, M. W. (1999). Ecological momentary assessment. In D. Kahneman, E. Diener, & N. Schwarz (Eds.), Well-being: The foundations of hedonic psychology (pp. 2639). New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Stone, A. A., Turkkan, J. S., Bachrach, C. A., Jobe, J. B., Kurtzman, H. S., & Cain, V. S. (2000). The science of self-report: Implications for research and practice. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Teuchmann, K., Totterdell, P., & Parker, S. K. (1999). Rushed, unhappy, and drained: An experience sampling study of relations between time pressure, perceived control, mood, and emotional exhaustion in a group of accountants. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 4, 3754. Thomas, D. L., & Diener, E. (1990). Memory accuracy in the recall of emotions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 291297. Totterdell, P. (1999). Mood scores: Mood and performance in professional cricketers. British Journal of Psychology, 90, 317332. Totterdell, P. (2000). Catching moods and hitting runs: Mood linkage and subjective performance in professional sports teams. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85, 848859. Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1973). Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cognitive Psychology, 5, 207232. Wang, P. S., Beck, A. L., Berglund, P., McKenas, D. K., Pronk, N. P., Simon, G. E., & Kessler, R. C. (2004). Effects of major depression on moment-in-time work performance. American Journal of Psychiatry, 161, 18851891. Weiss, H. M., Nicholas, J. P., & Daus, C. S. (1999). An examination of the joint effects of affective experiences and job beliefs on job satisfaction and variations in affective experiences over time. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 78, 124. Wheeler, L., & Reis, H. T. (1991). Self-recording of everyday life events: Origins, types, and uses. Journal of Personality, 59, 339354. Williams, K. J., Suls, J., Alliger, G. M., Learner, S. M., & Wan, C. K. (1991). Multiple role juggling and daily mood states in working mothers: An experience sampling study. Journal of Applied Psychology, 76, 664674.
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CHAPTER
21
Referee Reports: Applying Best Practice Principles
Julie A. West, Philippa White, and Hanna Thomas
Referee reports or employment references are commonly used by organisations in selection processes. A survey of eleven personnel selection methods used by organisations in 20 countries ranked employment references third in terms of the extent of their use as a selection technique (Ryan, McFarland, Baron, & Page, 1999). In Australia, the most extensively used selection technique was the employment reference. While some organisations use references simply to validate applicants previous job title and period of employment, references are commonly used to gain some measure of an applicants level of performance in past employment. This chapter examines research on referee reports and focuses on issues that are likely to be of particular interest to practitioners and those teaching applied approaches to organisational psychology research. In the following sections, potential advantages of using references are contrasted with limitations associated with this selection technique. The chapter presents recent examples of best practice in the field and highlights key areas of consideration for those involved in developing and using references as a selection tool. Additionally, issues that are particularly relevant to evaluating referee reports are discussed. In this context, the chapter aims to promote best practice in the use of referee reports and to encourage much-needed research into references as a selection technique. Throughout the chapter, the terms references, employment references, and referee reports will be used interchangeably to refer to
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selection techniques that collect information about a job applicant from people familiar with the history and experience of that individual. This definition also encompasses selection methods known by other similar terminology such as character references, reference checks, letters of recommendation, and so on.
What is a Referee Report?

Referee reports can vary substantially both in format and in the nature of the information collected. References can be obtained over the telephone or in writing and referees can be asked to provide qualitative comments, quantitative ratings or a combination of the two. In the case of qualitative information, referees may be asked to provide a generic summary of an applicants skills and character, to respond to questions about aspects of an applicants work style, to provide comments structured against job dimensions or selection criteria or to complete a structured form. Similarly, quantitative information can be collected in the form of ratings, which may or may not be structured against job dimensions and that may use various kinds of rating scale formats. References can also be gathered at any stage of the selection process. Most commonly, they are sought at the beginning, as a short-listing technique, or at the end, to complement information obtained from other phases of the selection process. Given the range of options for collecting reference information about an applicant, adopting the most appropriate approach to referee reports is an issue for careful consideration by practitioners. The discussion in the following sections of advantages and limitations of referee reports, legal considerations and practical applications of this technique, highlight some key considerations to be taken into account. Best practice principles presented in this chapter can be used to guide the design and use of referee reports so that they are likely to have the greatest utility for an organisation.
Advantages of Using Referee Reports

Why are referee reports so commonly used in selection? For most organisations, referee reports have common sense appeal because they offer an opportunity for the employer to find out what an applicant is really like. They are also seen as providing a unique source of information about an applicant that differs from other selection methods, as well as being costeffective and relatively easy to obtain. For these reasons, many organisations routinely include a reference check as part of their selection process. But to what extent are the potential benefits of the technique realised? That is, how useful are referee reports?
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Referee Reports: Best Practice Principles
The intuitive and common-sense appeal of the notion that past performance predicts future performance is undoubtedly a major reason for the popularity of referee reports as a selection technique (Browning, 1968; McCarthy & Goffin, 2001). The primary rationale for using references to assist in selection decisions is that workers who have been good performers at previous positions similar to those offered by an organisation or requiring a similar skill set are likely to be good performers if hired. As discussed below, when it comes to references, robust scientific support for this rationale has yet to be established. Referee reports may provide unique information over and above that provided by other selection techniques (McCarthy & Goffin, 2001). Taylor, Pajo, Cheung, and Stringfield (2004) discussed the possibility that references might be particularly useful in assessing noncognitive or contextual aspects of job performance. Preliminary support for this notion is provided by an early study of referee reports that found referee ratings of character to be more predictive of later job performance than were referee ratings of occupational ability (Mosel & Goheen, 1958). Additionally, in instances where referees have had a lot of contact with the applicant, it has been suggested that referees might be best placed to comment on an applicants typical level of performance (McCarthy & Goffin, 2001). Access to direct observation and assessment of an applicants typical work performance may not be afforded by some other indirect selection methods such as an interview, psychometric testing or assessment centre where the applicant may be conscious of performing at their optimal level. An applicants performance on these techniques affords assessment on tasks or in situations that are designed to simulate the work environment or provide an assessment of the applicants predicted work performance. Finally, referee reports can be a particularly cost-effective and easy-toadminister technique. Depending on the process used to obtain and assess referee information, referee reports can require relatively little in the way of resources and direct time commitment from an employer. The example of a behaviourally anchored approach to referee reports (West, White, & Thomas, 2005) reported later in this chapter illustrates a particularly efficient application of the technique.
Psychometric Limitations of Referee Reports

In order to maximise the potential benefits of referee reports, the practitioner must first consider a number of limitations associated with the technique. A key limitation of referee reports is that there is very little published research evaluating their effectiveness. Looking across more
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than 40 years of research on selection and assessment, McCarthy and Goffin (2001) identified only nine empirical investigations of referee reports. Further, on the basis of information available in the literature, it appears that referee reports may not meet acceptable psychometric standards in the areas of leniency, interrater agreement and validity. A common criticism of referee reports is that referees appear to have a leniency bias in describing applicants (Aamodt, Bryan, & Whitcomb, 1993; Knouse, 1994; McCarthy & Goffin, 2001). Referees selected by the applicant may be particularly likely to describe the applicant in positive terms and to withhold negative information (Aamodt et al., 1993). When reference information is collected in a quantitative format, leniency can lead to a restriction in the range of ratings given across the applicant pool (McCarthy & Goffin, 2001). Consequently, an employer may have less capacity to use the ratings as a tool for effectively discriminating between applicants. Poor interrater agreement has also been a focus for recurring criticism of referee reports (Aamodt et al., 1993; Mosel & Goheen, 1959). When different referees do not agree in their assessment of the same applicant, an employer may have less confidence in the measure of the applicants past performance. This situation also poses the problem of how to use referee ratings or assessments in selection because an employer must decide how much weight to place on each referees comments (Aamodt et al., 1993). Rater leniency and poor interrater agreement limit the degree to which referee ratings can be used to predict later job performance reliably and accurately. Consistent with this, meta-analytic evidence suggests that referee reports may not actually be an effective selection technique (Hunter & Hunter, 1984; Reilly & Chao, 1982; Schmidt & Hunter, 1998). In the most recent and comprehensive review, reference checks were ranked 14th of 18 selection techniques in terms of their validity as a single predictor of job performance (Schmidt & Hunter, 1998). The same review listed them as seventh of ten techniques in terms of their validity as a predictor of performance in job training programs. The failure of referee reports to discriminate accurately between potentially high and low performing job applicants is highly problematic given their widespread use and popularity as a selection technique.
Privacy/Legal Issues
When developing referee reports, it is important to consider the legal context in which selection occurs. Appropriate consideration must be given to an employers legal obligations when seeking reference information. In
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Australia, Commonwealth Government and Australian Capital Territory agencies must comply with Information Privacy Principles that are contained in the Privacy Act 1988. Private sector organisations1 must comply with National Privacy Principles also contained in the Privacy Act 1988. Separate privacy legislation also applies to some state government agencies.2 In general terms, the content of the information given in a referee report should be appropriate and relevant to the job. Normal comment on an applicants work performance would be acceptable. Personal information such as comment on an applicants health, marital status, political or religious views or family situation should not be sought or disclosed. Additionally, it is good selection practice to seek applicant consent before contacting a referee for a report. An applicant provides implied consent when they supply the name and contact details of a referee in the application process. This implied consent is restricted to details relating to the applicants work performance; information beyond the scope of this consent should neither be provided nor collected. If an organisation wishes to seek information from a person who has not been listed as a referee then permission from the applicant should be obtained before seeking the referee report. Applicants are entitled to access personal information held by government agencies, including referee reports.3 Principles of natural justice may also apply in situations where an applicants chances of getting a job are adversely affected by information in a referees report (Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1977) and the applicant should be given an opportunity to respond to the information provided by their referee.
Application of Referee Reports

Given that referee reports are widely used and have the potential to be a useful selection technique, it is important to examine ways of addressing any psychometric limitations so that practitioners can use the technique with greater confidence about its utility. The following three studies describe some applications of referee reports that represent best practice in this area.
Structured Telephone Check Procedure
Taylor et al. (2004) reported on a structured telephone reference check that was used for entry-level customer contact jobs in New Zealand. The reference check was the third stage in a sequential hiring process and was conducted by recruiters from recruitment consulting firms. Relevant performance dimensions were identified through job analysis within the organisation
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and three of these, commitment/reliability, teamwork/team communication and customer service, were targeted by 16 items in the reference check. For each item, recruiters asked referees to assess the applicant, compared to others they have known in similar positions. Responses were provided on a 5-point positively toned scale: 1 (below average), 2 (average), 3 (somewhat above average), 4 (well above average), 5 (outstanding). Applicants were rated by between one and three referees. Taylor et al. found that total scores from the reference check procedure significantly predicted supervisors ratings of overall job performance.4
Relative Percentile Rating Scale
McCarthy and Goffin (2001) presented findings from a study using standardised reference forms for high school graduates who had applied to a military training program in Canada. The reference form and a return envelope were mailed to referees nominated by the applicant as part of the application procedure. A job analysis had identified 31 attributes to be targeted by the reference form. The study employed three different methods of collecting reference information, however, only one of these, the relative percentile rating format, was found to have a significant relationship with performance ratings.5 The relative percentile rating format required referees to rate the applicant on a percentile scale relative to their peer group on each of 31 attributes (i.e., a scale of 0100 where 50 represented average performance) and applicants were rated by one or two referees.
Behaviourally Anchored Referee Report
West et al. (2005) described a structured and behaviourally-anchored referee report developed to select applicants for competitive entry into a specialist general practitioner training program. Seven key job criteria were identified by an expert panel and formed the basis of the referee report. The referee report provided behaviourally anchored rating scales (BARS) for each criterion and referees rated applicants on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (substantially below average) to 7 (superior). BARS consisted of a general criterion description and three anchors describing behaviours typical of performance at the mid and end-points of the scale (i.e., 1, 4 and 7). Data were gathered from three or four referees on each of 1125 job applicants. While it was not possible to calculate the predictive validity of this instrument, levels of interrater agreement appeared promising. More detail on the analysis of this instrument is described later in the chapter.
Developing Referee Reports: Best Practice Principles

In the next section, the three studies described above are used to illustrate
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the application of best practice in the design and use of referee reports. Drawing upon research in personnel selection and performance appraisal, seven best practice principles for designing referee reports have been identified. These are: incorporate structure define the relationship of the referee to the applicant identify job-relevant dimensions for assessment use well-defined rating scales use a behavioural approach integrate reference information with other selection measures balance technical and practical considerations.
Incorporate Structure
Collecting reference information in a structured manner should enhance its utility. Selection interviews have been found to have higher validity and reliability when they follow a structured format (Campion, Palmer, & Campion, 1997; Schmidt & Hunter, 1998). Similarly, incorporating structure into the process of collecting reference information may be a means of addressing both rater error and interrater agreement problems (Guion, 1989; Jones & Harrison, 1982). There are several ways in which structure can be applied to referee reports. Campion et al. (1997) identified 15 elements of selection interview structure and many of these were applied in the three example studies. In each case, job-relevant attributes of the applicant as assessed by a referee had been identified through job analysis. The same questions were asked of each referee and multiple referees were used. The three examples also incorporated structure by collecting quantitative assessments of applicants performance and scores were combined statistically (e.g., by averaging), rather than using the ratings to form an intuitive overall assessment. Some of these elements of structure are elaborated further in the remaining six best practice principles.
Define the Relationship of the Referee to the Applicant
The second best practice principle that can be incorporated in the design of a reference procedure is that information about the relationship of the referee to the applicant should be collected when obtaining referee reports. Studies of job performance ratings have shown some preliminary indications that supervisory ratings are more reliable than peer or subordinate ratings of job performance (Viswesvaran, Ones, & Schmidt, 1996). In the context of referee reports, lower levels of reliability of referee ratings will diminish their validity. In the study by
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West et al. (2005) described above, referees were required to have directly supervised the applicant in a professional capacity for a period of ten weeks over the previous 3 years. By specifying that referees must have acted as a supervisor of the applicant for an extended period of time, the practitioner may be more confident about the accuracy of the information provided by the referees. In cases where it is not practical to impose such stringent criteria upon referees, it is still important to gather information about the relationship of the referee to the applicant. McCarthy and Goffin (2001) studied an applicant pool of high school graduates and found that 57% of referees were related to the applicant through a school setting (e.g., teachers or counsellors) and 21% were friends of the applicant. All referees reported that they knew the applicant at least moderately well. Knowledge of the relationship of the referee to the applicant enables the practitioner to determine whether it is likely to be possible to gather meaningful information from referees and whether information is likely to be comparable across applicants. For some groups of applicants, such as graduate or school leaver populations, a practitioner may wish to consider whether appropriate references are likely to be accessible (Aamodt et al., 1993). For these groups, more general character references may be the only source available.
Identify Job-Relevant Dimensions for Assessment
Referees should assess applicants against job-relevant dimensions. Not only does this practice provide one means of incorporating structure into referee reports (Campion et al., 1997), the privacy legislation in Australia clearly indicates that the information obtained through reference checking must have direct relevance to the job. Assessment against job-relevant dimensions, determined by job analysis, is considered best practice in the area of selection interviews (Campion et al., 1997) and is also common in performance appraisal (London, Mone, & Scott, 2004). Job-relevant dimensions can be used to focus assessors on behaviours that are likely to be relevant to an applicants ability to perform on the job. It is worth noting that if only some job attributes can be assessed by the referee, referee reports may be particularly useful for assessing non-cognitive/contextual aspects of performance (Taylor et al., 2004).
Use Well-Defined Rating Scales
The fourth principle is that, where quantitative evaluations of applicants are sought, these should be collected using well-defined rating scales. The use of quantitative assessments against defined rating scales is an addi-
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tional means of incorporating structure into referee reports (Campion et al., 1997). While different rating formats can be used effectively, the design should draw upon current research findings in personnel selection and performance appraisal. The example studies discussed used three different rating formats that may be useful for the practitioner to consider. In the structured telephone reference check procedure, Taylor et al. (2004) employed a positively toned unbalanced scale, that is, 1 (below average), 2 (average), 3 (somewhat above average), 4 (well above average), 5 (outstanding). The scale was used in an effort to decrease leniency effects by increasing levels of discrimination amongst applicants whilst still allowing referees to rate applicants positively. Positively worded scales such as these have also been used successfully in a self-assessment context (Jones & Fletcher, 2004). A relative rating scale format was applied by McCarthy and Goffin (2001) and by Taylor et al. (2004) in collecting reference information. Referees were asked to make assessments of applicants by comparing them with their peer group. Wagner and Goffin (1997) presented some evidence that comparative rating methods are superior to absolute rating methods in a performance appraisal context. It is argued that comparative rating methods may be easier and simpler for raters to use than absolute rating methods because they facilitate social comparison rather than requiring each ratee to be considered in isolation. West et al. (2005) applied a behaviourally-anchored rating format. The intent of behaviourally-based rating scales is to calibrate rater expectations of poor, typical and good levels of performance. Work in the area of performance appraisal has demonstrated the value of having a common rater frame-of-reference in enhancing the quality of performance ratings (London et al., 2004). BARS have also been used successfully in selection interviews as a means of incorporating additional structure. In situations where ratings are made against job-related dimensions, there is some evidence that they improve the reliability and validity of the ratings (Campion et al., 1997).
Use a Behavioural Approach
The fifth principle that can be incorporated in the design of referee reports involves focusing referees on observations of applicant behaviour. Benefits of adopting a behavioural approach to applicant assessment have been highlighted in both performance appraisal and selection settings. A primary goal of performance appraisal training is to focus assessors on behavioural observations of staff and to use these as the basis for evaluations of performance (London et al., 2004).
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Campion et al. (1997) discussed the benefits of increasing structure in the selection interview by using behaviourally-based questions, using anchored rating scales and taking detailed notes of an applicants interview behaviour. Two of the example studies cited above employed a behavioural approach. The behaviourally-anchored rating scales used by West et al. (2005) required the rater to consider the applicants job-related behaviours and to align these with the behavioural descriptions provided by the rating scales. The telephone reference checking process used by Taylor et al. (2004) asked referees to elaborate on their ratings and to provide descriptions of an applicants behaviours that were the basis for the evaluations. When reference information is collected in a qualitative fashion, asking behavioural questions of referees can be considered a direct extension of best practice behavioural interviewing techniques (Barclay, 2001). Interview questions requiring a job applicant to talk about their behaviour have higher levels of validity than do questions that allow interviewees to make general statements about their suitability for the position (Campion et al., 1997). Applying this logic to reference checking, it follows that asking a referee to provide examples of an applicants behaviour in specific situations should provide better quality information than asking a referee to make general comments about an applicants performance and suitability.
Integrate Reference Information With Other Selection Measures
The sixth best practice principle is that reference information should be considered in the context of other selection information in order to make decisions. The specific mechanism for integrating referee reports into the selection process is likely to vary depending on whether information collected is qualitative or quantitative and the stage in the selection process at which the information is collected. When referee reports are used as a short-listing or a screening technique in situations where there is a large applicant pool, then averaged quantitative ratings may be an efficient means of generating an order of merit. Alternatively, a hurdle approach could be applied where a minimum score must be obtained on certain criteria, such as technical proficiency, in order to progress in the selection process. To enhance structure, Campion et al. (1997) recommend that scores are combined statistically rather than intuitively. When referee reports are obtained at the end of the selection process, it is advisable to use the information to complement earlier stages of the
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process. Quantitative scores on referee reports can be statistically combined with scores from other techniques, such as interview ratings. In some situations, the practitioner may wish to use referee reports as additional information rather than as another equally weighted selection technique. This approach acknowledges the psychometric limitations of the technique by integrating the reference information with other selection information rather than using it as a stand alone technique. For example, a practitioner may specifically seek behavioural examples from a reference to seek further information on an applicant who exhibits potentially problematic behaviour at interview, or who has an extreme score on a job-relevant personality dimension.
Balance Technical and Practical Considerations
In determining the particular design of a referee report, the practitioner needs to integrate the best practice recommendations described above with practical and logistical constraints of the selection process. A practitioner may choose a written format because it involves less time commitment than does a telephone format. Alternatively, a telephone format could be used because it encourages a higher response rate and allows opportunity for referees to elaborate on their responses. Referee reports potentially allow organisations to collect information in a cost-effective and efficient way at any stage of the selection process. In the case of West et al. (2005), a key requirement influencing decisions about the design and use of the referee report was the need for an inexpensive and effective method of screening large numbers of applicants that was acceptable to applicants and medical professionals.6 The short-listing process was coordinated nationally by the organisation and applicants were required to submit electronic and printed versions of the referee report from each referee as part of the application process.
Evaluating Referee Reports

Given the paucity of available research on referee reports, it is essential that new approaches representing best practice be evaluated and reported. It is particularly important that new approaches are assessed to determine whether they address some of the common limitations of the referee report as a selection technique. Below, methods for evaluating the effectiveness of referee reports with reference to leniency, interrater agreement, their relationship with other selection techniques and validity are described, along with illustrations from the three example studies. The discussion assumes that reference information has been collected in a quantitative format.
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Leniency
A practitioner wishing to evaluate the effectiveness of their approach to referee reports should first examine the data for evidence of leniency bias. Bias can be assessed by examining the distributions of scores across the rating scale. Ratings that are clustered at the top or high end of the scale indicate a leniency bias that is, positive ratings. This restriction of range in ratings suggests that the technique may not be maximally effective in discriminating between applicants. However, from a practical viewpoint, it is important to assess whether levels of differentiation between applicants are high enough for referee scores to be used to discriminate between applicants. West et al. (2005) found that nearly all referee ratings were four or above on the 7-point scale, however, within the upper half of the scale there was still some discrimination between applicants. Furthermore, in the context of their study, it is likely that there was a degree of preselection in the sample. Highly suitable applicants are more likely to apply to this specialist opportunity by self-assessing and then self-selecting and so it is plausible that a majority of those who applied may have been suitable to highly suitable applicants (see Jones & Harrison, 1982 for a similar argument). In this case, referee ratings may be an accurate reflection of applicants capabilities and leniency may be an artefact of applicant pre-selection. The critical point for those wishing to evaluate the extent of leniency bias is to consider the likely true score range of the applicant population being rated.
Interrater Agreement
Where reference information has been collected from multiple sources, practitioners can evaluate the degree of interrater agreement in an applicants ratings. However, because each applicant has been assessed by different referees, assessing levels of interrater agreement in these settings can be problematic. In other words, referee scores are collected in a nested design. Traditional reliability analyses that assess interrater agreement are not appropriate because the same referees have not assessed all the applicants (a crossed design). Two different indices of interrater agreement that can be used in this setting are AD and rwg. Table 1 displays levels of interrater agreement against each of the seven key job criteria dimensions in the West et al. (2005) study. AD is simply the average of absolute deviations of each rating from the mean and the index can be interpreted using the original Likert scale, in which lower values reflect greater levels of agreement and zero represents perfect agreement (Burke, Finkelstein,
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TABLE 1 Average Interrater Agreement Selection criteria Communication/interpersonal skills Clinical competence Analytical/problem solving skills Organisational/management skills Sense of vocation/motivation Personal attributes Professional/ethical attributes
AD
0.48 0.49 0.50 0.53 0.51 0.49 0.40
rwga
.86 .85 .84 .83 .84 .85 .85
Note: N = 1125 (1124 for criterion 2 and criterion 3) a Assuming a rectangular null distribution (variance = 4)
& Dusig, 1999; Burke & Dunlap, 2002). In Table 1, each group of ratings differed by less than one point on the 7-point scale. The second interrater agreement index, rwg, can be interpreted using benchmarks that are similar to correlation coefficients. While the statistic is not technically a correlation coefficient; its interpretation as a correlation was the intention of those who developed it (James, Demaree, & Wolf, 1984, 1993; see Schmidt & Hunter, 1989 for further discussion). In Table 1, average coefficients of .83 and above suggest that there are good levels of interrater agreement. It is difficult to claim that these values represent a definitive improvement in agreement over other methods of collecting referee ratings because of the paucity of empirical research on referee ratings in general; however, results from this study compare favourably with reliabilities for supervisor ratings of job performance of around r = .50 cited by Viswesvaran et al. (1996). It should also be noted that the range restriction associated with leniency bias can be problematic for assessing levels of interrater agreement. The rwg statistic assumes that, in the situation of zero agreement, scores will be equally distributed across the rating scale. However, if raters have a tendency to rate in the upper half of the scale, regardless of the applicant, then this assumption may be violated.7
Relationship With Other Selection Techniques
Practitioners may wish to investigate the relationship between referee scores and other selection techniques. Where two or more techniques were intended to be predictors of later job performance, a moderate relationship between selection techniques would be desirable (and expected). However, an extremely high level of agreement between any
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two techniques implies measurement redundancy. In such cases, one selection technique would be just as effective as the other in discriminating between high and low performing applicants and using both techniques may indicate a waste of resources in the selection process.
Validity
Where data are available, it would be highly valuable to assess the predictive validity of referee reports as a selection technique. In essence, predictive validity evaluates the ability of the technique to do the job it was designed to do that is, choose the best person for the job. Taylor et al. (2004) evaluated predictive or criterion-related validity by correlating total referee scores with supervisory ratings of overall job performance, r = .25, p < .01, n = 109. Supervisors rated the performance of successful applicants during an annual performance appraisal round at least 6 months following selection. McCarthy and Goffin (2001) entered the set of referee scores into a standard multiple regression analysis with a total performance score as the dependent variable, R2 = .24, p < .01; R2(adj) = .18, n = 57. Total performance score was calculated by aggregating supervisor and peer ratings of performance that were made on or eight weeks after completion of a training program.
Conclusion
An important role for organisational psychologists is to develop and refine effective selection techniques based on robust research findings. In the case of referee reports, a lack of available information on the technique limits the degree to which practitioners can confidently assure organisations that this selection technique will be an effective discriminator. It is only through accumulating empirical findings that more definitive comments can be made about the psychometric properties of referee ratings used for personnel selection. This chapter has presented current best practice recommendations from research and recent empirical studies. It is timely for referee reports as a selection technique to be more extensively reviewed, refined and evaluated by practitioners and researchers so the potential benefits of this unique technique can be applied with confidence.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge the cooperation and assistance of staff from General Practice Education and Training (GPET) in providing access to data. In particular, we would like to express our gratitude to Mr Rodger Coote and Ms Petra Gillan.
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Endnotes
1 Some private sector organisations are exempt from some of the obligations. 2 For further information refer to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (www.privacy.gov.au). 3 Private Sector Organisations may be exempt from these requirements under the employee records exemption. Those seeking further information are referred to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. 4 More detail on this predictive validity analysis can be found in the section: Evaluating referee reports. 5 More detail on this predictive validity analysis can be found in the section: Evaluating referee reports. 6 For a range of organisational and logistical reasons, other common short-listing methods could not be considered as possible options;for example, cognitive testing, knowledge-based competency testing, biodata. 7 Interested readers may also wish to examine the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC; see McGraw & Wong, 1996) to determine whether it is suitable for their purposes, although it is noted that this statistic is likely to be deflated in situations where variance is reduced due to range restriction.
References
Aamodt, M. G., Bryan, D. A., & Whitcomb, A. J. (1993). Predicting performance with letters of recommendation. Public Personnel Management, 22, 8190. Barclay, J. M. (2001). Improving selection interviews with structure: Organisations use of behavioural interviews. Personnel Review, 30, 81101. Browning, R. C. (1968). Validity of reference ratings from previous employers. Personnel Psychology, 21, 389393. Burke, M. J., & Dunlap, W. P. (2002). Estimating interrater agreement with the average deviation index: A users guide. Organizational Research Methods, 5, 159172. Burke, M. J., Finkelstein, L. M., & Dusig, M. S. (1999). On average deviation indices for estimating interrater agreement. Organizational Research Methods, 2, 4968. Campion, M. A., Palmer, D. K., & Campion, J. E. (1997). A review of structure in the selection interview. Personnel Psychology, 50, 655702. Guion, R. M. (1989). Comments on personnel selection methods. In M. Smith & I. T. Robertson (Eds.), Advances in selection and assessment (pp. 113127). Chichester, United Kingdom: Wiley. Hunter, J. E., & Hunter, R. F. (1984). Validity and utility of alternative predictors of job performance. Psychological Bulletin, 96, 7298. James, L. R., Demaree, R. G., & Wolf, G. (1984). Estimating within-group interrater agreement. Journal of Applied Psychology, 36, 8598. James, L. R., Demaree, R. G. & Wolf, G. (1993). rwg: An assessment of within-group interrater agreement. Journal of Applied Psychology, 78, 306309. Jones, L., & Fletcher, C. (2004). Short report: The impact of measurement conditions on the validity of self-assessment in a selection setting. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 13, 101111. Jones, A. & Harrison, E. (1982). Prediction of performance in initial officer training using reference reports. Journal of Occupational Psychology, 55, 3542.
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Knouse, S. B. (1994). Improving the letter of recommendation. Journal of Employment Counselling, 31, 105109. London, M., Mone, E. M., & Scott, J. C. (2004). Performance management and assessment: Methods for improved rater accuracy and employee goal setting. Human Resource Management, 43, 319336. McCarthy, J. M., & Goffin, R. D. (2001). Improving the validity of letters of recommendation: An investigation of three standardized reference forms. Military Psychology, 13, 199222. McGraw, K. O., & Wong, S. P. (1996). Forming inferences about some intraclass correlation coefficients. Psychological Methods, 1, 3046. Mosel, J. N., & Goheen, H. W. (1958). The validity of employment recommendation questionnaire in personnel selection: I. Skilled traders. Personnel Psychology, 11, 481490. Mosel, J. N., & Goheen, H. W. (1959). The employment recommendation questionnaire: III. Validity of different types of references. Personnel Psychology, 12, 469477. Reilly, R. R., & Chao, G. T. (1982). Validity and fairness of some alternative employee selection procedures. Personnel Psychology, 35, 162. Ryan, A. M., McFarland, L., Baron, H., & Page, R. (1999). An international look at selection practices: Nation and culture as explanations for variability in practice. Personnel Psychology, 52, 359391. Schmidt, F. L., & Hunter, J. E. (1989). Interrater reliability coefficients cannot be computed when only one stimulus is rated. Journal of Applied Psychology, 74, 368370. Schmidt, F. L., & Hunter, J. E. (1998). The validity and utility of selection methods in personnel psychology: Practical and theoretical implications of 85 years of research findings. Psychological Bulletin, 124, 262274. Taylor, P. J., Pajo, K., Cheung, G. W., & Stringfield, P. (2004). Dimensionality and validity of a structured telephone reference check procedure. Personnel Psychology, 57, 745772. Viswesvaran, C., Ones, D. S., & Schmidt, F. L. (1996). A comparative analysis of the reliability of job performance ratings. Journal of Applied Psychology, 81, 557574. Wagner, S. H., & Goffin, R. D. (1997). Differences in accuracy of absolute and comparative performance appraisal methods. Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes, 70, 95103. West, J. A., White, P., & Thomas, H. (2005, July). How can referee reports be improved? An applied study of a structured, behaviourally-anchored approach. Paper presented at the 6th Australian Industrial and Organisational Psychology Conference, Gold Coast, QLD.
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CHAPTER
22
Open Plan Office Environments: Rhetoric and Reality
George Mylonas and Jane Carstairs
The physical work environment is an important component of an organisations aim of improving work efficiency and productivity. Architectural design affects the way people behave (Oldham & Brass, 1979) with designers creating conditions that can hinder, discourage, guide, support or enhance users behaviour (Goodrich, 1982; Zalesny, Farace, & Kurchner-Hawkins, 1985). However, Oldham and Brass concluded that an organisations physical environment is often designed with little, if any, consideration for the effects that layouts might have on staff, and Dumesnil (1987) observed that designers have traditionally designed interior spaces focusing on the needs of those paying the bill (the client) rather than users needs, creating aesthetic environments with strong visual impact and limited functionality. Most research on the impact of the physical environment on worker satisfaction and productivity was conducted in the 1970s and 1980s and work environments have received little attention by researchers since then. This recent dearth in the research literature is surprising given the mixed findings regarding the purported superiority of the open plan office and research results suggesting that worker satisfaction with the work environment is directly related to job satisfaction and indirectly related to commitment and turnover intentions (Carlopio, 1996). In this chapter we consider the rhetoric associated with the open plan office and the reality based on a large body of research. Further, we argue that, due to the
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changing nature of work, it is time to revisit the literature in this area and consider what it means for the way that todays office is designed. Recommendations are made, based on the literature, for creating more user-oriented work environments.
Main Types of Office Design
Two main types of office arrangements are constructed within work environments. These are the traditional or conventional enclosed office and the open plan office. The conventional enclosed office, which is characterised by floor to ceiling walls with a door, provides a private, identifiable and defensible work area (Oldham & Brass, 1979; Zalesny & Farace, 1987). Individuals, therefore, experience a greater sense of privacy, which produces opportunities for personal conversations and sharing information, and reduces the likelihood of external intrusions (Oldham & Brass). There are many variations of the open plan office, but it is generally characterised by an absence of floor to ceiling walls (Oldham & Brass, 1979; Zalesny & Farace, 1987). The open plan office often uses screenedoff work spaces to replace conventional walled offices (Brookes, 1978; Hedge, 1980; McCarrey, Peterson, Edwards, & von Kulmiz, 1974).
The Open Plan Office

The open plan office provides an adaptable and flexible environment (Dean, 1977; Hedge, 1982, Ives & Ferdinands, 1974; Sundstrom, Herbert, & Brown, 1982) that allows for staffing location changes without architectural alterations (De Long, 1980). This allows the office to respond rapidly and relatively inexpensively to organisational changes or project-based work requiring regrouping of individuals (Becker, Gield, Gaylin, & Sayer, 1983) to satisfy the changing demands of an organisation and improve information flow (Brennan, Chugh, & Kline, 2002; Brookes, 1972, 1978; Brookes & Kaplan, 1972; Hedge, 1980, 1982). The open plan office also creates an egalitarian system with equal working conditions (Brookes, 1972; Hedge, 1980, 1982), which appears to be better suited to contemporary flattened organisational hierarchies. This open design purportedly assists in facilitating contact between staff through improved communication channels and social cohesiveness (Hedge, 1980, 1982; Sundstrom, 1986). Furthermore, the openness of the design allows better access to daylight than do conventional office arrangements (Sundstrom et al., 1982), facilitates staff supervision (Ives & Ferdinands, 1974) and increases task identity as the absence of physical boundaries provides more information about how an individuals job relates to the work of others (Zalesny & Farace, 1987).
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Open Plan Office Environments
Rhetoric and Reality
Proponents of the open plan office environment suggest that a number of advantages are afforded to organisations using this type of office arrangement. These include improved ambient conditions, improved social atmosphere, better communication, improved work flow and productivity, lower costs (that is, fit out, reconversion and maintenance), greater flexibility of space, less space required (Becker et al., 1983; Boyce, 1974; Hedge, 1980; Zalesny & Farace, 1987) and more usable area per floor due to the elimination of corridors and dead spaces (Boyce, 1974; Nemecek & Grandjean, 1973a). Advocates have gone so far as estimating percentage gains made when converting to an open plan office environment. These include 40% to 50% reduction in space requirements, 20% decrease in maintenance costs, 95% reduction in set-up and renovation times and 10% to 20% increase in staff productivity (Brookes, 1978). Although reduced maintenance and space costs may be true, the psychological and productivity claims are generally not supported by research (Brennan et al., 2002). These latter claims tend only to be opinions, which are seldom backed by scientific research (Nemecek & Grandjean, 1973a). The research reported with a high degree of consistency in both the psychological and design literature suggests that typical problems of the open plan office include a higher incidence of both visual and auditory distractions, frequent interruptions by co-workers, loss of privacy (visual and conversational) and problems with ambient conditions (Hedge, 1982, 1986). There is also no evidence to support open plan office proponents claims of increased productivity (Hedge, 1982) nor improved work efficiency (Brookes & Kaplan, 1972). In fact, the reverse relationship has generally emerged in the research, with workers in conventional office reporting higher levels of productivity (Hedge, 1982).
Workplace Distraction
One of the main sources of complaint with the open plan office is the amount of perceived distraction. Crouch and Nimrans (1989) survey of 65 managers on the features of their work environment impacting on work performance found that distraction was the most inhibiting environmental characteristic. Disturbances in the open plan office appear to arise mainly from staff behaviour rather than office machinery (Hedge, 1982). Sources of distractions include workers walking around the office and others holding conversations (Hedge). Nemecek and Grandjeans (1973a) survey of 519 workers in six companies in Switzerland found that the most frequent complaints were noise disturbances (80%), with the main source being conversations (Nemecek & Grandjean, 1973a,
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1973b). The conversations were disturbing due to the distracting effect of content, which resulted in reductions in concentration (Nemecek & Grandjean, 1973a, 1973b). Not only do disturbances in the work environment impact on satisfaction and workers stress levels (Sutton & Rafaeli, 1987), they also affect task performance. Banbury and Berry (1998) examined the effects of office noise on office-related tasks and found that both speech and office noise (e.g., keyboard, printer, telephone and fax machine noise) can disrupt performance on memory for prose and mental arithmetic tasks.
Workplace Privacy
Privacy is another factor that is reported to significantly impact on individuals perceptions of the open plan office. According to proponents of the open plan office the need for privacy is accommodated through a subjective sense of space boundaries, rather than definitive space delineators such as glass or gypsum-board (Brookes & Kaplan, 1972). However, research findings suggest that this is not the case. There is consensus that the open plan office provides little privacy and allows one to be easily overheard (Hedge, 1980). Workers in open plan offices report pronounced problems with visual and conversational privacy (Marans & Spreckelmeyer, 1982) resulting in a loss of production time and increases in mistakes (Kupritz, 1998). A case study by Sundstrom et al. (1982) found after relocation from enclosed offices to open plan, managers satisfaction with visual and acoustic privacy declined, as did their ability to hold confidential discussions. Dean (1977) found that 75% of staff in an open plan office indicated that they needed greater acoustic privacy and 50% said that they needed more visual privacy. Research showing that enclosure is correlated with privacy also suggested that privacy in the office is, to some extent, dependent upon physical enclosure (Sundstrom, 1986). Sundstrom, Burt, and Kamps (1980) study on privacy showed that architectural privacy was consistently associated with psychological privacy (the psychological state that accompanies a satisfactory retreat from, or regulation of, interactions and intrusions [Sundstrom, 1986]). Further, the level of architectural privacy seems to be positively correlated with overall job satisfaction (DuVall-Early & Benedict, 1992).
Adapting to Reduced Privacy in the Open Plan Office
Individuals do not, however, passively suffer from a lack of privacy. Workers use informal, non-verbal cues to induce others who share the office to leave, they strike particular postures (e.g., turn their backs to -
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co-workers) and arrange furniture in such a way to signal their desire for privacy (Goodrich, 1982). Some staff work back late after others have left their immediate surrounds (Dean, 1980) or go somewhere else to work (Goodrich). The typical response to reduced control over interactions is flight (when possible). Becker et al.s (1983) study in three community colleges found that open-private faculty were less available as compared with closed-private staff. This finding supports the flight hypothesis that is, using avoidance as a coping strategy (Becker et al.). Alternatively, workers change the quality and nature of communication (Becker et al.), for example, giving out less sensitive information when in an open office environment as one may easily be overheard.
Open Plan Office Communication
Open plan offices that are intended to promote availability and enhance interactions seem to do this less effectively than fully enclosed single occupancy offices do (Becker et al., 1983). Becker et al. found that working in an open plan office affected the type of topics that individuals were willing to discuss, feedback effectiveness and ability to effectively criticise or praise others in the office (Becker et al.). These findings suggest that interactions are not facilitated by unlimited opportunities for interpersonal contact but by the opportunity for privacy (Becker et al.). Similarly, Hatch (1987) suggested that interactions in research and development firms among professionaltechnical workers are greater for staff who are given enclosed spaces than for those lacking physical barriers. Enclosure by walls or partitions and a door was found to be positively associated with the amount of time staff reported working with colleagues (Hatch). Furthermore, partition height was positively related to amounts of meeting time (Hatch). These findings are consistent with the view that enclosure supports interpersonal and group interaction (Hatch). As already mentioned, the open plan office design hinders some types of communication, notably confidential communication and feedback. However, it has been found to facilitate other types of interactions. Some studies on the open plan office environment have found improvements in communication, collaboration (Nemecek & Grandjean, 1973a; Wolgers, 1973) and social interactions (Brookes & Kaplan, 1972). According to Hedge (1982), the openness and accessibility of workers appears to create a more cohesive social environment with 89% of workers surveyed reporting that they get on well with colleagues and 70% indicating that they socialise with other staff in office hours. However, the cohesive social environment does not appear to mitigate work problems
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associated with the open plan office, in fact it may even augment them (Hedge, 1982). This suggests that the type of communication improvements and their impact on work and productivity are important. Seventyone per cent of workers surveyed by Ives and Ferdinands (1974) indicated that they believed there was more social talking in the open plan office. It may be the case that workers with strong needs for social interaction might thrive in an open office setting whilst others do not (Oldham & Brass, 1979).
Partitioning Office Space
Our discussion on privacy in the open plan office has started to illustrate the importance that partitions play in regulating this problem. Research has also demonstrated that the number of enclosures surrounding an individuals work space is positively correlated with job performance and work space satisfaction, and negatively correlated with perceptions of crowding (Oldham & Fried, 1987). Sundstrom et al. (1982) found that privacy ratings and work space satisfaction were positively correlated with the number of work space sides enclosed by walls or partitions. Other studies by Oldham and Fried, and by Oldham and Rotchford (1983) found that the fewer the barriers around a workers desk, the more likely they were to take breaks outside office boundaries. This finding provides further support for the flight hypothesis mentioned earlier. Dressel and Francis (1987) study of workers who originally worked in open plan offices with no partitions, found a significant increase in productivity (20.6%) after new systems furniture was installed that had partitions as well as more storage and work-surface space and included task lighting. However, individual differences appear to have an influence, with workers who have high privacy needs or low levels of stimulus screening reporting the largest decreases in perceived crowding (Oldham, 1988). Stimulus screening refers to an individuals capacity to cope with or screen out numerous inputs and stimuli present in a given environment (Oldham, 1988).
Workplace Density
It may be tempting for employers to pack greater numbers of individuals into an open plan office in order to maximise space-saving attributes (Boyce, 1974). However, this should generally be avoided as it results in opinions of overcrowding, increased noise disturbance, difficulties with temperature control (Boyce, 1974; Oldham & Fried, 1987), decrements in task performance (Paulus, Annis, Seta, Schkade, & Matthews, 1976) and reductions in job autonomy (Szilagyi & Holland, 1980).
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Furthermore, social density has been found to be positively correlated with turnover intentions and negatively related to job satisfaction (Marans & Spreckelmeyer, 1982; Oldham & Fried, 1987). Conversely, some findings on workplace density by Szilagyi and Holland (1980) suggested that an increase in social density can have a positive impact on work performance and satisfaction. These researchers found that increasing workplace density amongst professional workers in a petroleum-related company resulted in less role stress as well as improvements in task facilitation, information exchange and work satisfaction (Szilagyi & Holland, 1980). The professionals in this study required a high degree of interaction and information flow to perform their work (Szilagyi & Holland). This finding points to the need for careful consideration of the nature of the work performed when designing office space (Szilagyi & Holland). Further, when considering office social density, employers and designers should also give thought to the colour of the work space as it can impact on peoples perceptions of density. Research has shown that people consider dark rooms smaller and less spacious than light rooms (Oldham & Rotchford, 1983).
Control Over the Work Environment
Control over ones immediate environment has decreased significantly since the move to the open plan office. This has had a detrimental impact on workers, as individuals often have a strong desire to control their immediate environment (Hedge, 1986). A study by McCarrey et al. (1974) of 600 workers in an open plan office environment suggested that reported lower satisfaction was due to inadequate control over input to and from the environment. This occurs through a lack of auditory privacy, personal privacy and confidentiality of communications (McCarrey et al.). Workers also appear less satisfied with their workstations and jobs when faced with intrusions from others (Sutton & Rafaeli, 1987). These intrusions are stressors because they hamper control and decrease predictability of events (Sutton & Rafaeli). On the other hand, workers with a greater degree of control over their immediate environment are more satisfied than are workers with a diminished amount of control (Marans & Spreckelmeyer, 1982). In conventional enclosed office spaces staff are able to exercise intimate control over work, work space and ambient conditions (Hedge, 1982). Adjustability of heating and cooling as well as furniture and storage elements enhance a staff members sense of control over their work environment and environmental satisfaction (ONeill, 1994). The use of task lighting in furniture can also provide staff with a sense of personal control in their work
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environment (Dean, 1980). Furthermore, the opportunity to personalise ones work space by introducing personal items makes the space more of ones own (Goodrich, 1982; Oldham & Rotchford, 1983). This suggests that giving workers greater control over their work spaces through consultation during the design phase, and providing them with greater control over working conditions, is likely to improve their satisfaction levels (Hedge, 1986).
Impact of Job Type and Job Complexity
Research findings indicate multiple effects on workers of working in an open plan office. Open plan office research, which has investigated a variety of variables, suggests that job type and complexity can influence worker reactions to privacy, distractions and the other issues associated with open plan office spaces (Hedge, 1982, 1986). Workers in supervisory, managerial, graduate and complex technical jobs generally react less favourably to working in an open plan office than do other staff members (Hedge, 1986; Nemecek & Grandjean, 1973a). Amongst managerial and professional workers noise is the prime complaint (Boyce, 1974; Dean, 1980). Managerial and professional staff indicate a strong need for conditions conducive to concentrating and are most sensitive to the problems of disturbances and lack of privacy (Hedge, 1982; Ives & Ferdinands, 1974; Zalesny & Farace, 1987). This group also reported that open plan office conditions prevented, rather than facilitated, effective working and reported the highest levels of dissatisfaction with office conditions (Hedge, 1982; Zalesny and Farace, 1987). On the other hand, staff performing routine clerical jobs reported that they suffered less from disturbances, distractions and loss of privacy in an open plan office (Hedge, 1982). Zalesny and Faraces (1987) survey of 426 workers who relocated from conventional enclosed to open plan offices, found that perceptions and reactions to the physical environment varied with a workers organisational position. Managers reported that the open plan office resulted in less privacy, and that they were less satisfied with the physical environment (Zalesny & Farace). Clerical staff responded more favourably to the change in office environments (Zalesny & Farace). Similarly, Johnsons (1970) survey of 358 individuals from 18 different companies, found that managers preferred work spaces divided by some form of partition or wall as they found seeing others as distracting. Secretaries and clerical staff, on the other hand, preferred to see others in the office and to interact with them (Johnson).
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Worker Adjustment to the Open Plan Office
Oldham and Brass (1979) examined worker reactions 8 weeks before and 9 and 18 weeks after they moved from conventional to open plan offices. Results indicated decreases in supervisor feedback and friendship opportunities and that task significance and concentration decreased significantly, while work satisfaction, interpersonal satisfaction and internal motivation declined sharply (Oldham & Brass). Oldham and Brass suggested that these results were temporary and short-term since they were based on data collected in the first 18 weeks after the move to an open plan office. However, studies using longer postoccupancy survey periods do not generally report improvement in staff perceptions of the open plan office. Nine months after a move to an open plan design Brookes and Kaplan (1972) found that the main causes of complaint were an increase in noise level, the number of visual distractions and a loss of privacy. Investigating the effects of relocating staff from enclosed offices to open plan offices, Brennan et al. (2002) found that workers were significantly less satisfied with the physical environment, experienced increases in physical stress, decreases in team member relations and lower perceived job performance. Dissatisfaction reported by these workers did not abate after an adjustment period of 6 months (Brennan et al.). Conversely, Hedge (1982) found that 54% of staff reported adapting to frequent interruptions by colleagues in an open plan office. However, this finding could suggest that 46% of staff still had not adjusted to their new environment. No evidence was found to suggest that adaptation either improves with length of employment or is dependent on previous experience in different types of offices (Hedge, 1982). Some workers may be adapting to these less than optimum open plan office environments at a cost. Peoples ability to accommodate comes with costs in terms of energy requirements and efficiency (Johnson, 1970). This is likely to impact on work efficiency and productivity, paradoxically one of the main motivators for conversion or movement to an open plan office environment.
Ambient Environmental Conditions
Ambient environmental conditions such as temperature, ventilation and lighting can impact on workers perceptions of their workplace. Temperature and humidity significantly affect workers satisfaction with their office environment (Johnson, 1970). Many staff in open plan airconditioned offices suffer a higher incidence of eye, nose and throat irritations, even when no physical evidence exists that levels of known indoor pollutants exceed health standards (Hedge, 1986). Other research
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findings indicate that workers are disturbed by reflections or glare with eye complaints (23%) (Nemecek & Grandjean, 1973a) and experience problems with inadequate lighting (50%) (Dean, 1977).
Improving Office Design and Satisfaction
A number of solutions has been proposed to remedy the adverse impact of working in an open plan office environment. Ferguson and Weisman (1986) concluded that the solution to the lack of privacy, auditory distraction and reduced job satisfaction may be to use methods such as selecting furnishings with low acoustical reflectance values, or re-orienting desks to improve visual and auditory privacy. Based on the research findings of Kupritz (1998), having minimal traffic routed through ones work area and having the work space located away from main traffic corridors appear to be important characteristics for regulating privacy. Other suggested solutions include using partitioning and sound absorbent building finishes that provide noise reduction and make conversations less intelligible (Banbury & Berry, 1998; Herbert, 1978, 1980; Oldham & Brass, 1979). Additional approaches to improve satisfaction may include organisational policies that define workers rights to both privacy and quiet within the work space and educational programs to enhance awareness of non-verbal privacy cues (Ferguson & Weisman, 1986) and on how to behave, work in and use the open plan office environment (Hedge, 1982). Another solution may be to provide workers with realistic previews of the open plan office design (Oldham & Brass, 1979). Interestingly, research studies that have investigated a large variety of design variables suggest that the most critical design features that impact on user perceptions of the work space are those that exist at the most intimate and personal levels within the office such as working surface and storage space (Spreckelmeyer, 1993). Kupritz (1998) found that design variables associated with privacy regulation are ranked immediately after design items that are necessary to perform basic job functions (e.g., adequate work-surface, adequate storage, easy access to reference materials and having groups that work together located together) (Kupritz). Similarly, ONeill (1994) found that when work space enclosure is considered in conjunction with other design variables, it plays less of a role in worker satisfaction than previously believed, with adjustability and storage perceived as more important properties of work space design. These findings suggest that features associated with privacy regulation take precedence once design features that are necessary to perform basic job functions are addressed (Kupritz). This illustrates the importance of
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including office users in the design process and understanding what they need to perform their work adequately. It cannot be assumed that providing improved environmental quality in the workplace will result in a corresponding increase in occupant satisfaction (Spreckelmeyer, 1993). Careful analysis of conditions within the existing work space is required to assess established perceptions before initiating environmental change (Spreckelmeyer). Active involvement of users in the design process is important in meeting user needs and ensuring greater user acceptance (Goodrich, 1982). Users need to receive ongoing feedback on how the information they provide is being used and made aware of any trade-offs that have to be made (Goodrich). Users will tend to accept new design concepts if they have an understanding of how a design solution was arrived at and how to use the new system effectively (Goodrich). Without this ongoing feedback process, users tend to be more negative about the design of a space (Goodrich). Benefits of user involvement have been demonstrated by Spreckelmeyer (1993) in a postoccupancy evaluation for a government organisation. Spreckelmeyer found that relocating to an open plan office produced significant increases in satisfaction levels among most workers. It appears that staff involvement in the process of change and their awareness of the new working conditions was effective in reducing the negative impact of environmental change (Spreckelmeyer). Including user needs in design issues such as workstation lighting, size of individual work spaces and office privacy, contributed positively to worker satisfaction with a workplace (Spreckelmeyer). Designers should, therefore, conduct predesign surveys and focus groups to ascertain current and future occupant needs. Job analysis techniques would be beneficial in assisting to achieve this. Technological advances and increasing globalisation have had profound effects on the nature of work and job design in recent years. For example, Frese (2000) identified trends of increasing job complexity, increasing use of teams, reduced supervision and increasing reliance on (often remote) technology. In order to design a work environment conducive to todays work and to foreshadow requirements for the work of tomorrow, management and designers need to match office design to the staff occupying the space and consider the type of work, complexity of tasks, cognitive demands, technology used, social and communication patterns as well as future job requirements. For example, the nature of work carried out by managers and professionals is generally cognitively complex, requiring analysis, reflection and conceptualisation (Goodrich,
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1982). For an office environment to be functional for these worker groups it needs to support these activities (Goodrich) by constructing work spaces that provide privacy and freedom from distraction (Sundstrom, 1986). Alternatively, an open plan office environment is likely to be more suited to team-based work where frequent exchanges of information are required or sharing knowledge for new learning is necessary to successfully perform ones work, such as a project team working on the same problem. Given the nature of work today, a combination of the two different types of work space may be needed in order to accommodate the various components of an individuals job. This suggests that a range of work areas should be constructed to accommodate different user needs such as open spaces for improved communication flow when work is collaborative and other compartmented areas for work where freedom from distraction is essential (Boyce, 1974). These combinations of work spaces have been successfully implemented by organisations (Dean, 1980). Further, given that the built environment sends daily signals to those working in the space (Baldry, 1997) it is also vital that the office space reflects an organisations culture as well as its vision and values. If an organisation espouses valuing its people and has poor quality and less functional office furniture and/or crowds its staff into tight spaces, then this sends a clear continual message that senior executives do not in fact value their workers. An organisation that values its people would instead involve them in the design process and provide them with adequate tools and space to perform their work comfortably.
Limitations of Office Design Research

The main issue with research conducted on workplace design is overreliance on self-report questionnaires to make comment on changes to productivity. According to Dean (1980), many productivity studies are in fact surveys of staff opinions on what would make them work more efficiently. Therefore, independent measures of productivity are required such as supervisor ratings and hard data (e.g., sales figures). The questionnaires used also tend not to include definitions of standards and therefore, terms such as productivity and privacy may be interpreted differently by different people (Hedge, 1986). Furthermore, these questionnaires are rarely in the users language so there tends to be little shared meaning of concepts such as privacy (Kupritz, 1996). Another research limitation is that it has not been clarified whether reported improvements in open plan office communication are due to changes in procedures, organisational practices or management behaviour that
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could have been made without changes to the office environment (Brookes & Kaplan, 1972). Finally, there is a question over the relevance of this older research given that the nature of work has changed since the bulk of the studies were conducted, with more recent findings suggesting that other design variables impact on work productivity and satisfaction.
Conclusion
The above findings from an extensive body of research, suggest that open plan offices do not generally support advocates blanket claims of improved communication, satisfaction and productivity. In fact, most findings suggest the exact opposite. Removing physical boundaries diminishes perceived personal privacy and opportunities for close interpersonal relationships and results in perceived loss of control over space and personal work boundaries (Zalesny & Farace, 1987). There is a plethora of environmental, employment position (e.g., task requirements) and individual (e.g., privacy needs, stimulus screening) factors that impact on evaluations of the workplace. The nature of work has also changed since most of the research was conducted on open plan offices. The complexity associated with this large array of factors means that this area of scientific investigation has not been adequately, or systematically, researched. Further comprehensive research is required to clearly identify variables that impact on users of office environments and whether suggested solutions do improve work efficiency, productivity and satisfaction.
References
Baldry, C. (1997). The social construction of office space. International Labour Review, 136, 365378. Banbury, S., & Berry, D. C. (1998). Disruption of office-related tasks by speech and office noise. British Journal of Psychology, 89, 499517. Becker, F. D., Gield, B., Gaylin, K., & Sayer, S. (1983). Office design in a community college. Effect on work and communication patterns. Environment and Behavior, 15, 699726. Boyce, P. R. (1974). Users assessments of a landscaped office. Journal of Architectural Research, 3, 4462. Brennan, A., Chugh, J. S., & Kline, T. (2002). Traditional versus open office design. A longitudinal field study. Environment and Behavior, 34, 279299. Brookes, M. J. (1972). Office landscape: Does it work? Applied Ergonomics, 3, 224236. Brookes, M. J. (1978). Changes in employee attitudes and work practices in an office landscape. In A. Friedmann, C. Zimring, & E. Zube (Eds.), Environmental design evaluation (pp. 3545). New York: Plenum. Brookes, M. J., & Kaplan, A. (1972). The office environment: Space planning and affective behavior. Human Factors, 14, 373391.
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Carlopio, J. R. (1996). Construct validity of a physical work environment satisfaction questionnaire. Journal of Occupational Health and Psychology, 1, 330344. Crouch, A., & Nimran, U. (1989). Perceived facilitators and inhibitors of work performance in an office environment. Environment and Behavior, 21, 206226. Dean, A. O. (1977). Evaluation of an open office landscape: AIA headquarters. American Institute of Architects Journal, 66, 3239. Dean, A. O. (1980). Workplaces: The open office revisited. American Institute of Architects Journal, 69, 5056. De Long, D. G. (1980). Workplaces: Open offices in a noble hall. American Institute of Architects Journal, 69, 4449. Dressel, D. L., & Francis, J. (1987). Office productivity: Contributions of the workstation. Behaviour and Information Technology, 6, 279284. Dumesnil, C. A. (1987). Office case study: Social behavior in relation to the design of the environment. The Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, 4, 713. DuVall-Early, K., & Benedict, J. O. (1992). The relationships between privacy and different components of job satisfaction. Environment and Behavior, 24, 670679. Ferguson, G. S., & Weisman, G. D. (1986). Alternative approaches to the assessment of employee satisfaction with the office environment. In J. D. Wineman (Ed.), Behavioural issues in office design (pp. 85108). New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Frese, M. (2000). The changing nature of work. In N. Chmiel (Ed.), Introduction to work and organizational psychology (pp. 424439). Oxford, United Kingdom: Blackwell. Goodrich, R. (1982). Seven office evaluations: A review. Environment and Behavior, 14, 353378. Hatch, M. J. (1987). Physical barriers, task characteristics and interaction activity in research and development firms. Administrative Science Quarterly, 32, 387399. Hedge, A. (1980). Office design: Peoples reaction to open plan. In R. Thorne & S. Arden (Eds.), People and the man-made environment: Building, urban and landscape design related to human behaviour (pp. 5768). Sydney, Australia: University of Sydney. Hedge, A. (1982). The open-plan office: A systematic investigation of worker reactions to their environment. Environment and Behavior, 14, 519542. Hedge, A. (1986). Open versus enclosed workspaces: The impact of design on employee reactions to their offices. In J. D. Wineman (Ed.), Behavioural issues in office design (pp. 139176). New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Herbert, R. K. (1978). Use of the articulation index to evaluate acoustical privacy in the open office. Noise Control Engineering, 11, 6467. Herbert, R. K. (1980). Noise control in the open plan. Administrative Management, 41, 2729. Ives, R. S., & Ferdinands, R. (1974). Working in a landscaped office. Personnel Practice Bulletin, 30, 126141.
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Johnson, K. E. (1970). The office environment people prefer. American Institute of Architects Journal, 53, 5658. Kupritz, V. W. (1996). HEM: Directed means for improving current limits of privacy research. Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, 13, 310328. Kupritz, V. W. (1998). Privacy in the work place: The impact of building design. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 18, 341356. Marans, R. W., & Spreckelmeyer, K. F. (1982). Evaluating open and conventional office design. Environment and Behavior, 14, 333351. McCarrey, M. W., Peterson, L., Edwards, S., & von Kulmiz, P. (1974). Landscape office attitudes: Reflections of perceived degree of control over transactions with the environment. Journal of Applied Psychology, 59, 401403. Nemecek, J., & Grandjean, E. (1973a). Results of an ergonomic investigation of large-space offices. Human Factors, 15, 111124. Nemecek, J., & Grandjean, E. (1973b). Noise in landscape offices. Applied Ergonomics, 4, 1922. Oldham, G. R. (1988). Effects of changes in workspace partitions and spatial density on employee reactions: A quasi-experiment. Journal of Applied Psychology, 73, 253-258. Oldham, G. R., & Brass, D. J. (1979). Employee reactions to an open-plan office: A naturally occurring quasi-experiment. Administrative Science Quarterly, 24, 267284. Oldham, G. R., & Fried, Y. (1987). Employee reactions to workspace characteristics. Journal of Applied Psychology, 72, 7580. Oldham, G. R., & Rotchford, N. L. (1983). Relationships between office characteristics and employee reactions: A study of the physical environment. Administrative Science Quarterly, 28, 542556. ONeill, M. J. (1994). Work space adjustability, storage, and enclosure as predictors of employee reactions and performance. Environment and Behavior, 26, 504526. Paulus, P. B., Annis, A. B., Seta, J. J., Schkade, J. K., & Matthews, R. W. (1976). Density does affect task performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 34, 248253. Spreckelmeyer, K. F. (1993). Office relocation and environmental change: A case study. Environment and Behavior, 25, 181204. Sundstrom, E. (1986). Privacy in the office. In J. D. Wineman (Ed.), Behavioral issues in office design (pp. 177201). New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Sundstrom, E., Burt, R. E., & Kamp, D. (1980). Privacy at work: Architectural correlates of job satisfaction and job performance. Academy of Management Journal, 23, 101117. Sundstrom, E., Herbert, R. K., & Brown, D. W. (1982). Privacy and communication in an open-plan office: A case study. Environment and Behavior, 14, 379392. Sutton, R. I., & Rafaeli, A. (1987). Characteristics of work stations as potential occupational stressors. Academy of Management Journal, 30, 260276. Szilagyi, A. D., & Holland, W. E. (1980). Changes in social density: Relationships with functional interaction and perceptions of job characteristics, role stress, and work satisfaction. Journal of Applied Psychology, 65, 2833.
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Wolgers, B. (1973). Study of office environment: Attitudes to office landscapes and open-plan offices. Build International, 6, 143146. Zalesny, M. D., & Farace, R. V. (1987). Traditional versus open offices: A comparison of sociotechnical, social relations, and symbolic meaning perspectives. Academy of Management Journal, 30, 240259. Zalesny, M. D., Farace, R. V., & Kurchner-Hawkins, R. (1985). Determinants of employee work perceptions and attitudes. Perceived work environment and organizational level. Environment and Behavior, 17, 567592.
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SECTION
V
Conclusions
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Introduction to Section V
The two chapters in this short concluding section seek to draw together some of the key themes represented elsewhere in this book. ODriscolls chapter provides a brief but very valuable historical background to the contemporary organisational psychology scene in Australia and New Zealand. Others have highlighted the relevance to organisational psychologists of appreciating their history, in at least one case reminding us that the roots of organisational psychology are by no means tied to a United States context (Kwiatkowski, Duncan, & Shimmin, 2006). Picking up the thematic overview provided by Tharenou (2001), ODriscoll systematically reviews the main contemporary topics researched by Antipodean organisational psychologists, as evidenced by high-impact journal papers, IOP conference presentations and a survey of organisational psychologists.
Reflections on Past and Current Organisational Psychology Topics
A major finding outlined in ODriscolls chapter is that while there has been a strong focus in certain areas within organisational psychology, a wide variety of topics was also evident, reflecting the richness and diversity of organisational psychology research in Australia and New Zealand. Perhaps unsurprisingly, ODriscolls findings reflect the content of many of the contributions within the current book, particularly the broad section themes for example, that of section II on occupational stress, health and wellbeing, is strongly represented. Organisational diversity is also represented as a growing field, reflecting in this case one of the themes in section IV of this book. The importance of ODriscolls review for practitioners includes the influence that many organisational psychology topics have had upon the
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practice of HR, as well as consulting more broadly, including teamwork, personnel selection, leadership, career management, stress, workfamily balance and performance management. This useful compilation indicates that a large majority of organisational psychology research is strongly oriented towards issues of direct relevance to practitioners. However, an important issue for practitioners may be the relative accessibility of material in academic journals (e.g., Gelade, 2006). ODriscolls review suggests that while there is material in abundance, the task of translating theory and research into practical applications, for example in selection and recruitment, represents a continuing challenge. This chapter also reveals some emerging areas that can be addressed by organisational psychology researchers, one implication being that it is unlikely that the flow of new topics or issues will readily abate. ODriscoll also highlights, inter alia, the important issue of psychologists contributions, or more commonly their absence, in public debate and policy for example, in occupational health and wellbeing. This has been noted by other psychologists (e.g., Frese, 2005; Wall, 2006), and represents a major challenge for the entire profession. Those at the academic pole of the scientistpractitioner continuum are likely to face increasingly stringent demands from federally inspired research quality exercises, meaning that their research is more and more likely to be channelled towards highimpact journals with practical relevance unlikely to be a prime consideration. Conversely, those at the practitioner pole of the organisational psychologists continuum are likely encounter continuing competition from consultants based in cognate disciplines as well as from within their own ranks, exacerbating a situation described by Anderson, Herriot, and Hodgkinson (2001). The question then arises as to who from within the profession will lead any distinctive organisational psychology contribution to broader social policy. Perhaps once the current generation of boomer psychologists retire beyond the clutches of academic quality imperatives on the one hand and market forces on the other, a critical mass could take up this significant challenge to their wisdom and skills. Not only could members of this generation provide a valuable springboard for further professional developments across a broad spectrum of advances within the discipline the primary theme of this book, but they could also extend their own longevity by actively engaging their extensive knowledge and organisational experience in the broader policy domain. As well as arguing for further integration of research and practice in organisational psychology, ODriscoll ends on an optimistic note for the vital continuing role of the APS Industrial and Organisational Psychology conference.
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Introduction Section V
In their concluding chapter, the editors explore some key issues arising from the contributions to this book. These include the desirability of organisational psychologists extending their research and practice beyond the tempting and often comfortable zone of large organisations and into smaller units, thereby engaging with a more extensive and representative sample of the workforce. Such a move would better reflect the more inclusive Work and Organisational Psychology referent associated with our European colleagues. Another theme involves broadening the client base beyond managerial interests, already an imperative through our ethical codes. An emergent theme within organisational psychology is that of the long-running debate within many areas of psychology of the appropriate balance between quantitative and qualitative research. The overwhelming orientation of psychology schools, within Australia at least, is towards quantitative research, and this is strongly reflected in teaching practice. For example, two psychology students have pointed to the relatively small number of universities in Australia that offer discursive approaches in their teaching (Simmons & Ekberg, 2006). This book has included some qualitative studies and, to increase the richness of their appreciation of organisational topics, organisational psychology researchers may need to be sufficiently bold to breach the quantitative bias, at least occasionally, and to complement their undoubted skills in generating rigorous quantitative results with more broadly based findings. Studying small organisations in particular can provide an ideal opportunity to adopt more qualitative approaches. As well as a shift in focus towards smaller organisations, Thompson, Myors, and Glendon also argue that a broadening cross-sectional focus is increasingly evident in the work of organisational psychology researchers. Thus, it seems as though the diversity of themes, topics, methods and substantive domains already represented in this book is likely to be enhanced by even greater future expansions. A further theme raised by Thompson et al. is the interface between organisations and their environments, particularly those represented by social/community and cultural influences. To these could be added economic, political and legal influences. These also relate to a further theme that of organisational psychologists erstwhile lack of influence in the policy domain. Our suggestion for a new journal that addresses the role of organisational psychology or indeed psychology more broadly in public policy would be one means of directing our research and practice towards a broader audience.
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References
Anderson, N., Herriot, P., & Hodgkinson, G. P. (2001). The practitionerresearcher divide in Industrial, Work and Organizational (IWO) psychology: Where are we now, and where do we go from here? Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 74, 391411. Frese, M. (2005). The president speaks. International Association of Applied Psychology Newsletter, 17(1), 26. Gelade, G. A. (2006). But what does it mean in practice? The Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology from a practitioner perspective. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 79, 153160. Kwiatkowski, R., Duncan, D. C., & Shimmin, S. (2006). What have we forgotten and why? Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 79, 173201. Simmons, K., & Ekberg, S. (2006). So what the hell are you talking about? The undergraduate experience of discursive psychology at an Australian University. British Psychological Society Qualitative Methods in Psychology Section Newsletter, 2, 2527. Tharenou, P. (2001). The relevance of industrial and organisational psychology to contemporary organisations: How far have we come and what needs to be done post-2000? Australian Psychologist, 36, 200210. Wall, T. (2006). Commentary: Is JOOP of only academic interest? Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 79, 161165.
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CHAPTER
23
Organisational Psychology in Australia and New Zealand: Reflections on the Recent Past and Issues for Future Research and Practice
Michael P. ODriscoll
Towards the end of 2001, Phyllis Tharenou published a paper in the Australian Psychologist entitled, The relevance of industrial and organisational psychology to contemporary organisations: How far have we come and what needs to be done post-2000? In this paper, Tharenou reviewed some major research topics and areas of application in the field of organisational psychology globally, and commented on overall themes and relevant ongoing issues, taking into consideration changing work conditions and organisational environments. Tharenous analysis is important because it contextualised the activities and outputs of organisational psychologists, as well as highlighting some key areas for future development of the discipline. This chapter builds upon Tharenous overview, as well as international commentaries provided by other authors (e.g., Patterson, 2001), to provide an overview and reflection on the current state of organisational psychology in Australia and New Zealand. The chapter differs from these other reviews in that its focus is exclusively on developments within Australia and New Zealand. The main aims are to: (a)
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summarise information on the major topics that have been investigated by Australian and New Zealand researchers in the field, (b) describe areas in which organisational psychology in these two countries has established a degree of recognition, (c) consider some of the challenges that we face in the immediate and medium-term future, especially in light of the changing work environment referred to by Tharenou and others and (d) highlight some of the major existing contributions and potential contributions of our discipline to knowledge of organisational behaviour and human resource management. For the purposes of this chapter, I have adopted the convention of referring to the discipline as organisational psychology, rather than the perhaps more familiar terminology industrial and organisational psychology (or I/O psychology). The major reason for this is that in both Australia and New Zealand there is an increasing trend toward using the (shorter) term organisational psychology. This label is the official designation used by the Australian Psychological Society, and a growing number of academic programs at universities in both countries also use the label organisational psychology. For all practical purposes, however, the terms organisational psychology and I/O psychology can be viewed as functionally equivalent.
Brief Historical Background
Before examining some of the major current issues and areas within organisational psychology in Australia and New Zealand, it is useful to reflect briefly on the development of the discipline in these two countries. In his chapter in the Encylopedia of psychology, Bochner (2000) discussed some milestones in the history of psychology in Australia, including reference to the general area of applied psychology, which encompasses organisational psychology. He noted that a defining moment in the history of organisational psychology in this country was the establishment in 1927 of the Australian Institute of Industrial Psychology in Sydney. In a sense, this organisation could be regarded as a forerunner to the existing College of Organisational Psychology, which is a subdivision of the Australian Psychological Society. Other institutions established in New South Wales a little later included the Industrial Welfare Division (1941) and the Manpower Directorate (1942). Despite its title, the major functions of the latter were to select and train women for factory work during World War II, when there was an acute shortage of male labour. The Directorate also engaged in research on topics such as employee morale, supervisorsubordinate
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Organisational Psychology in Australia and New Zealand
relationships and teamwork, all of which remain of significant interest to organisational psychologists. As noted by Bochner (2000), individuals who made significant contributions to the development of organisational psychology in these early years included Elton Mayo (who taught at The University of Queensland until 1923) and, following World War II, Fred Emery, whose research and applied work on industrial democracy, semiautonomous workgroups and sociotechnical systems are well known to this day. As in other countries, from the 1950s onward there was burgeoning interest in the development of management practices, especially HRM, encompassing some shift away from strictly personnel issues to a broader focus on the dynamics of organisational life. In the 1970s, organisational psychology became an established and recognised subdiscipline within psychology in Australia and the College was founded. The first Australian I/O Psychology Conference was held in Sydney in 1995, and has been held biennially since then, attracting considerable interest from academics and practitioners alike, as well as the business community more generally. In 2005, over 30 universities in Australia offered organisational psychology as a specialty, and there were 16 postgraduate training programs in this field. The College of Organisational Psychology has over 400 members nationally. The history of organisational psychology in New Zealand somewhat parallels that in Australia. Around the 1920s and 1930s there was a move toward applying psychology to work-related organisations, mainly those in manufacturing and other industrial settings. Early interest reflected international trends, for example assessing working conditions and productivity, time and motion analyses and work redesign (related to Emerys focus on social-technical design). As in Australia, World War II led to increased interest in topics such as psychological testing and assessment of defence force personnel. In the 1960s, organisational psychology began to surface as a subdiscipline in university postgraduate training programs, although some years passed before it received full recognition. The Division of Industrial/Organisational Psychology was formed within the New Zealand Psychological Society in the 1970s. Although the number of members is relatively small, especially compared with other major areas of psychology such as clinical and counselling psychology, the division nevertheless plays an active role in promoting organisational psychology across New Zealand. The establishment of an email network (I-O Net) in the late 1990s has substantially enhanced communication among its
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members. In 2005, four of the eight major universities provided postgraduate training programs in organisational psychology. Most graduates in this country are employed as practitioners, for instance in consulting firms or the HR section of larger companies.
Major Issues Discussed by Tharenou (2001)
As noted above, Tharenou (2001) provided a comprehensive overview of topics and areas that have dominated the field of organisational psychology internationally. For example, from meta-analytic reviews of research she identified the following issues as featuring significantly: work motivation, leadership, personnel selection, performance appraisal and management, personnel training, work schedules (e.g., shiftwork and flexitime), and discrimination (e.g., gender). Each of these can be seen as important and continuing areas of substantive interest to organisational psychologists, as well as to managers and organisations generally. In addition, narrative reviews of research have focused substantially on areas such as personality, job loss/unemployment, leadership, stress and occupational health, organisational change and development and the workfamily interface. As will be noted later, several of these are also issues that have attracted considerable attention from organisational psychologists in Australia and New Zealand. Tharenou also reflected upon changes in work environments that had occurred immediately prior to her paper and how these changes had impacted on the nature of work and on workers experiences. These changes included: (a) globalisation and technological advances, (b) restructuring organisations to increase competitiveness and reduce costs, (c) changes in the way in which work is performed (such as work redesign) and (d) new employment relationships, especially the upsurge in contingent working and casual contracts. Changes in these areas have all influenced activities of organisational psychologists and human resource managers, in areas such as strategic HR planning, teamwork, leadership, career management, stress and workfamily balance. To gain an understanding of topics that have been most central to research in organisational psychology in Australia and New Zealand, I collected information from two major sources: (a) publications in researchfocused journals in organisational psychology and allied management areas and (b) presentations at the six Australian industrial and organisational psychology conferences that have been held since 1995. In addition, I conducted a brief survey of organisational psychologists in both countries, to ascertain their views of important topics to be explored in both research and practice. Results from these exercises are discussed below.
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Data Sources
Research Publications
Publication in research-oriented journals represents a critical source of information about organisational psychologists research endeavours. While these publications may not yield a totally comprehensive picture of research conducted, it is reasonable to assume that they do reflect important research topics in the field. For present purposes, a search was conducted of research publications from 19852005, in the journals listed by Zickar and Highhouse (2001) as the top ten journals in the field: Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of Management, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Organizational Research Methods, and Journal of Vocational Behavior. Four journals that also publish a considerable amount of research in organisational psychology were added to the search list: Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, Applied Psychology: An International Review, Group & Organization Management, and Human Relations. While many other journals publish relevant research, it was felt that the above would capture a reasonably representative collection of research papers. Any papers that included an Australian-based or a New Zealand-based author were recorded and were classified according to their focal topic area(s). In several cases, a paper focused on more than one topic (e.g., job satisfaction and work performance); in these instances, multiple topics were recorded. Table 1 presents the total numbers of articles in the above journals, between 1985 and 2005, which included an Australian or a New Zealand author. It is evident that the number of articles authored or co-authored by a New Zealand-based researcher remained relatively constant over the four time periods covered by this review. In contrast, the number of papers published by Australian-based researchers increased considerably over the first three time periods, although there was a slight decline in 20002005.
TABLE 1 Number of Publications in Major Organisational Psychology and Management Journals (19852005) Years 19851989 19901994 19951999 20002005 Australian authored papers 33 52 78 72 New Zealand authored papers 12 14 14 13
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TABLE 2 Topics of Publications in Major Journals (19852005) Area Careers Job stress Teams and teamwork Wellbeing (work-related) Unemployment Leadership Performance management Personnel selection Job satisfaction Other Total number of publications (both countries) Number of articles 27 22 16 14 13 11 9 8 8 160 288 % 9.4 7.6 5.6 4.9 4.5 3.8 3.1 2.8 2.8 55.6
Table 2 shows the frequency with which various topic areas were researched over this same time period. For this analysis, a paper was counted if it had either an Australian-based or a New Zealand-based author, hence the N represents the total across both countries. Two topics careers and job stress were reflected most often in publications, illustrating a strong research interest in career development/management and in work-related stress. Around 89% of published articles were on one of these two topics. Other topics that also received attention (around 45% of the total number of papers) included teamwork, work-related wellbeing (which also exhibited some overlap with job stress), unemployment, and leadership. A caveat in the interpretation of the above findings is necessary. Although the focus of the present chapter is on organisational psychology and activities of organisational psychologists, it is not possible to determine whether authors would necessarily identify themselves under this professional banner. Indeed, several publications in the above journals were produced by researchers based in business schools, hence the numbers shown in tables 1 and 2 in all likelihood overestimate publications strictly attributable to organisational psychologists. This means that the data should be regarded as indicative, rather than definitive. Nevertheless, an informal comparison of authors based in psychology departments and those in other departments (e.g., Human Relations [HR]) indicated that areas of research were not systematically different across departments. In July 2005, the New Zealand Journal of Psychology published a special feature on organisational psychology. This special issue (volume 34, issue 2) comprised nine papers on a range of topic areas, including personality in
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the workplace (two papers), diversity (two papers), cultural competency among organisational psychologists, job performance management (including appraisal), personnel selection, turnover, employee wellbeing and human resource planning. It is evident that several of these topics parallel those listed in Table 2, again reflecting the prevalence of these particular issues. However, given the cultural context in New Zealand, it is not surprising that issues such as diversity (especially ethnic) and culturally competent practice also featured in this special issue.
Conference Presentations (19952005)
Another salient source of information about the activities of organisational psychologists in Australia and New Zealand, and their research interests in particular, are presentations at the Australian Psychological Society Industrial and Organisational Psychology conference, which has been held biennially since the inaugural event in 1995. Although organisational psychologists in these two countries clearly present their research and practice at a variety of both national and international conferences (including, for example, the Academy of Management Convention and the SIOP Convention in the United States), the Australian conference offers a unique opportunity for researchers and practitioners to showcase their activities to local colleagues. Interest in, and attendance at, this conference has been consistent over the 10-year period, and the most recent (July 2005) conference had an enrolment of approximately 500
TABLE 3 Symposium and Individual Paper Sessions Themes in IOP Conferences (19952005) Theme
Teams, team performance Job stress, occupational health Personnel selection Leadership Assessment and testing Emotions in the workplace Emotional intelligence Organisational development and change management Performance management Careers and career management Work motivation Organisational justice and trust Work and family Organisational culture and climate Personnel training Others
N sessions
14 9 9 6 5 5 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 3 3 35
%
11.7 7.5 7.5 5.0 4.2 4.2 4.2 4.2 4.2 3.3 3.3 3.3 3.3 2.5 2.5 29.2
Total number of sessions (across 6 conferences)
120
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participants, from across Australia and New Zealand, as well as internationally (with a fairly sizeable contingent from Asia). As was described above in relation to journal papers, to obtain a picture of the most frequently presented topic areas at the ten conferences, I conducted an informal content analysis, using session titles provided in the conference programs as a key to topics discussed. Symposia and individual paper sessions were included in this analysis, but not keynote addresses, as these typically contained general information encompassing a number of topic areas. Where a session focused on more than one issue (for instance, personnel selection and performance), all were counted. The results of this thematic content analysis are shown in Table 3. Of interest is the wide array of areas presented, covering a diverse spectrum of both personnel and organisational issues. Over the 120 sessions across the ten conferences, 14 (roughly 12%) focused on teamwork and team (or group) performance. The next most common topics were occupational stress/health and personnel selection/assessment (both occurring 9 times, 7.5%). Given the relatively small numbers of presentations in some areas, it was not feasible to evaluate thematic changes over time, although some topics (such as emotional intelligence) were more in evidence at recent conferences than at earlier ones. Overall, if topics are subdivided into those that are more personnel (P) oriented and those that are more organisational (O); the most prominent P topics presented were: recruitment and selection, psychological testing and assessment, and job performance appraisal and management. On the O side, the most frequent topics were: teams/teamwork, occupational health and wellbeing (including job stress), leadership, and personality (including emotional intelligence). Table 3 provides an interesting snapshot of one type of activity (conference presentation) in which organisational psychologists engage. In addition, comparing information shown in this table with that in Table 2 illustrates a relatively high degree of commonality between conference presentation areas and journal article topics. For instance, the following areas figure prominently in both tables 2 and 3: careers, job stress, teamwork, personnel selection, performance management and leadership; suggesting that these are indeed areas in which there is considerable interest and activity among organisational psychologists in Australia and New Zealand.
Survey of Organisational Psychologists in Australia and New Zealand
The final set of data collected in the preparation of this chapter came from a brief survey conducted in 2005 of organisational psychologists in
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both countries. The aim of this survey was to capture organisational psychologists perceptions of themes currently dominating the field, both in terms of research and applications, as well as their beliefs about future challenges for the profession and issues that may need more attention from organisational psychologists. The specific questions posed in the survey were: What issues or topics are currently at the forefront of research in I/O psychology in Australia (or New Zealand, for New Zealand respondents)? What are the major practical issues or topics of current concern to I/O psychologists in Australia (New Zealand)? List the major challenges that you see confronting the field of I/O psychology in Australia (New Zealand) at this time and in the immediate future. In your view, what issues or topics should I/O psychologists in Australia (New Zealand) be devoting more attention to? These four questions were embedded in an email questionnaire that was distributed to nonrandom samples of organisational psychologists in both countries. In Australia, the survey was sent to academics teaching in organisational psychology programs at universities, to other academics whom I knew identified themselves as organisational psychologists, and to members of the College of Organisational Psychologists. In New Zealand, the questionnaire was sent to academics teaching in organisational psychology programs at universities and to I-O Net, which is the email distribution network of the Division of Industrial/Organisational Psychology. Aside from identifying whether the respondent was an academic or a practitioner, no other demographic information was requested. Although, due to the sampling procedures used, the sample cannot be considered as being necessarily representative of organisational psychologists based in Australia and New Zealand, an attempt was made to recruit widely and the findings (presented in Table 4) are, in all likelihood, fairly reflective of the views of many organisational psychologists in the two countries. Responses to the above questions were all open-ended (qualitative), hence content analysis was used to identify major themes and to classify responses in terms of these themes. The content analysis, conducted with a research assistant, was in three stages. The research assistant and I first separately examined all of the responses to determine which comments were meaningful in relation to the question asked meaningful responses were highlighted. Stage 2 entailed an initial perusal of all meaningful responses
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TABLE 4 Themes from a Survey of Australian and New Zealand Organisational Psychologists Themes
Forefront research issues Stress and wellbeing Diversity (cultural, ethnic) Personnel recruitment and selection Worklife balance Personality (including emotional intelligence) Leadership Psychometric testing and assessment Contextual performance Others
N responses
14 10 8 8 7 7 6 5 51
%
12.1 8.6 6.9 6.9 6.0 6.0 5.2 4.3 44.0
Total number of responses

Forefront practice issues Personnel recruitment and selection Leadership Organisational change/development Training (including coaching) Stress and wellbeing Professional identity and promotion of the profession Job performance management Worklife balance Others
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13 11 8 8 6 6 5 5 60 10.7 9.0 6.6 6.6 4.9 4.9 4.1 4.1 49.2

Major challenges for organisational psychology in Australia and New Zealand Professional identity of the discipline Lack of recognition of organisational psychology Differentiation of organisational psychology from other disciplines Scarcity of organisational psychologists Integration of theory and practice Personnel recruitment and selection Others
122
11 11 10 8 6 5 46
11.3 11.3 10.3 8.2 6.2 5.2 47.4

Areas needing more attention from organisational psychologists Identity and promotion of the discipline Diversity (e.g., multiculturalism) Ageing workforce Training Psychometric testing and assessment Others
97
10 8 5 4 4 58 11.2 9.0 5.6 4.5 4.5 62.5
89
to formulate a set of thematic categories. The research assistant and I performed this task independently, then met to agreed a set of category labels for each of the above items. Finally, we (again independently) assigned each
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response to a category, followed by discussion of our allocations and resolution of any differences. Given that most responses were quite specific, the task of assigning responses to thematic categories was, for the most part, relatively straightforward and the overall percentage agreement between the research assistant and myself was therefore high (around 9598%). Any responses upon which we could not agree were classified under other. Data from both countries were combined for analysis. Most respondents provided multiple responses to all items. The total number of responses to each item is shown in Table 4, which also shows the number and percentage of times a particular category was identified in responses to each question. Overall inspection of this table illustrates that many issues were identified by survey respondents and that no one (or two) themes stand out in any of the questions. Rather, there is a relatively uniform spread of responses across various themes. In addition to themes receiving multiple responses, a considerable number of other issues were raised by individual respondents for the sake of brevity and clarity these are not reported here. In respect of item 1 (research issues), one immediately apparent trend is that the issues raised most frequently are very similar to those discussed earlier under journal article publications and conference presentations, although there are some differences in the frequency with which certain topics emerged here compared with these previous analyses. The most prominent theme identified in the survey was occupational stress and wellbeing, with around 12% of respondents suggesting that this is a forefront issue in Australia and New Zealand. This finding may reflect recent changes in occupational health and safety legislation in both countries, which have incorporated work-based stress as a potential occupational hazard. It may also suggest a growing concern for enhancing individual health and wellbeing in workplaces (see, for example, Tetrick & Quick, 2003; Thomas & Hite, 2002), for both organisational purposes (e.g., improved performance and productivity) and individual benefits (e.g., quality of work life). Also of interest is the relative emphasis placed upon diversity issues in organisations, which were mentioned by approximately 9% of survey respondents. Over recent years, there has been increasing emphasis on the importance of recognising ethnic and cultural diversity in organisations, and the impact that this has on both organisational functioning and psychological practice. This has been particularly evident in New Zealand, with recognition of the rights of Maori as tangata whenua (people of the land) and the need for organisational psychologists to incorporate cultural (especially bicultural) perspectives into their conceptualisations of and research on work attitudes, values and performance. Although the cultural context in
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Australia is markedly different from that of New Zealand, similar issues arise in Australia and again there has been increased emphasis on an awareness of cultural diversity as a central issue in organisational research (Tharenou, 2001). Most of the other themes recorded in relation to item 1 of the survey reflect issues that have received attention in both journal papers and conference presentations. However, two topics that did not figure prominently in journal publications (see Table 2) but which are clearly perceived to be important by organisational psychologists in Australia and New Zealand are: (a) worklife balance and (b) contextual performance, including citizenship behaviours. Again, as with occupational health and wellbeing, there has been considerable attention to the workfamily relationship in political circles and the media in recent years, as well as amongst social commentators, and the growing salience of this issue is reflected to some extent in the present survey. Similarly, there does not appear to have been a large amount of published or presented research by Australians and New Zealanders on contextual performance, yet this was perceived by around 4% of the present survey respondents to be a topic of some relevance. For item 2 (practical applications), approximately the same number of issues were mentioned by respondents as for item 1 (research). Personnel recruitment/selection and leadership were the two most often mentioned practice issues (11% and 9% of respondents respectively), followed by organisational change/development and personnel training (each around 7%). Other themes mentioned under research, such as occupational stress and worklife balance, also figured in the list of applied issues reported in item 2. Overall, it is clear that these respondents viewed some parallels between research and application, although there were also some differences in themes recorded under the two items. For example, while diversity was one of the most often reported themes under forefront research, interestingly it did not appear frequently under forefront practice issues, which one might have expected given the salience of this issue described above. On the other hand, promoting the identity and image of organisational psychology was viewed by some respondents (about 5%) as an important practical issue. Major challenges for the profession (item 3) also tended to reflect development and promotion of the professional identity of organisational psychology. Around 33% of responses to this item indicated some aspect of this issue, including differentiating the discipline from other related professions (e.g., HR, clinical psychology) and a relative lack of recognition of the potential contributions that organisational psychologists could make to organisations. Some respondents (8%) believed that a scarcity of professionally-
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trained organisational psychologists is contributing to this lack of recognition. There would also appear to be continuing concern over integrating theory, research and practical applications. To some extent this is confirmed in the last theme reported under item 3 (personnel recruitment and selection), where respondents commented that translating validated selection procedures into practice is a continuing challenge. The final question in this survey (item 4) asked respondents to consider areas that required more attention from organisational psychologists in Australia and New Zealand. A smaller number of responses was provided to this item than to earlier ones, and issues raised were quite diverse, yielding a substantial proportion of idiosyncratic responses that could not be classified under general themes. However, again, promoting the profession was mentioned by several respondents (11% of the responding sample), with cultural diversity (9%), the ageing workforce (6%), personnel training (4%) and psychometric testing and assessment (4%) being the remaining themes identified from responses to this question.
Contributions of Organisational Psychology
Overall, as mentioned above, there is clearly some degree of commonality in responses to the four questions posed in the survey to organisational psychologists, although there is also considerable variability. Examining the responses as a collective, a question that arises is, What are we known for? or what are the competencies and knowledge that organisational psychologists are perceived to hold and may contribute to organisations and to society more generally? Reflecting on the survey responses and considering the activities engaged in by organisational consultants, I suggest that the following represent some of the main areas in which organisational consultants currently contribute: Psychometric testing and assessment, including personality testing; Personnel selection, especially developing and using structured interviews, assessment centres and other selection processes; Organisational climate/culture surveys; Occupational stress management and, more generally, occupational health and safety; Career management, including career coaching; Research competency, such as evaluation research (e.g., training; performance appraisals). The above list is clearly not exhaustive, and particular organisational psychologists may contribute in a variety of other domains. For instance, in conjunction with HR specialists and other professionals, there has been
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(as noted earlier) a growing interest in fostering worklife balance among workers. Through their research on this topic, as well as their knowledge of work motivation processes, work-related attitudes and performance, variables influencing role enactment, and a host of other related issues, organisational psychologists can and do contribute to the debate over enhancing both work and family life in society.
Challenges for Organisational Psychology in Australia and New Zealand
To conclude this chapter, I would like to reflect upon some significant challenges for organisational psychologists in the ensuing decade. Some of these were discussed by Tharenou (2001) in her thoughtful overview of organisational psychology in the global context, while others are derived from responses to the survey described above, and yet others emerge from wider debates about the role of organisational psychology in society at large (e.g., Patterson, 2001). It is not intended that this list be totally exhaustive or definitive, and other commentators may well argue with some issues raised here or would list an alternative set of challenges that are equally pertinent. Rather, the aim here is simply to briefly highlight a few areas that have become evident as posing significant challenges for our profession. These are discussed below in no specific order of importance. One of the issues discussed in detail by Tharenou (2001) and which has become, if anything, increasingly salient is what is sometimes referred to as the changing nature of work. Put simply, whereas in the past it was common for individuals to hold a job in an organisation for a considerable amount of time (typically years, or even a lifetime), this is clearly no longer the norm. Due to ever changing domestic and international demands, advancing new technologies and new operational procedures, there can be no doubt that the previous concept of a job held by most (if not all) employees and employers no longer applies to all situations today. Instead, many organisations are reducing the number of core employees they retain, and are hiring a greater proportion of workers on some form of contractual arrangement (contingency workers). Implications of these arrangements for theories and research in organisational psychology have not yet been fully recognised, but it is clear that changing work arrangements will not only alter demands placed on individuals, but will also force a reconsideration of societal values and attitudes in respect of work and its role in our lives. Along with a refocusing of theories about the nature of work itself, there is also a challenge for organisational psychologists in our two countries to provide a more direct contribution to organisational effectiveness and change. Practitioners and consultants are constantly engaged in activities that lead to development and change in organisations. For instance, there has
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been a substantial growth in the demand for and use of climate surveys to assess the health of organisations, and to make changes in their policies and practices to ensure more optimal functioning. With knowledge and expertise in areas such as teamwork, performance management and occupational health and wellbeing, organisational psychologists are well positioned to make a constructive and valuable contribution to this important area. However, as noted by some respondents in the survey described above, what is required is greater alignment of theory, research and practice. A third domain where I would contend that organisational psychologists in Australia and New Zealand have tended to be relatively silent, when compared with some other professions, is public debate and policy formulation. Some examples of policy areas to which the expertise of organisational psychologists could be brought to bear more fully include: occupational health and wellbeing, the workfamily interface, psychosocial aspects of unemployment, retirement and the impact of new technologies on work lives and life more generally. From the above review of research publications and conference presentations, it is evident that a considerable volume of organisational psychology research has been conducted on some of these topics within Australia and New Zealand and that there is a wealth of expertise within our ranks. There would appear to be significant gaps, however, in promulgating research findings into the public arena and informing policy development. In this sphere, it would seem that the scientistpractitioner model is not being fully enacted. The above relates to a fourth challenge, which also figured relatively often in responses to item 4 of the survey described earlier. This is the development of a more distinctive and visible profile for the profession, including demarcation from other professional groups such as human resource management specialists and clinical psychologists. Significant advances have been made in this direction, particularly in Australia, where the College of Organisational Psychologists has actively promoted the profession both within the discipline of psychology and in the community at large, but there still appears to be considerable public confusion about unique contributions that organisational psychologists can make to organisations, as well as about distinctions between various subdisciplines within psychology. Professional registration of psychologists, which became fully enacted in New Zealand in late 2004, will no doubt assist in differentiating skills and competencies of psychologists from those of other professionals, but needs to be accompanied by more direct promotion of the knowledge and expertise of organisational psychologists. Two other, more specific, areas will be briefly mentioned as warranting further attention from our discipline. These are workforce diversity
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and researchpractice integration. Both these areas emerged from the present survey of academic and practitioners as being important areas for consideration, and have been discussed above. In respect of the former, it is becoming increasingly evident that organisational theory and practice must take account of the diverse social and cultural backgrounds of todays workforce, which oblige a reconsideration of underlying theoretical conceptions about work-related values, attitudes, motives and expectations. Failure to acknowledge and incorporate cultural differences into theory and practice will marginalise the contribution of organisational psychology to the functioning of organisations in our societies. Finally, despite ongoing debate about the lack of synergy between research and application, and various efforts to promote greater integration between these spheres, a researchpractice gap clearly still exists and hinders the advancement of our profession. Organisational psychology is a discipline with two faces one scientific (or empirical) and the other practical (or applied). However, since its inception in the early part of the 20th century, the discipline has struggled to integrate these two components into a unified whole. One suggested reason for this struggle is that there is a communication gap between organisational psychologists (typically employed in universities) who conduct research and those who function as practitioners in the field (Hansson & ODriscoll, 1993). While academic researchers have sometimes questioned the theoretical and empirical basis for techniques used by their practitioner colleagues, the latter have argued that topics investigated by researchers are frequently only marginally related to issues and problems confronted in organisational settings. In recent years, considerable efforts have been made to bridge this gap the Australian Industrial and Organisational Psychology conference is a prime example of such collaborative efforts and both sides have moved toward closer working relationships.
Conclusion
This chapter has endeavoured to provide information on research-related activities of organisational psychologists in Australia and New Zealand, issues that are perceived to be most relevant to our discipline and some challenges that we confront in developing and promoting our profession. Data were presented on topics that have been focused on in empiricallybased journal papers and presentations at the major regional organisational psychology conference, as well as the views of organisational psychologists in Australia and New Zealand (both academics and practitioners) of the foremost research and practice issues and challenges that we need to
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confront. The intention here has not been to offer an exhaustive analysis of the field, but rather to generate some issues for ongoing consideration as we continue to progress our discipline and profession. It is hoped that these reflections will assist organisational psychologists in their striving to enhance our contributions to individual workers, to organisations and to society in general.
Author Note
This chapter is based on a keynote address presented to the 6th Australian Industrial and Organisational Psychology Conference, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, June 30 to July 6, 2005. I would like to thank the conference organisers, and Brett Myors in particular, for their assistance in preparing my keynote address. I would like to especially thank Denis Flores, president of the Australian College of Organisational Psychologists, for his assistance in distributing the survey to college members. I would also like to thank all my colleagues who responded to the survey and who provided information on their views on the contributions of organisational psychologists.
References
Bochner, S. (2000). Australia. In A. E. Kazdin (Ed.), Encyclopedia of psychology (pp. 331338). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association and Oxford University Press. Hansson, G., & ODriscoll, M. (1993). Roles for industrial/organisational psychologists: A survey of New Zealand managerial personnel. New Zealand Journal of Psychology, 22, 918. Patterson, F. (2001). Developments in work psychology: Emerging issues and future trends. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 74, 381390. Tetrick, L., & Quick, J. C. (2003). Prevention at work: Public health in occupational settings. In J. C. Quick & L. Tetrick (Eds.), Handbook of occupational health psychology (pp. 318). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Tharenou, P. (2001). The relevance of industrial and organisational psychology to contemporary organisations: How far have we come and what needs to be done post-2000? Australian Psychologist, 36, 200210. Thomas, J. C., & Hite, J. (2002). Mental health in the workplace: Toward an integration of organizational and clinical theory, research and practice. In J. C. Thomas & M. Hersen (Eds.), Handbook of mental health in the workplace (pp. 314). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Zickar, M. J., & Highhouse, S. (2001). Measuring prestige of journals in industrial-organizational psychology. The Industrial Psychologist, 38, 2936.
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CHAPTER
24
Briony M. Thompson, A. Ian Glendon, and Brett Myors
The themes in these chapters represent many of the constructs that we find salient as organisational psychologists, and serve as a benchmark for our current state. In considering this collection in retrospect, we ask the question, where to from here?
Some Pointers From This Book

Consistent with Murphys position (chapter 2), our work continues to be rather narrowly focused, with particular emphasis on large public sector organisations. We need to extend our work more into private sector organisations and also into the small business sector. For example: How can the organisational experiences of people working in family and small businesses best be characterised? What about the growing proportion of people engaged in short-term, contract and casual work? These groups are generally harder to access, and smaller numbers of participants or clients may generate data that may not be amenable to sophisticated quantitative analyses. However, reporting on experiences of workers and managers in this sector would provide a much-needed balance to our current focus, especially if we are to address the needs of a broader segment of the workforce. Murphy also raises the issue of the diversity of stakeholders in organisations, and challenges us to move beyond our narrow focus on the perspectives of management, naming us servants of power. This is by no
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means a new critique of psychological research and applications (e.g., Baritz, 1965), and to some extent is capable of being addressed in the contemporary arena by ethical considerations requiring us to treat all organisational stakeholders involved in any given project as part of our participant or client base, for example in respect of providing feedback on our various endeavours. However, there remains a strong likelihood that management interests could be the prime director of our research or applications focus. What questions would we ask from the perspective of different stakeholders, for example, workers, clients and the broader community? Studies of how different stakeholders construe some of the variables that we research may lead us to different perspectives on behaviour at work. For example: How do managers and workers respectively conceptualise performance? How does this map onto clients understandings? Moving away from a management perspective should lead us, for example, to focus more on understanding peoples experiences at work rather than the products of work (Arnold, chapter 11) and to achieve that by exploring how individuals and teams (e.g., Langan-Fox et al., chapter 13) construe and make sense of those experiences. As with Arnolds case study, we need to be prepared to engage in qualitative and interpretative research to better inform our interventions and other applications. This work is necessarily exploratory and moves away from the narrow focus (still reflected here) on quantitative research and testing statistical models. Both can usefully contribute, and be mutually informing to enhance and further enrich the field of organisational psychology. We are also on the verge of developing a more genuine cross-cultural dimension to organisational psychology, which should arise from the varied and complex nature of cultures within the region. As Bond and Smith (1996) have argued, the presumptive goal of psychology is to achieve universal status by generalising results found in particular settings; however, such generalisation requires testing in maximally different cultures. We are also in a position to investigate cultural diversity issues within organisations (as argued by ODriscoll, chapter 23) due to the increasingly multicultural base of Australia and New Zealand citizenry, from which most contributions within this volume are sourced. For example, to what extent does Hooper and Martins work (chapter 12) on LMX and procedural justice climate translate across cultures? Emotional intelligence research, as reviewed by Jordan (chapter 17), continues to be plagued by conceptual and measurement issues, and we have barely begun to understand how this construct may be
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reflected in different social and cultural groups. Lau, Au, and Ho (chapter 19) present a model of motivators and suppressors of productive and counterproductive behaviours. Whilst a fair degree of commonality across cultures in this aspect of organisational life would be expected, assuming a direct transposition across contexts would be unwarranted. Not only do we need to recognise an increasing move towards crosscultural issues within organisational psychology, we also need to acknowledge that many peoples work occurs within in a global environment. The contribution by Inkson et al. (chapter 15), addressing the psychology of migration and talent flow, represents a much needed focus on global as opposed to local issues. While being consistent with Tharenous (2001) call to recognise globalisation in organisational psychology as opposed to an exclusively organisational focus their chapter addresses a social and economic issue within the region. How can we retain talent in smaller countries that are seen as offering less economic opportunity, if we are to best use the human resources within the region? As Inkson et al. argue, young people migrate in search of better career opportunities and, together with the influence of multinationals, we are seeing the rise of global careerists. How do these opportunities affect career decisions, and what is the impact, for example, on workfamily issues, of global careers? Other workers experience globalisation through international networks. How does our understanding of teams need to be extended when we deal with virtual teams in such a context? We should also refocus from studying workers or managers as isolated groups to understand, within a systems framework, how groups of workers and managers influence each other in a dynamic process. Branch, Ramsay, and Barker (chapter 5) emphasise that focusing only on employee wellbeing in organisational systems is overly restrictive. In particular, the assumption that power is exercised in only one direction fails to recognise the complexity of how individuals attain and use power. It also reminds us that managers and supervisors are also employees in a system over which they may also lack control, and that they may also be vulnerable. Addressing managers wellbeing is one element of developing effective and healthy organisational systems. We need to recognise the influence of context, not just organisational, but also economic, political, environmental and social systems. Organisational context is reflected by Brough, ODriscoll, and Kalliath (chapter 4) on how workplace policies and practices affect workfamily balance, and also by Hannam and Jimmieson (chapter 8) indicating that sources of support (in the workplace in the form of
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supervisor support, and outside the workplace from parents), can act differentially to achieve positive outcomes for teachers. Also studying teachers, Purkiss and Rossi (chapter 14) demonstrate that sense of community in the workplace is a critical link between workplace variables such as leadership and outcomes such as wellbeing, turnover and absenteeism. Studying the same occupational group, Timms, Graham, and Catabiano (chapter 7) demonstrate the importance of the socialpsychological context in determining burnout experiences. Wills, Watson, and Biggs (chapter 9) present Australian data illustrating the key role of the socio-organisational environment on safety of workers while driving. Mylonas and Carstairs (chapter 22) remind us of the importance of physical context in their analysis of the effects of open plan offices a topic that organisational psychologists have previously neglected. McArdle and Waters (chapter 3) propose the construct of employability, a multidimensional construct tapping not only into traditional individual factors, but also addressing the linked notions of human and social capital. The latter factors are of necessity context-bound, for example, economic and technical changes may alter demand, and Mcardle and Waters acknowledge the challenges inherent in defining this construct. However, in spite of the increasing recognition of context, our investigations continue to be largely focused at an intra-organisational level. Hannam and Jimmeisons chapter illustrates the possibility (by also recognising parental support) of community influences. More studies are needed that focus on the interface between organisation and society, for example how parental experience of workfamily conflict is affected by attitudes within their community or culture, and how peoples job satisfaction and morale is affected by the valuing of their work within their communities. More positively, organisational psychologists increasingly recognise the complex nature of the variables we study, and understand more about how they interact to determine experience. Teachers, who often perform high levels of organisational citizenship behaviours (OCBs) with limited recognition, are one profession that is particularly at risk of emotional exhaustion (Hannam & Jimmieson, chapter 8), while Donatelli and Sevastos (chapter 6) argue that it is the additive combination of job demands and job features that particularly determine outcomes. We see a continuing interest in developing more complex system-based models of human behaviour in organisations. Psychologys influence may be attenuated by lack of agreement over concepts and theories. For example, even a couple of decades ago it might almost have been possible to find a different personality theory for every psychologist you talked to. However, witness the explosion of research and growth in applying personality concepts and dimensions to organisational
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psychology issues as soon as a measure of agreement formed around the Big Five. Inevitably, the plethora of poorly defined and undifferentiated theoretical terms mitigate against cumulative knowledge (see Table 1 in Donatelli & Sevastos, chapter 6, for other examples). Psychological findings have sometimes been easy to ignore. For example, as Mylonas and Carstairs (chapter 22) show, while problems associated with open plan offices have been known for many years, open plan office arrangements continue to be widespread. Nevertheless, there is every reason to expect that as reliable empirical findings accumulate in these areas, their implications will be understood and applied, especially in the areas of stress and wellbeing, as several papers in this book attest. We can expect organisational psychology to be influenced also by broader forces impacting on the world of work, such as new technology and globalisation. It is likely that more cross-cultural research will be undertaken in response to these trends. Further, research in a wider range of organisational settings is likely to emerge as researchers encounter increasingly diverse organisational forms. However, whatever the future, one thing is assured: we will still all be working for organisations that employ people; and this means, to quote the student mentioned in chapter 1, that organisational psychology will be totally relevant. As organisational psychologists it behoves us to challenge our own culture, if we are not to be an irrelevance, and we welcome the critiques of our discipline and practice presented here. We need to challenge our own cognitive maps and constructs. As Dick (chapter 10) argues, we are in a process of qualitative change and some of our previous assumptions no longer adequately serve us.
Finding a Policy Orientation

A strong tradition within organisational psychology emphasises micro issues, theory development and evidence-based practice, whereas many areas of application, especially strategy and policy development, require a more macro perspective. Indeed, strategy and policy development often requires a best guess in the face of more research being required. Emphasis on methodological rigour also drives a micro perspective and attendant great attention to detail. Nevertheless, if this is organisational psychologys biggest weakness, it could also be our greatest strength the demand for empirical support for a justifiable evidence base. This perspective is more akin to program evaluation; an inherently post-hoc mindset, rather than a strategic, policy-oriented one. Another orientation that tends to lead us away from policy development is psychologys strong focus on the individual, rather than groups or
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communities who could be affected by our policy recommendations. Murphy (chapter 2) argues that organisational psychology has done better than other subfields of psychology in balancing scientistpractitioner orientations. He argues that there is general acceptance across all workers in the field of the importance of empirical support for theories, ideas and interventions; but that there is not an overemphasis on arcane theories with little or no bearing on applied or practical issues. If we cannot provide definitive theoretical solutions, bearing in mind that there is never any such thing by definition, then we must be able to recommend current best practice. Given the potential for application suggested by this analysis of contributions, we need to consider how best to use this information. ODriscoll (chapter 23) points to the tension between the scientist and practitioner sides of the I/O psyche and suggests that a greater contribution to policy might better restore the balance. Indeed, one could ask why psychologists more generally do not figure strongly in policy debates. Maybe we need a centre, or even a journal as a forum for discussion of psychological implications of policy, and also to generate debate on policy implications of psychological research?1 Kwiatkowski, Duncan, and Shimmin (2006) suggested that engagement by industrial/organisational psychologists with very senior policy makers was almost certainly greater in previous generations than currently. They discussed the case of the National Institute of Industrial Psychology, including its political lobbying activities, which were considered to be a normal aspect of its functioning. However, they noted that, psychology today is relatively politically powerless and has a limited impact in the policy domain (p. 195). Within the international domain of applied psychology more broadly, Frese (2005) has argued, inter alia, for all papers published by members of the International Association of Applied Psychology to have concrete policy implications. As a society, we are used to economic and environmental impact statements of various kinds. It may be timely to develop the psychological impact statement. For example, Australia is in the midst of working through some of the most significant policy shifts in the area of industrial relations for a generation. What would a psychological impact statement of the impact of the new Australian industrial relations legislation look like? For example, implications of this new legislation for worklife balance are already part of the political debate and could very usefully be informed by psychological research.
From Science to Practice

Returning to the scientistpractitioner theme, what general guidance or strategies can the scientific community within organisation psychology
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offer those who mainly practice? Some key contributions can be derived from the chapters in this volume. First, because accurate diagnosis is a sine qua non of any intervention, it follows that a key component of any successful consulting process is to develop methods that can provide appropriate diagnostics. Without a systematic (scientific) approach to organisational problems, interventions are liable to become trial- and error-based. Second, because some generic strategic interventions can impact upon a variety of downstream workplace factors, to maximise the value of interventions to organisations it often makes sense to focus upon these. Examples might include chief executive officer coaching, leadership training, developing high-trust cultures and effective change management. Potential outcomes that could be positively affected by such interventions include reduced incidence of stress and bullying, improved productivity and reduced absenteeism and turnover. Such a generic approach does not preclude the need for correct initial diagnostics. Third, models of individual and organisational functioning from past generations that once seemed appropriate may have little more than face validity in the light of research that increasingly is able to elucidate complex relationships between variables, for example through structural equation modelling, moderated and mediated regression and other forms of multivariate analysis. Once validated, the essence of these models should become incorporated within practitioners toolkits. However, as noted in chapter 1, it is the general constructs and concepts that practitioners are likely to find most useful and not the intimate details of these models. Fourth, a major contribution by researchers to the applications arena is not only to identify relationships between predictor or explanatory variables on the one hand, and response or criterion variables on the other, but also to specify the conditions under which those relationships are likely to hold. For example, relationships that hold in large organisations may not be sustained in small organisations, or cultural differences might act as discriminating factors. Fifth, large organisations in particular manifest such complexity that even with the best instruments available, combined with state-of-the-art statistical analyses on large samples, we are in most cases still unable to account for more than a modest proportion of the variance in the response or outcome variables. Any research material used by practitioners should therefore carry a warning label that due to multiple sources of error and variables not operationalised or measured, a substantial
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proportion of the variance is likely to remain unaccounted for. Sixth, while it is inherent within a scientific (experimental) approach to test for the effects of an intervention for example through prospective designs or program evaluation, this rarely occurs within organisational practice. The plethora of cross-sectional studies within the research domain also reveals that pressure upon researchers to produce outcomes (e.g., scientific papers) frequently precludes their own adherence to this principle. Perhaps this is an opportunity for researchers and practitioners to join forces to plan more intervention studies, such as field experiments, within organisation settings that combine the best of both worlds?
Endnote
1 Since this chapter was written, a new journal The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Organisational Psychology, has been announced.
References
Baritz, L. (1965). The servants of power. New York: Wiley. Bond, M. H., & Smith, P. B. (1996). Cross-cultural social and organizational psychology. Annual Review of Psychology, 47, 205235. Frese, M. (2005). The president speaks. International Association of Applied Psychology Newsletter, 17(1), 26. Kwiatkowski, R., Duncan, D. C., & Shimmin, S. (2006). What have we forgotten and why? Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 79, 183201. Tharenou, P. (2001). The relevance of industrial and organisational psychology to contemporary organisations: How far have we come and what needs to be done post-2000? Australian Psychologist, 38, 200210.
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Author Biographies
Nicola Allfree is a research assistant in the Department of Management and International Business at Massey University, New Zealand. Stewart Arnold has been a practicing organisational psychologist for 15 years. He says: Im always practising theres so much to learn. Stewarts dictum is Experiences maketh the industrial organisational psychologist and he continues to accumulate diverse experiences in life. Stewart has an eclectic work history that includes work as a mortuary attendant, a factory hand, and a 5-year stint as a professional fruit picker! His passion for understanding human behaviour has led to work as an employee assistance counsellor, a management consultant, and a university lecturer. Stewarts research has taken him deep into organisations experiencing major change and other crises. Stewart currently lives in Singapore and one challenging Asian experience was a week spent in rural Sri Lanka providing trauma counselling to villagers affected by the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami. Theres so much to experience; so much to learn! Wing-tung Au completed his PhD at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, United States of America. He has since been teaching in the Department of Psychology at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research topics include group dynamics like mixed-motive interactions and consensual decision-making, and organisational behaviours like counterproductive work behaviours. He has taught courses in industrial/organisational psychology, social psychology, personnel psychology, and organisational psychology. He has also provided
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consultancy services to private and public organisations on staff attitudes, team dynamics, and job analysis. Michelle Barker is Professor of Management in the Griffith Business School, and Deputy Director of the Centre for Work, Leisure and Community Research. Formerly, Deputy Director of AusAid in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Michelle has professional and scholarly expertise in the area of intercultural transitions and international human resource management. Michelle has developed a national and international profile in research into bullying and mobbing in the workplace. She is co-chief investigator of a current ARC Discovery grant on workplace learning. Michelle is the individual award winner of the 2005 Australian Award for University Teaching in the area of Law, Economics, and Business. In 2003, Michelle led the team that won the 2003 Australian Award for University Teaching (Institutional category) for introduction of the ExcelL Intercultural Skills training program at Griffith University. Herbert C. Biggs is Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology and Counselling at Queensland University of Technology and a Senior Research Consultant at the same University with CARRS-Q. Dr Biggs gained his PhD in industrial/organisational psychology at Massey University, New Zealand, and has a research and consultancy background in injury prevention, rehabilitation and industrial psychology. His current research spans fatigue and environment concerns in bus driving populations, developing safety critical competencies, behaviours and attitudes in construction site environments, and the role of resilience in worklife balance in the information technology sector. Prashant Bordia is Associate Professor in the School of Management at The University of South Australia (UniSA). Prior to joining UniSA, he was a senior lecturer in organisational psychology at The University of Queensland where he received the Early Career Research Excellence Award. He has received competitive research grant funding from the Australian Research Council (Discovery & Linkage schemes) and the US National Science Foundation. His research focuses on rumour and uncertainty management, psychological contracts, and cross-cultural management. His research has been published in leading journals such as the Academy of Management Journal, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Human Resource Management, Human Communication Research, and Social
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Author Biographies
Psychology Quarterly. He is co-author of the book, Rumor psychology: Social and organizational approaches, published by the American Psychological Association. Prashant serves on the editorial boards of Group and Organization Management, Journal of Business Communication, Journal of Business and Psychology, and Journal of Social Psychology. Sara Branch is currently finishing her PhD research at Griffith University, Queensland, in the area of upwards bullying. She is an organisational psychologist with research interests in workplace conflict, organisational development, change management, transitions to university and work, as well as career development. She has worked in higher education as a researcher, lecturer and learning adviser, and has a range of experience in research and teaching particularly in the areas of academic skills, training, group facilitation, change management and interpersonal skills. In 2002, she was corecipient of the 2002 Australian Awards for University Teaching Institutional Award for Innovative and Practical Approach to the Enhancement of the Quality of Teaching and Learning at Griffith University. Paula Brough has a PhD in Occupational Psychology from Bristol University, United Kingdom. She is currently Senior Lecturer in Organisational Psychology in the School of Psychology at Griffith University. Paulas research interests are primarily within the occupational stress and psychological health fields, specifically in regards to occupational stress, coping, and the psychological health of high-risk workers (e.g., emergency service workers, correctional officers, customs officers). Her other main research interest is workfamily conflict: researching how best to manage both job and non-job demands for both individual workers and their employers. Paula has written numerous journal articles and book chapters based on her research, and supervises postgraduate research students in these areas. Paula is on the editorial boards of several international academic journals and national grant bodies. Marie Caltabiano PhD is Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology on the Cairns campus of James Cook University, Queensland. Her principal areas of research are health psychology, stress, coping, burnout in professionals, and resilient ageing. She is co-author with Edward Sarafino of Health psychology: Biopsychosocial interactions. An Australian perspective (2002), published by Wiley. Marie is a member of the Australian Psychological Society (APS), the American Psychological Association, the APS College of Health Psychologists, the Public Health Association of
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Australia, and the Australasian Society of Behavioural Health and Medicine. She has published nationally and internationally in the areas of psychosocial aspects of stress, stress modulation effects of leisure, job burnout, disordered eating, parental coping, adolescent health risk behaviours and womens health. James M. Canty is a PhD candidate in the Department of Psychology at the University of Melbourne under the supervision of Professor Janice Langan-Fox and Dr Meei Ng. His research explores the relationship between team member individual differences, team mental models and team processes and outputs. He has presented his research at the Australian Psychological Society (APS) annual conferences and the APS Industrial and Organisational Conference. James has worked in market research and recruitment, has taught at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and is currently a committee member of the APS College of Organisational Psychologists (Victorian Branch). Stuart C. Carr has a PhD in social change from Stirling University, Scotland and coordinates the national program in Industrial and Organisational (I/O) Psychology in the School of Psychology at Massey University, New Zealand, where he is Professor of Psychology. Specialising in the I/O psychology of poverty reduction, Stuart has worked at the universities of Malawi (East Africa), Newcastle (Australia) and the Northern Territory (Darwin). He has consulted for a range of not-for-profit organisations in Africa, South-East Asia, Australasia and Oceania, and has published and co-published over 120 articles, edited works, book chapters and books on poverty reduction and I/O psychology. These works include first-time publications (for I/O psychology) with the OECD and UNESCO. Stuart is currently coordinator of the Talent Flow Program, and leads the Poverty Research Group based at Massey University as principal investigator in a multinational, multi-institutional project on the impact of salary discrepancies in aid work. He is a previous co-editor of the South Pacific Journal of Psychology, which focuses on development issues, and currently co-edits the Journal of Pacific Rim Psychology. Jane Carstairs is a member of the College of Organisational Psychology in Australia and is a Chartered Occupational Psychologist in the United Kingdom. She received her doctorate from the Open University, United Kingdom, and has held academic positions in psychology at the Open University, Australian National University and Macquarie University. She has 10 years of public sector experience working as a psychologist and as
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Author Biographies
director of statistical research and development. She was Director of the Master of Organisational Psychology program at Macquarie University and, in 2005, returned to the United Kingdom to set up an occupational psychology program at the University of Wolverhampton. Her research interests include individual differences, selection and assessment. Bob Dick in the past, has been shop assistant, electrician, electrical draftsperson, recruitment officer, industrial psychologist, academic, facilitator and consultant. For most of the past 30 years he has been an academic and a practitioner in the fields of community and organisational change. As an academic, he used experiential methods to help practitioners learn the theory and practice of their profession as psychologists and change agents. He is currently an independent scholar and a consultant in private practice, using action research to help people improve the effectiveness and joy of their organisations and communities. He also has adjunct appointments at the University of South Australia and Southern Cross University (New South Wales), mostly supervising action research PhDs and advising on qualitative research methodologies. He lives in the leafy western suburbs of Brisbane with his partner Camilla in a house frequently overrun by large numbers of grandchildren. Feliciano Donatelli received his masters degree in organisational psychology with distinction from Curtin University of Technology, Western Australia in 2004. Felicianos research has focused on relationships between job characteristics and employee wellbeing. He has conducted employee opinion surveys as a private consultant for both public and private organisations. Feliciano has worked as a senior consultant for the global consulting firm, SHL, where he was involved in a broad range of consulting for clients, including job analysis, competency design, 360degree feedback, and assessment and development centres. His experience in the design and delivery of assessment and development centre programs spans a wide range of organisational levels, from large-scale recruitment applications through to senior level development and includes international experience. He currently works for Oil Search Limited, an international oil and gas exploration and development company, where he is involved in a range of human resource and organisational development initiatives. Margot F. Edwards is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Management and International Business at Massey University, New Zealand. She has a background in sport management and her PhD explored the impact of
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gender on coaching in womens hockey. Margot has recently published work on the Brawn Drain, which highlights issues arising from global movements of professional sport workers. Her current research interests, in addition to her commitment to the New Zealand Talent Flow Program, include exploring the relationship between sport and self-concept and social identity formation in a New Zealand context. Cynthia D. Fisher received her PhD in Industrial/Organisational Psychology from Purdue University, United States of America in 1978. She is Professor and Head of Management in the School of Business at Bond University (Australia) and has previously held faculty posts at Texas A&M University, the University of Baltimore, and the National University of Singapore. Her research interests include emotions at work, attitudebehaviour relationships and work motivation. Dr Fisher is first author of Human Resource Management, a textbook now in its sixth edition with Houghton-Mifflin. She has served on the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Review, Journal of Applied Psychology, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. Her research has been funded by large grants from the US Office of Naval Research and the Australian Research Council. A. Ian Glendon is Associate Professor in Griffith Universitys School of Psychology (Gold Coast). He has held visiting positions at Queensland University of Technology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Psychology. His research interests include personality, driver stress/behaviour, occupational health and safety/risk management, and safety climate/culture. His publications include four co-authored books and he is on the editorial board of four international journals. He has consulted for over 60 clients on occupational health and safety auditing, safety climate/culture analysis, injury analysis, and human factors. He was an Expert Panel member for the New South Wales Government Special Commission of Inquiry into the Waterfall Rail Accident (20032004). He is a Registered Psychologist in Queensland, a Chartered Occupational Psychologist (United Kingdom), a Chartered Fellow of the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health, a Registered Member of the Ergonomics Society (United Kingdom), and President (20062010) of the International Association of Applied Psychology Traffic and Transportation Psychology Division.
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Author Biographies
Deborah Graham PhD is Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology at James Cook University, Cairns Campus. Her interests include psychoneuroimmunology, psychosocial outcomes in individuals faced with loss or illness, burnout, and drug and alcohol research that examines pleasure expectations, negative affect and harm minimisation strategies. Publications and grants received encompass the areas of chronobiology, illness representations in chronic illness, ageing, and developing drug and alcohol harm minimisation strategies. Her drug and alcohol harm minimisation research ranges from individually focused research to exploring industry-wide approaches. Jerald Greenberg is Professor of Management and Organisation, National University of Singapore Business School. He is best known for his pioneering work on organisational justice, a topic on which he has published over 160 professional works, including 20 books such as the Handbook of Organizational Justice, Advances in Organizational Justice, Quest for Justice on the Job, Equity and Justice in Social Behavior, and Justice in Social Relations. In recognition of his lifelong scientific contributions, Dr Greenberg has won the Herbert Heneman Career Achievement Award from the Academy of Management, and the Distinguished Scholarly Contributions Award from the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP). He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, SIOP, and the Academy of Management. He is also Past-Chair of the Organizational Behavior Division of the Academy of Management and currently is Associate Editor of Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes and Senior Editor of the Journal of Organizational Behavior. Rachel L. Hannam is a former schoolteacher and is a registered psychologist in Queensland. She completed her PhD in Organisational Psychology at The University of Queensland, Australia, her Bachelor of Social Science and Graduate Diploma of Education at the Queensland University of Technology and her Honours degree in Psychology at the University of New England (New South Wales). In addition to working in the public school system, Rachel has been project manager on several research projects in higher education. Since 2002, she has lectured at The University of Queensland, Griffith University, and Queensland University of Technology in both undergraduate and postgraduate psychology courses. Her research interests include employee wellbeing, employee performance, social support in the workplace, and the role of employee attitudes in predicting client satisfaction.
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Beryl Hesketh is Executive Dean, Health and Science at the University of Western Sydney, having recently completed a period of 3 years as ProVice-Chancellor and 4 years as Dean of Science at the University of Sydney. She has also held senior roles in psychology at Macquarie University and the University of New South Wales. She was awarded the Australian Psychological Society Elton Mayo Award in 1997, and organised and chaired the inaugural Australian Industrial and Organisational Psychology conference in 1995. She has received consistent Australian Research Council (ARC) funding for her applied psychology research, and is currently a chief investigator on a major ARC linkage grant investigating the best ways of using errors, exceptions and rules of thumb to train fire-fighters for adaptability and decision-making. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences Australia, and of the Australian Psychological Society, and a member of the APA Society for Industrial and Organisational Psychology (SIOP). She has extensive international reviewing and editorial experience and is currently an Associate Editor for the Journal of Applied Psychology. Jane Ming-chun Ho completed her Master of Philosophy degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She currently works in corporate human resources, responsible for personnel recruitment and selection. Other than developing and conducting assessments, she also has to take charge of special projects that sometimes involve staff disciplinary issues. Jill J. Hooks PhD, FCPA, is Associate Professor and academic leader in the School of Accountancy, Massey University, New Zealand. Jill joined the Talent Flow team to provide expertise in the area of the largest group of business professionals responding to the survey instrument, Chartered Accountants. Her research interests have mainly been focused on the New Zealand electricity industry, particularly with respect to increasing accountability and transparency through annual reporting. Jill has a number of international publications in this area. She is also interested in the quality and extent of environmental reporting and has published articles on this topic, particularly in respect of assessing electricity generators efforts to report on the monitoring of the environmental effects of their activities. Danica T. Hooper is a practicing organisational psychologist. She obtained her PhD in organisational psychology in 2005 from The University of Queensland. Her consulting work focuses on a broad range of areas, including psychometric testing, employee retention, organisa498
Author Biographies
tional surveying and selection systems. Her primary research interests include leadership (especially LeaderMember Exchange theory) and psychometric testing for selection. Kerr Inkson is Adjunct Professor of Management at the University of Otago, Visiting Professor at Victoria University of Wellington, and Honorary Research Fellow at Massey University, New Zealand. He takes up an adjunct professorial position at the University of Waikato, New Zealand, from October 1, 2007. He has a PhD from the University of Otago. Kerr is a Fellow of the New Zealand Psychological Society and the New Zealand Institute of Management, a life member of the Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management, and a former chair of the Careers Division of the Academy of Management. From a background in organisational psychology, he has conducted research in many areas of organisational behaviour, including organisation structure, orientations and attitudes to work, and career development and management. Kerr has published over 100 refereed journal articles and 12 books, the most recent ones being Cultural intelligence with David C. Thomas (BerrettKoehler, 2004) and Understanding careers (Sage, 2006). Duncan J. R. Jackson is a researcher and lecturer in the Department of Management and International Business at Massey University and has a PhD in industrial and organisational psychology. His scope of research covers assessment centres, behavioural assessment, simulations exercises, psychological factors in talent migration, cultural intelligence and labour market dynamics. He has published in such journals as Human Performance and the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology. Duncan is interested in quantitative methods and specialises in using multivariate correlational techniques. He is also interested in psychometrics and has researched using classical and modern test approaches and generalisability theory. He teaches general management at undergraduate level and assessment and selection and performance management at postgraduate level. Nerina L. Jimmieson received her PhD in 1998 from The University of Queensland in which she examined a range of different job characteristics as moderating variables in the stressstrain relationship. After holding a lecturing position in the School of Management at Queensland University of Technology, she accepted a Senior Lectureship in the School of Psychology at The University of Queensland in 2001. She teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses in organisational behaviour,
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personnel selection and organisational change. Employing a range of methodologies, her research interests are concerned with stress and coping in the workplace, employee adaptation to organisational change and the role of employee attitudes in the prediction of client satisfaction. Her research has appeared in a number of journals in the area of industrial and organisational psychology. Peter Jordan is Associate Professor of Management at the Griffith Business School, Griffith University, Queensland. He gained his PhD in management at The University of Queensland. Peters current research interests include emotional intelligence, emotions in organisations, job insecurity, team performance and conflict. He has published a number of book chapters and in a range of international journals including the Academy of Management Review, the Human Resource Management Review and Human Performance. Peter is currently the holder of three Australian Research Council grants for research examining the impact of emotional intelligence at work. He has also been invited to deliver presentations to a number of business groups across South-East Asia. Prior to entering academia, he worked in strategic and operational planning for the Australian Government. Thomas J. Kalliath has a PhD in industrial organisational psychology from the Washington University in St Louis, United States of America. Prior to joining the Australian National University as Senior Lecturer in Management, Tom taught organisational psychology, organisational development and change and personnel training and development in the University of Waikato, New Zealand from 1995 to 2004. Since 1996, working independently or in collaboration with research colleagues, Tom has contributed more than 100 research outputs in the occupational and organisational psychology area. A significant amount of his work has focused on furthering our understanding of the workfamily interface, as well as the nature of job stress and burnout among human service workers and managers in samples from India, New Zealand and the United States. Janice Langan-Fox is an industrial/organisational psychologist who had 10 years experience in industry before beginning her academic career at RMIT University as a lecturer in Organizational Behaviour. In 1988, she took up a Research Fellow position at Monash University and, in 1991, moved to the Department of Psychology, University of Melbourne where she was engaged full-time in teaching and research, being promoted to Associate Professor in 2002. In 2005, Janice was appointed Research
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Author Biographies
Professor of Management in the Faculty of Business and Enterprise, at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne. Janice has served on the editorial board of a number of international and national journals and has over 150 publications in refereed journals, books, and reports; her work is widely cited. She has obtained more than $1 million in research grants from government, charitable foundations and industry, and has many years of consulting experience in industry. Ruby Man-wa Lau received her first degree in Psychology and Master of Philosophy degree in Industrial/Organisational Psychology at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. After graduation, she started her career in human resources consultancy where she provided a wide range of consultancy services to different industries, including national and international firms. Highlights of services provided were aptitude, personality and competencybased assessments; customised training on psychometric assessment, teambuilding and personnel selection; assessment and development centre design and delivery. She currently works in a corporate organisation where she specialises in training, staff communication and motivational issues. Examples of projects involved include the design and development of supervisory training programs, staff motivational programs and performance management systems. Her research interest is the studying of motivation of organisational citizenship and counterproductive behaviours. She is also a member and Registered Industrial/Organisational Psychologist of the Hong Kong Psychological Society. Robin Martin is Professor of Social and Organisational Psychology at Aston Business School, Birmingham, United Kingdom. He obtained his PhD in experimental social psychology in 1987 from the Open University, United Kingdom. He has been on the faculty of the universities of Sheffield, Swansea, and Cardiff and, until recently, was Director of the Centre for Organisational Psychology at The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. His research interests include social influence processes (especially majority and minority influence), work motivation and workplace leadership. Sarah McArdle graduated with a Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) degree from the University of Melbourne in 2005, majoring in psychology and management. In 2006, she was awarded a prize for the top honours thesis in management. Sarah is currently working as a graduate in Human Resource Management at ANZ Bank and is working on further research into unemployment with Lea Waters.
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Kevin R. Murphy is Professor of Psychology at Pennsylvania State University, and Director of the International Center for the Study of Terrorism. He served as President of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology and as Editor of Journal of Applied Psychology. He has also served on four National Academy of Sciences committees, most recently the Committee to Review the Scientific Evidence on the Polygraph, and is the recipient of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychologys 2004 Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award. He is author of over 115 articles and book chapters, and author or editor of ten books, in areas ranging from psychometrics and statistical analysis to individual differences, performance assessment, gender and honesty in the workplace. Kevin Murphys main areas of research include personnel selection and placement, performance appraisal and psychological measurement. George Mylonas is a practicing organisational psychologist. He received his BSc degree (1989) from the University of New South Wales, a MA degree (1990) from the University of Sydney and a Master of Organisational Psychology (2004) from Macquarie University. He has an interest in work spaces and is currently completing studies in interior design. His experience includes work in selection, development, training and counselling. Brett Myors is Associate Professor of Applied Psychology in the School of Psychology at Griffith Universitys Mount Gravatt Campus, Queensland where he is Director of Organisational Training for the postgraduate organisational psychology programs. Before that he performed a similar role at Macquarie University, and has held visiting positions at the Institute of Work Psychology at Sheffield University in the UK. He chaired the Conference Committee of the 6th Industrial/Organisational Psychology Conference, held in 2005. His publications include books and book chapters on statistical power analysis and his most recent book is concerned with selection and assessment, co-authored with Professors David Shum and John OGorman. Michael P. ODriscoll is Professor of Psychology at the University of Waikato, New Zealand, where he teaches courses in organisational psychology. He has a PhD in Psychology from the Flinders University of South Australia. His primary research interests are in the fields of job-related stress and coping, and the interface between job experiences and peoples lives off the job (especially family commitments and responsibilities),
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Author Biographies
including conflict between job and family commitments. More generally, he is interested in work attitudes and behaviours and the relationship between work and health. He has published empirical and conceptual articles on these and other topics in organisational and social psychology. He has served as an editorial consultant for several academic journals, and has been editor of the New Zealand Journal of Psychology (20012006). Meei Ng is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Melbourne. Her areas of research are in applied statistics, including survival analysis, non-linear regression and environmental statistics. The application of statistics to teammental models and within-rater agreement in general is a more recent development of her interest. Dr Ng started off as a pure mathematician, with a PhD in group theory from Warwick University, United Kingdom. She later changed interest and completed a MSc by research in survival analysis at Monash University. As an academic, she has developed and taught many statistical subjects at different levels and to different cohorts of students, including many years in Melbourne College of Advanced Education, teaching student teachers. Roslyn B. Purkiss is a registered psychologist and has worked in educational settings for around 25 years. The research project upon which her co-authored chapter in this book is based was undertaken as part of a Master of Psychology (Clinical and Forensic) degree at Charles Sturt University in Australia. Roslyn retains a strong interest in the importance of psychologically healthy workplace environments, and in their relationship with employee wellbeing as well as with key individual and team outcomes such as absenteeism, staff retention, innovation and the development of hopelessness. Sheryl Ramsay is an organisational psychologist with interests in organisational behaviour, particularly workplace conflict; learning, transition and adjustment processes; and cross-cultural psychology. She has worked in the public sector in clinical and organisational psychology roles. She currently holds an academic position in the Department of Management, Griffith University, Queensland, where she is Director of the Master of Human Resource Management degree program and teaches in the areas of human resource training and development, business communication, organisational behaviour and human resource management at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Her present research focuses on work adjustment processes for migrants to Australia. The research higher
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degree students that she currently supervises are principally focused on workplace conflict and intervention processes, particularly in relation to workplace bullying in a range of organisations, and the transition from university to work for new graduates. Simon Lloyd D. Restubog is Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Psychology at The University of Queensland, where he received his PhD in organisational psychology. His primary research interests include antecedents and maintenance of psychological contracts, revenge and workplace deviance in organisations, and cross-cultural organisational behaviour. His research has been published in Applied Psychology: An International Review, British Journal of Management, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, and the Best Paper Proceedings of the US Academy of Management. He also serves as a reviewer for the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, Journal of Business Research, and the Academy of Management Conference. Robert J. Rossi is founder of iBuildCommunity.com, a small business devoted to enhancing the effectiveness of individuals and groups, and increasing the sense of community within society. Formerly, he was principal and managing scientist at the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and Director of AIRs Centre for Community Research, founded in collaboration with John W. Gardner. Bob has authored books on collaboration, social measurement, and sense of community; he has served as director of many national, state-level, and organisation-specific evaluation, planning and improvement efforts. Peter Sevastos, PhD, spent almost 20 years in private enterprise as a human resources director before embarking on an academic career in organisational psychology at Curtin University of Technology, Western Australia. Among his various responsibilities as a lecturer and research supervisor, Peter coordinated the Master of Organisational Psychology program at Curtin for a number of years. His current research interests include affective wellbeing and its association with managerial performance, workfamily balance, emotional labour, job insecurity and teacher burnout. Peter maintains close links with private industry and the public sector through his graduate students, and continues to provide consulting services in survey design, evaluation research and quantitative analysis. Briony M. Thompson is Senior Lecturer in Organisational Psychology in the School of Psychology and a member of the Centre for Work, Leisure
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Author Biographies
and Community Research at Griffith University, Queensland. Her main research interests are in work and family, with a focus on the determinants of spillover and crossover effects of work stress to the family. She has a broad interest in gender and work, particularly the experience of women in high stress occupations such as policing, and the role of social support in the work and home environment in men and womens experience of the workfamily interface. Briony has professional experience as a management consultant and clinical psychologist, and is a Member of the Australian Psychological Society, a Member of the College of Organisational Psychologists and a Registered Psychologist in Queensland. She has 30 years experience in teaching organisational psychology and management. Kaye J. Thorn is Lecturer in the Department of Management and International Business at Massey University, New Zealand. She has an MSc in Resource Management and has spent much of her working career in the fields of environmental management and tourism. Her research interests have broadened from tourism to the whole issue of global migration, and she is a member of the Talent Flow Program. Kaye is currently enrolled in doctoral studies, examining the implications of global mobility on highly skilled New Zealanders. Hanna Thomas (PhD, University of Wollongong) is an organisational psychologist with Workplace Research Associates, Australian Capital Territory and in private practice. She has extensive professional experience in the public sector, particularly as a senior psychologist with the Australian Federal Department of Defence. Her experience in organisational psychology includes job analysis, policy review, selection system development and validation, assessment centre design, program evaluation, survey design and analysis, training design and delivery, test administration and interpretation, management and quality control of selection databases, computer-based testing and test development. Hanna has considerable experience working with clients from both private and public sectors in a variety of contexts and has taught psychology and statistics courses at undergraduate level. Her research interests include memory, information processing, learning and assessment. Carolyn Timms came to psychology after a long career as a high school teacher. Twenty years of her teaching life were spent at one independent school where she wore several hats: Leading Teacher; Teacher Librarian, and Study of Society and Environment (SOSE) Coordinator. Out of interest,
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she studied psychology by part-time distance education through Monash University, Victoria. While she was completing a unit of organisational psychology the administration of her school changed. This event triggered some intriguing personnel dynamics within the school that inspired the research reported in this chapter. After completing Honours, Carolyn was offered PhD candidature at the School of Psychology, James Cook University, Cairns Campus, Queensland. The working title of her research is Workplace Dynamics: Engagement and Burnout. Carolyn wishes to thank the Queensland Independent Education Union (QIEU) for their generosity in supporting and facilitating her research. Lea Waters holds a BA (Hons) (Psychology) from the University of Melbourne and a PhD (Psychology) from Deakin University, Victoria. She is currently Associate Professor in the Department of Management at the University of Melbourne. She teaches undergraduate and postgraduate programs in organisational behaviour, organisational psychology and organisational change. In 2004, she was awarded the Australian and New Zealand, Pearson Education Management Educator of the Year and was a finalist at the Australian University Teaching Awards. Her research interests include career management, mentoring, occupational stress, job loss and unemployment. Associate Professor Waters has received international recognition for her research having published and presented in Canada, Europe and the United States. In 2004, she was awarded the Best Paper Award at the American Academy of Management Conference. In 2005, she was awarded the Elton Mayo Prize by the Australian College of Organisational Psychologists in recognition of her outstanding contributions to organisational psychology. She has reviewed for academic journals such as Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Journal of Occupational Health Psychology and Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology. She is currently a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Organizational Behavior. Barry Watson is Associate Professor with Queensland University of Technologys (QUT) Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety (CARRS-Q). In this capacity, Barry is primarily responsible for developing and delivering courses in road safety and traffic psychology for both undergraduate and postgraduate students. Prior to joining CARRS-Q, Barry accumulated a wide range of experience in road safety research and policy development, working for government road safety agencies in New South Wales and Queensland. Barry completed his PhD at QUT and has conduct506
Author Biographies
ed research into a wide range of road user issues including drink-driving, speeding, driver licensing, driver education, traffic law enforcement, unlicensed driving and international drivers. Barry is currently National Co Vice President (Policy) of the Australasian College of Road Safety. Julie A. West (PhD, Fordham, USA) is an organisational psychologist with extensive professional experience in both public and private sectors. She is Principal of Workplace Research Associates Pty Ltd, a Canberra-based management consultancy firm that has provided organisational psychology services throughout Australia for almost 10 years. She has more than 20 years experience as a senior organisational psychologist with both the Australian Public Service and private recruitment consultancy firms. Julie has considerable experience with all aspects of recruitment and job/organisational evaluation and design, including psychological testing, assessment centres, test development, job analyses, competency development, program evaluation, survey design and analysis, work level standards and capability frameworks and training delivery. She has lectured and tutored in psychology in Australia and the United States and has held both academic and research positions. Julie maintains a keen interest in promoting research-led best practice principles in all aspects of her applied work. Philippa White has a BPsych (Hons) from the Australian National University, is an organisational psychologist with Workplace Research Associates, ACT, and a PhD candidate in organisational psychology at Monash University. She has had applied experience in psychological testing; senior executive, general public service and graduate recruitment; assessment centre design; job and organisational analysis; the assessment of staff attitudes and morale; survey design and analysis; and training design and delivery. Philippa is responsible for a continuing research program that underpins a number of Workplace Research Associates applied consulting services with several large Australian public service departments. Her research interests include assessing personorganisation fit in personnel selection processes. Andrew R. Wills is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety-Queensland (CARRS-Q), Queensland University of Technology. Andrew holds a Bachelor of Psychology (First Class Honours) and is an Associate Member of the Australian Psychological Society. He has published research on safety climate, work-related driver safety and other aspects of road safety. His current research includes identifying and examining factors influencing work-related driver safety,
507
including organisational climate and culture, occupational stress and conceptualising driving behaviour as job performance. Andrew is also a Principal Advisor (Policy) at Queensland Transport.
508
Glossary of Acronyms
Glossary of acronyms used in this book (excludes North American states/ provinces and publishers names) ABC ABRSFG ABS ACT ACTU AD AD AH AIA AIC AIR AMJ AMR ANOVA ANU ANZ APA APS ARC ASA Australian Broadcasting Corporation Academy of Business Research Strategies Funding Group (NZ) Australian Bureau of Statistics Australian Capital Territory Australian Council of Trade Unions Additional decrement (Warrs vitamin model) Absolute deviation (interrater agreement measure) A Hospital (pseudonym) American Institute of Architects Akaike Information Criterion (in SEM) American Institutes for Research Academy of Management Journal Academy of Management Review (journal) Analysis of variance Australian National University Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd American Psychological Association Australian Psychological Society Australian Research Council Attraction, selection, and attrition
509
BA BARS BBC BPsych CARRS-Q CCB CD CE CEO CFA CFI CHD CPB CWB df DV DTI ECI ECVI EE EFA EI EIS EMA EQi/EQ-I ESM FCPA FWI g GCCA GDP
Bachelor of Arts (degree) Behaviourally anchored rating scales British Broadcasting Corporation Bachelor of Psychology (degree) Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety Queensland Co-worker-centred behaviour (teachers) Compact disc Constant effect (Warrs vitamin model) Chief executive officer Confirmatory factor analysis Comparative Fit Index (in SEM) Coronary heart disease Counterproductive behaviour Counterproductive work behaviour Degrees of freedom Dependent variable Department of Trade and Industry (UK) Emotional Competencies Index Expected Cross-Validation Index (in SEM) Emotional exhaustion Exploratory factor analysis Emotional intelligence Emotional Intelligence Scale Ecological momentary assessment Emotional Quotient Inventory Experience sampling methodology Fellow of the Certified Practising Accountants of Australia Family-to-work interference General intelligence factor Graduate Careers Council of Australia Gross domestic product
510
Glossary of Acronyms
GFI GIAB GNS GPET HEM HR HRM HSD ICANZ ICC IJT ILM I/O (I-O) IOP IQ ISCA IT IV IWO JDS JOOP Ltd LMX M MA MBA MBI MDC MSc MSCEIT MTMM MV
Goodness-of-Fit Index (in SEM) Growth and Innovation Advisory Board (NZ) Growth need strength General Practice Education and Training Heuristic elicitation methodology Human resources Human resource management Honestly Significant Difference (Tukey-Kraimer test) Institute of Chartered Accountants of New Zealand Intra-class correlation coefficient Interpersonal justice training Internal labour market Industrial/Organisational (psychology) Industrial/Organisational Psychology Intelligence quotient Independent Schools Council of Australia Information technology Independent variable Industrial, Work and Organisational (psychology) Job diagnostic survey Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology Limited Leader-member exchange (theory) Mean Master of Arts (degree) Master of Business Administration (degree) Maslach Burnout Inventory Multidimensional construct Master of Science (degree) Mayer Salovy Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test Multitrait-multimethod Mediator variable
511
N (or n) n/a NASA ns NSW NZ NZDL O O OB OCB OE OECD OHS p P PA PAF PCA PhD P-J QIEU QUT r rwg R2 R2(adj) RMIT RMSEA S SAR
Number Not appropriate/applicable National Aeronautical Space Administration (US) Non-significant New South Wales New Zealand New Zealand Department of Labour Order (chapter 14) Organisational (chapter 23) Organisational behaviour Organisational citizenship behaviour Overseas Experience (NZ) Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development Occupational health and safety Probability Personnel (chapter 23) Personal accomplishment Principal Axis Factoring (EFA) Principal Components Analysis (EFA) Doctor of Philosophy (degree) Person-job (fit) Queensland Independent Education Union Queensland University of Technology Correlation coefficient Within-group interrater agreement measure (coefficient) Multiple correlation (coefficient of determination) Adjusted R squared (for n IVs and sample sizes) Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (University) Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (in SEM) Strain (chapter 14) Special Administrative Region (of China)
512
Glossary
SARS SCB SCOS SCQ SCQ-MD SD SEM SET SHL SIOP SIT SOC SOSE SRMR SS SUEIT TLI TM TMM UK UNESCO US(A) VSA WEIP WFI WWJD
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Student-centred behaviour (teachers) Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism Safety Climate Questionnaire Safety Climate Questionnaire Modified for Drivers Standard deviation Structural equation modelling Social exchange theory Saville Holdsworth Ltd Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (of APA) Social identity theory Sense of community (chapter 14) Study of Society and Environment Square Root Mean Residual (in SEM) Sum of squares Swinburne University Emotional Intelligence Test Tucker-Lewis Index (in SEM) Trademark Team mental model United Kingdom United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation United States (of America) Voluntary Service Abroad (NZ) Workshop Emotional Intelligence Profile Work-to-family interference What would justice do? (analysis)
513
514
Index
Adaptability, 40, 49, 52, 5455, 5962, 6466, 70, 270, 303, 498 Anxiety, 42, 51, 58, 60, 81, 118119, 128130, 170, 223236, 408, 411, 417 Aspiration, 43, 117118, 124, 127, 129, 314 Attitudes, 21, 22, 46, 70, 78, 82, 84, 89, 102, 103, 137, 150, 154, 155, 178, 179, 181, 183184, 186188, 194, 206, 241, 244, 251, 264, 266, 285287, 296, 299, 306, 317318, 323, 330, 334, 367, 372, 384385, 418, 420, 455, 457458, 475, 478, 480, 486, 492, 497, 499, 500, 503, 507 Auditory distraction, 452 Autonomy, 43, 115, 117120, 122, 124, 130, 132133, 145, 154155, 168, 212, 283, 409, 421, 424, 448 Behaviour behavioural approach, 433, 435, 436 behavioural change, 185 driver behaviour, 4647, 178, 183185 Beliefs without reason, 213, 217, 218 Best practice, 192, 352, 427429, 431437, 439441, 488, 507 Biodata, 8, 12, 18, 3031, 33, 35, 441 Brain drain, 301, 304305, 316321 Buffering effect, 81, 83, 8586, 159, 163 Bullying see Workplace bullying Bureaucracy, 7, 200, 209210, 213, 217 Burnout, 4344, 73, 87, 116, 118, 135137, 139151, 153155, 157, 161, 165, 167168, 170174, 234, 246, 297298, 331, 359, 486, 493, 494, 497, 500, 504, 506, 511 employee, 153, 155, 165, 173 psychological, 73, 153, 155, 167 Career, 13, 4041, 49, 5257, 5970, 78, 80, 84, 87, 9091, 95, 148, 170, 205, 301306, 310312, 314, 319321, 373, 378, 379, 462, 468, 470471, 477, 485, 492493, 497, 499501, 504506 identity, 40, 49, 52, 5456, 5962, 6466 involvement, 87, 90 landscape, 52 satisfaction, 55, 84, 91 success, 54, 5657, 65, 70 Change, 8, 20, 29, 42, 44, 52, 5456, 58, 65, 70, 76, 7879, 83, 103107, 119, 121122, 130, 139, 148149, 169, 177, 184, 185, 200, 211, 215218, 228, 240, 244, 278, 294, 311, 318, 320, 339, 351, 363, 385, 416417, 419, 421, 425, 447, 450, 453, 457, 468, 471, 474, 476, 478, 487, 489, 491, 493495, 500, 506 changing nature of work, 69, 98, 101, 133, 444, 456, 478 Chaos, 200, 213215, 225, 357 Childcare, 41, 7678, 80
515
Cognitive ability, 12, 1617, 2527, 179, 369 Comfort, 42, 124, 127129 Communication, 110, 119, 124, 140, 145, 150, 171, 181182, 185187, 238, 246, 255, 265267, 282, 286, 329, 338, 352, 356, 360, 383, 424, 432, 439, 444445, 447448, 453455, 457, 467, 480, 492493, 501, 503 Community, 8, 25, 35, 47, 77, 108, 111, 156, 173, 199, 202204, 218, 228, 235, 237239, 281282, 284296, 299, 324, 349, 356, 363, 375, 383, 447, 455, 463, 467, 479, 484, 486, 488, 492, 495, 504505, 512 community assessment guide, 285287, 299 sense of community, 199, 203204, 281282, 284286, 288296, 299, 486, 504, 512 Competence, 43, 45, 117, 118, 124, 127, 129131, 149, 156157, 305, 366, 409, 424, 439 knowing-whom competencies, 57 knowing-how competencies, 56 knowing-why competencies, 55, 65 Complexity, 6, 53, 99, 128, 129, 200, 201, 213215, 219, 349, 350, 352, 450, 453, 455, 485, 489 Concentration, 187, 446, 451 Conceptual models, 186 Conflict, 7392, 94, 101103, 107109, 118, 135, 141, 217, 227, 255, 265, 283, 286288, 298, 339340, 358, 364365, 367368, 370, 383, 400, 486, 493, 500, 503504 group-based, 102, 107 interpersonal, 94, 101, 283, 298 Content validity, 12, 2324, 32 Context, 1213, 17, 24, 49, 52, 5455, 58, 60, 66, 129, 139, 150, 160, 181, 183, 185, 200, 204205, 219, 229, 231, 233, 241242, 250, 256, 266, 270, 281, 285, 296, 302, 333, 336, 349350, 372, 374, 376377, 379, 380, 382383, 386, 399, 407408, 422, 427, 430, 433, 435436, 438, 461, 471, 475, 478, 485486, 496
516
Control, 40, 43, 53, 55, 5961, 82, 91, 98, 115119, 121, 123124, 127133, 150, 163, 172, 190, 204, 217, 223230, 236238, 244, 246, 257, 258, 260, 265266, 283, 285290, 295296, 318, 336, 352, 357, 364, 366, 408, 421, 425, 447450, 455457, 485, 505 personal, 43, 118119, 121, 123124, 127, 129130, 224226, 229, 236237, 244, 449 Coping, 51, 55, 58, 6061, 6667, 69, 71, 8691, 121, 131, 136, 170, 217, 218, 244, 358, 366, 368, 413414, 417, 421, 423424, 447, 493, 494, 500, 502 strategies, 60, 136, 413 Correlation, 26, 32, 43, 120, 125127, 142, 253, 292, 312, 392, 439, 441, 442, 510, 512 canonical, 43, 120, 125127 Counterproductive behaviours, 104, 107, 389391, 395400, 411, 413, 485, 501 negative behaviour, 94 Crashes, 175178, 183, 184, 189, 190, 193 Cross-cultural, 6, 108, 241243, 303, 321, 334, 337, 341, 349, 374, 376, 386, 484, 487, 490, 492, 503504 research, 108, 374, 487 Culture, 46, 76, 82, 89, 102, 104105, 107109, 164, 169, 172173, 178179, 184, 186, 189194, 202, 204205, 222, 237, 241242, 244, 246, 296, 298299, 301, 306, 312, 317, 319, 337, 349350, 373374, 377, 383387, 394, 398399, 401, 442, 454, 471, 477, 486487, 496, 508 corporate, 89, 385 cultural change, 105 family-friendly work cultures, 76 national, 82, 241242 safety, 178179, 186, 189193 workplace, 107 Cynefin, 215
Index
Decision latitude, 115, 116, 118, 132, 134 Decision making, 110, 111, 142, 150, 209, 214, 215, 217, 218, 277, 297 participative, 142 Demandcontrol model, 115116, 119, 132 Demandcontrolsupport model, 116120, 285, 288290 Density, 352, 448, 449, 457 Dependency, 42, 94, 98101, 105107 Depression, 42, 51, 58, 81, 95, 115116, 118, 128129, 223, 283, 297, 331, 417418, 420, 425 Diary methods, 405, 420 Displeasure, 42 Diversity, 5, 57, 104, 111, 199, 216217, 282, 294, 349, 461, 463, 471, 474477, 483484 Driver, 43, 4647, 175, 177185, 187192, 195, 496, 507 behaviour, 4647, 178, 183185 safety, 47, 175, 178185, 188189, 195, 507 training, 177, 179, 182 work-related driving, 175177, 179, 181, 184185, 187189, 194195 Dustbowl empiricism, 18, 31 Ecological momentary assessment, 404, 405, 420, 422425, 510 Economic development, 301, 312313, 317 Emotion, 171, 335356, 358360, 365, 366, 368369, 420421 and cognition, 356, 358, 359 emotional awareness, 357, 360 emotions, 86, 336, 338, 351, 356358, 360365, 367368, 421422, 425, 471, 496, 500 Emotional intelligence, 9, 12, 2627, 30, 3234, 111, 347348, 355370, 471472, 474, 484, 500, 510512 Emotional labour, 362, 365, 504 Emotional management, 360, 364 Empathy, 359, 360, 363, 367 Employability, 3940, 4959, 6171, 486
Engagement, 4, 5, 60, 76, 164, 169171, 189, 234, 246, 257, 266, 327, 343, 390, 488, 506 Enthusiasm, 42, 124, 126131, 137, 141, 284, 383 Environmental clarity, 118, 121, 123124, 128, 130 Equity theory, 265, 339, 341 Experience sampling methodology, 403405, 407, 419, 420, 425, 510 Fairness, 17, 19, 34, 87, 92, 173, 202, 249, 256, 258, 260, 264266, 323324, 327328, 332, 334336, 338342, 378379, 442 fairness theory, 327, 339 Family involvement, 84, 87, 90 Feedback, 12, 27, 28, 30, 3334, 46, 115, 118, 120, 124, 128, 159169, 190, 215, 251, 284, 293294, 447, 451, 453, 484, 495 Future, 4, 68, 18, 29, 50, 55, 6466, 88, 89, 122, 130, 149, 168, 173, 175, 185, 188189, 200, 203, 209, 211, 213, 215, 217, 219, 222, 240241, 245, 257, 263, 265, 270, 276, 286, 294, 307, 313, 317, 341, 352, 389, 399, 409, 418, 423, 429, 453, 463, 465, 466, 473, 481, 483, 485, 487, 489 Gender, 4142, 73, 8385, 8891, 97, 100, 102, 108, 111, 140, 143, 161163, 259260, 287288, 292, 305, 385386, 468, 502, 505 harassment, 97, 100, 111 Global careers, 302, 319, 320, 485 Globalisation, 52, 73, 210, 215216, 453, 468, 485, 487 Goals, 19, 40, 60, 62, 101, 104105, 118119, 121, 123, 124, 126129, 189, 221, 226, 237, 272, 282, 286, 293, 296, 339, 356, 373, 398 goal setting, 12, 30, 33, 189, 193, 333, 442 externally generated, 118119, 121, 123124, 126129 Group, 19, 30, 33, 44, 46, 66, 98, 100,
517
102106, 108, 110112, 125, 137, 138, 148, 160, 188189, 192, 195, 200, 203204, 207, 212, 218, 225, 250, 252, 254257, 263, 265267, 272, 277, 282, 284285, 294, 296, 300, 314, 318, 327, 343, 356, 361, 364, 366367, 369, 375377, 390, 392, 425, 432, 435, 439, 447, 450, 469, 472, 486, 491, 493494, 498, 503, 509 group engagement model, 257, 327, 343 group level climate, 46, 188 group value model, 256, 327 Hopelessness, 203204, 281, 283, 285297, 503 Hierarchical regression, 126 Human capital, 54, 5657, 59, 61, 6365, 205, 308, 319 Human resource functions, 217 Hybrid organisations, 217 Identity awareness, 55 Implicit theories, 414, 416, 424 Injustice, 206, 331, 335338, 340, 343, 382 Innovation, 11, 52, 5556, 131, 204, 213, 217218, 243, 281282, 285, 286, 289, 293298, 300, 320, 503, 510 Integrated functioning, 43, 117, 124 Interpersonal contact, 118, 121, 123124, 127, 129130, 447 Interrater agreement, 278279, 352, 430, 432433, 437439, 441, 509, 512 Interrole conflict, 74 Interview, 8, 12, 17, 18, 30, 32, 34, 201, 232234, 237, 241, 351, 355, 368, 369, 377, 379, 390, 391, 413, 429, 433, 436, 437, 441 Involvement job and family, 84, 87, 90 Job characteristics model, 115, 117, 119, 120 demands, 115, 118119, 121,
518
128130, 132134, 178, 192, 246, 392, 394, 486 features, 43, 114115, 117131, 486 satisfaction, 26, 32, 62, 115118, 120, 122126, 128133, 137, 141, 156, 157, 170173, 180, 186, 250, 252, 255, 267, 282, 284, 286288, 291, 292, 295, 299, 325, 353, 364, 365, 374, 392, 394, 404, 406, 418, 420422, 425, 443, 446, 449, 452, 456457, 469, 470, 486 search, 40, 49, 51, 58, 6064, 66, 69, 70 security, 1920, 52, 54, 154, 379 sharing, 41, 7677, 82 Justice, 19, 44, 124, 173, 197, 199200, 202, 206207, 224, 249, 251, 256267, 323343, 385, 421, 431, 471, 484, 497, 510, 512 distributive, 124, 206, 324, 327, 329330, 332, 336, 337 informational, 206, 328, 330, 341 interactional, 327328, 330331, 336338, 340 interpersonal, 206, 328329, 340, 510 organisational, 44, 200, 206207, 323339, 341, 343, 471, 497 procedural, 199, 202, 206207, 249, 251, 256264, 266, 324, 326330, 332, 334, 337, 339, 341, 343, 484 Leadermember exchange (LMX), 202, 249, 264267, 374, 499 LMX differentiation, 251, 255 LMX distribution measure, 249, 253255, 260 LMX variability, 202, 249, 251263, 265, 267 LMX, 202, 249267, 484, 511 Leadership, 5, 7, 18, 2022, 32, 44, 46, 101, 104, 108, 112, 118, 139, 141, 148150, 171, 186, 190, 193, 197, 199, 203204, 246, 249250, 264267, 278, 281285, 287, 289, 291, 293299, 312, 314, 321, 325, 342, 358, 362364, 367368, 370, 376, 379, 385, 410, 462, 468,
Index
470472, 474, 476, 486, 489, 499, 501 Leniency, 352, 430, 435, 437439 Local issues, 485 Management, 57, 1213, 22, 3134, 41, 47, 5557, 6770, 74, 87, 8991, 94, 96, 97, 102104, 108111, 114, 131, 133, 138, 139, 141142, 148151, 170174, 178183, 185187, 190194, 201, 206, 218219, 226, 232, 238, 240247, 251, 259, 265267, 278279, 285, 296300, 302, 304, 312, 319321, 324327, 330, 332333, 335, 338341, 343, 360, 363364, 367368, 372, 384387, 397, 401, 424, 439, 441442, 453, 454, 456458, 462, 466472, 474, 477, 479, 483484, 489, 491493, 495497, 499501, 503507, 509510 commitment, 179, 181183, 185, 187, 193 Maslows need hierarchy, 12, 29, 30 Mental health, 51, 57, 67, 113115, 117124, 128129, 131134, 149, 171, 481 Meta-analysis, 12, 16, 25, 26, 3233, 35, 51, 57, 133, 136, 170171, 272, 319 Moderators, 73, 76, 83, 86, 9091, 340 Money, 28, 118, 121122, 124, 126127, 129131, 294, 314, 340, 392, 394395, 398 Mood at work, 404405, 409, 414, 422 Morale, 5, 44, 135137, 139142, 144151, 282283, 466, 486, 507 Motivation, 8, 16, 1819, 2123, 2829, 33, 46, 55, 103, 110, 115, 132, 137, 155157, 170171, 186, 188, 192, 193, 205, 282, 285287, 289, 291, 301302, 305306, 312321, 325, 341, 353, 360, 362, 367, 369, 385, 393394, 400, 403, 407408, 419, 424, 439, 451, 468, 471, 478, 496, 501
Motor vehicle fleets, 175 fleet safety, 46, 47, 175, 177179, 181, 185, 189190, 192195 fleet safety climate, 178, 190, 195 fleet safety culture, 178179, 193 Multivariate analysis, 43, 113, 120, 123, 125126, 131, 213, 489 orthogonal dimensions, 118, 120, 127128, 131 regression, 40, 4346, 126127, 129, 142, 144147, 161164, 170, 183, 184, 202, 260, 264, 289, 291, 318, 381382, 392, 440, 489, 503 regression analysis, 40, 145, 147, 161, 163, 183184, 440 hierarchical regression, 126 variance, 26, 123, 125126, 142, 144147, 149, 161, 163, 182184, 204, 252, 258, 261263, 274275, 278, 287, 289, 291293, 311312, 360, 364, 392, 395396, 404, 413, 417, 439, 441, 489490, 509 Networks, 40, 57, 60, 108109, 213, 281, 306, 485 Noise, 408, 445446, 448, 450452, 455457 Occupational violence, 98, 110 Office, 7, 19, 131, 133, 238, 352353, 441, 443458, 487, 496 enclosed, 444, 449 design, 353, 444, 447, 452457 open plan, 443455, 457, 487 Organisational climate, 9, 2930, 46, 136, 150, 179, 184, 187, 477, 508 Organisational citizenship behaviours, 45, 153, 174, 407, 486 Organisational commitment, 118, 237, 250, 374 Organisational crisis, 201, 221223, 225235, 237, 239243, 245, 247 Organisational culture, 104, 108, 164, 169, 178, 179, 246, 373, 384, 471 cultural values, 100, 105, 316, 375 Organisational effectiveness, 12, 2425, 30, 153, 478 and change, 478
519
Organisational factors, 47, 83, 101, 177, 178, 186, 204, 284 Organisational identification, 201, 237, 240, 374 Organisational issues, 94, 102, 284, 472 Organisational psychology industrial and, 10, 1314, 29, 91, 190, 191, 221, 360, 442, 462, 464466, 468, 471, 480481, 490, 498500 major challenges for, 474 research in, 178, 468469, 478 organisational structure, 99, 200 organisational restructuring, 111 organisational uncertainty, 42, 103 organisational values, 19, 239 Overcrowding, 448 Parental leave, 78, 8082, 8990 Part-time work, 41, 7880 Perceptions, 21, 4142, 44, 8788, 91, 100, 135, 137142, 144150, 164, 173, 175, 179181, 183184, 186, 188192, 194, 199, 202, 207, 231, 238, 239, 249, 251, 254264, 266, 267, 284286, 298, 318, 323, 328336, 338339, 341343, 374, 379, 385, 387, 405, 409, 420, 446, 448453, 457458, 473 Performance at work, 186, 367, 423 contextual performance, 15, 32, 170, 174, 474, 476 job performance, 8, 12, 1517, 2223, 2526, 30, 32, 34, 43, 68, 70, 84, 114, 155156, 180, 283284, 298, 331, 365, 391, 393, 395397, 406, 417, 429430, 432433, 439442, 448, 451, 457, 471472, 474, 508 pay for performance, 12, 28, 30, 33 team performance, 202, 270, 277278, 369, 471, 500 Personality, 16, 2122, 25, 27, 32, 34, 54, 55, 5860, 67, 70, 101, 109, 133, 149, 170173, 179, 192, 244, 246, 265267, 320321, 343, 356, 359,
520
360, 362367, 369, 384, 393, 397, 401, 405, 419425, 437, 457, 468, 470, 472, 474, 477, 486, 496, 501 negative affectivity, 8788, 92, 290, 293, 420 neuroticism, 67, 85, 362, 365, 417, 422 proactive personality, 5455, 5860, 70, 133 Personnel selection, 16, 2122, 32, 170, 316, 401, 427, 433, 435, 440442, 462, 468, 470472, 477, 501502, 507 Philippines, 349, 372, 374379, 383387 Physical security, 118, 122, 124 Planning, 187, 200, 210, 213216, 219, 296, 385, 455457, 468, 471, 500, 504 Pleasure, 8, 42, 118119, 416, 497 Procedures, 34, 104, 179, 181182, 211, 213, 217, 230, 246, 256258, 264, 266267, 296, 321, 324, 327330, 336338, 418, 420421, 423, 442, 454, 473, 477478 Power, 8, 12, 21, 42, 44, 68, 94, 96101, 105111, 120, 128, 131, 137, 141, 163, 167168, 205, 215, 246, 265, 284285, 293294, 297, 314316, 319, 358, 376377, 384, 406, 409, 483, 485, 490, 502 abuse of, 99 coercive, 99, 137, 284, 293294 expert, 99100, 284, 293294 illegitimate, 42, 101 informational, 100 legitimate, 99, 100, 284285 personal, 101 positional, 101, 106107 referent, 99, 284, 293 reward, 99, 284 Praise and recognition, 45, 153169 Privacy, 352, 430431, 434, 441, 444457 Problem solving, 209210, 213218, 368, 439 Productivity, 5, 20, 24, 42, 45, 77, 91, 95, 96, 114, 132, 145, 154, 192,
Index
206, 255, 265, 283284, 296, 298299, 331, 352353, 383, 408, 417418, 443, 445, 448, 451, 454456, 467, 475, 489 Professional identity, 237, 242, 474, 476 Psychological contract, 8, 12, 19, 3334, 67, 138, 188, 246, 347349, 371374, 376, 379387 breach of, 387 Psychological readjustment, 224, 226229 Psychological strain, 87, 115, 133 Re-employment, 40, 5051, 58, 6064, 66, 380 re-employment quality, 40, 58, 6264, 66 Referee, 8, 24, 347, 351352, 427442 employment references, 427 ratings, 429430, 433, 438440 reports, 8, 347, 351352, 427442 reference check, 428, 431432, 435, 442 Referent cognitions theory, 327 Relational model, 257, 267, 327, 343 Relationships, 16, 19, 26, 34, 4243, 45, 58, 6264, 74, 8387, 9091, 98, 114, 115, 117, 119123, 125126, 128131, 133135, 137139, 142145, 148, 150, 159161, 163, 168171, 173, 180185, 191, 193, 195, 202204, 214215, 217, 221, 231, 249251, 253258, 260, 262267, 270, 282, 284, 287, 289, 291, 294, 295, 297, 300, 302303, 310311, 316, 328, 330, 335336, 341, 349, 366, 372, 374, 376378, 380381, 383, 385, 389390, 392400, 406, 408, 419420, 422, 455457, 467, 468, 480, 489, 495496 differential, 43, 119, 128, 130, 202 curvilinear, 117, 120121, 123, 126, 129, 131 Research qualitative, 65, 222, 231, 244, 246, 463, 495
quantitative, 256, 347, 463, 484 research in organisational psychology, 178, 468, 469, 478 researchpractice integration, 480 Retrospective reports, 405, 407, 410414, 416418, 420, 423425 Role conflict, 74, 76, 89, 118, 286288 Safety, 5, 29, 37, 40, 4647, 110, 121, 175195, 243, 310311, 351, 475, 477, 486, 492, 496, 506507, 510512 driver, 47, 175, 178185, 188189, 195, 507 fleet, 4647, 175, 177179, 181, 185, 189190, 192195 fleet safety climate, 178, 190, 195 fleet safety culture, 178, 179, 193 occupational, 175, 178, 180, 183, 186, 190191, 496 climate, 40, 46, 175, 177195, 496, 507, 512 climate factors, 182, 184, 185, 192, 195 Safety Climate Questionnaire (SCQ), 181, 189, 512 Safety Climate Questionnaire Modified for Drivers [SCQ-MD]), 182, 512 culture, 178, 179, 186, 189193 initiatives, 177, 182, 185, 192 outcomes, 175176, 180, 183185, 187 rules, 181182, 185 School administration trustworthiness, 135, 139, 145, 149 Scientistpractitioner model, 45, 89, 1213, 19, 34, 479 Self-esteem, 29, 40, 49, 51, 5859, 6164, 66, 70, 95, 103, 113, 156, 224, 252, 260, 297, 420 during unemployment, 49, 5859 Sense-making, 201, 222, 225, 227229, 231, 235241, 243, 246 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), 199, 221222, 229247 Singaporean hospital, 199, 221, 230, 241, 242 Singularity, 200, 209210, 213
521
Skill, 43, 65, 114115, 118, 120121, 123124, 126, 128131, 192, 278, 319, 404, 410, 429 use, 43, 118, 120121, 123124, 126, 128131 variety, 115, 118, 124 Social capital, 40, 49, 52, 54, 5657, 5961, 6366, 70, 204, 281, 296297, 486 Social exchange, 101, 265266, 324, 338, 341, 373, 512 Social identity theory, 42, 94, 101102, 106107, 243, 512 and cycle of abuse, 106 and organisational change, 244, 500, 506 in-group, 102106, 109, 380 out-group, 102105 prototype, 102, 104 social categorisation, 102 social comparison, 102103, 435 social identity, 42, 94, 101104, 106110, 243, 266, 318, 343, 496, 512 uncertainty reduction, 110 Social learning theory, 186 Social networks, 40, 57, 108, 281 Social structure, 100 Social support, 4041, 57, 59, 61, 6970, 73, 83, 8586, 8890, 92, 116120, 132, 151, 170171, 204, 247, 283, 286, 297298, 303, 381, 384, 497, 505 Social systems, 209210, 214, 485 Statistical models, 46, 186, 484 Stress, 5, 18, 21, 37, 4344, 46, 57, 58, 60, 69, 82, 8992, 9495, 104, 114, 116, 120, 131132, 134135, 137, 139, 141151, 170, 172, 174, 176, 187189, 191194, 218, 223, 243, 244, 246247, 282283, 295, 297300, 332, 334, 339, 343, 358, 359, 366, 369, 384, 395, 398, 405, 413, 417, 420, 446, 449, 451, 457, 461462, 468, 470472, 474477, 487, 489, 493494, 496, 500, 502, 505506, 508 occupational, 46, 90, 132, 170,
187189, 191, 282, 297, 366, 461, 472, 475477, 493, 506, 508 psychological, 95 Structure, 1718, 3334, 52, 56, 60, 64, 99100, 109, 114, 136, 161, 168, 170, 183, 186, 189, 200, 210212, 218, 222, 250, 266, 271, 273, 287, 298, 352, 362363, 369, 384, 389, 391, 395, 397, 414, 421, 433436, 441, 499 Supervision, 5, 41, 43, 118, 121, 123124, 126130, 151, 444, 453, 494 supervisor support, 76, 284, 294, 373 System, 4, 25, 28, 136, 148, 150, 186, 206, 214215, 225, 270, 310, 311, 318, 321, 330, 375, 383, 396, 400, 444, 453, 485, 497, 505 systems furniture, 448 Talent flow, 205, 301, 303307, 309, 311, 313, 315, 319321, 485, 494, 496, 498, 505 Task, 15, 3133, 115, 118120, 124, 174, 203, 211, 216, 250, 270272, 278, 348, 357, 370, 392, 394, 404, 408410, 413, 416, 418, 420, 422, 444, 446, 448449, 451, 455457, 462, 474475 identity, 115, 118, 394, 444 significance, 115, 118, 124, 394, 451 Teachers work, 154, 169 Teams, 5, 7, 190, 197, 203, 212, 216, 217, 235, 239, 249, 251, 253257, 259, 261, 263, 264, 267, 270272, 276, 279, 296, 300, 302, 320, 357, 361, 365, 425, 453, 470472, 484485 shared cognition, 277 team conflict, 255 team mental model, 203, 269271, 273, 275279, 512 team performance, 202, 270, 277278, 369, 471, 500 virtual teams, 217, 485 360-degree feedback, 12, 2728, 30, 495 Time flexibility, 82
522
Index
Traffic offences, 183, 184, 189 Training, 5, 13, 18, 2122, 3435, 44, 4647, 51, 56, 65, 6771, 148, 155, 169, 177, 179, 182, 187, 204, 207, 216, 277279, 295296, 334, 339, 340, 342, 359, 366, 369, 377, 381, 430, 432, 435, 440, 441, 467468, 471, 474, 476, 477, 489, 492493, 500503, 505, 507, 510 driver, 177, 179, 182 Trust, 34, 41, 4344, 87, 90, 135, 137151, 206, 250251, 258, 263, 282, 284, 298, 330, 335336, 339, 341, 374, 383384, 386387, 471 calculus-based, 336 identification-based, 336 Unemployment, 40, 4955, 5763, 6571, 134, 468, 470, 479, 501, 506 hidden unemployment, 50, 51, 70 Underemployment, 50, 51 Valued social position, 118, 121, 124 Variables, 24, 3941, 4347, 54, 56, 6365, 76, 8387, 9192, 107108, 115, 117, 119120, 122128, 130132, 139, 142144, 146, 154, 158, 161, 164, 170171, 187, 191, 194, 204, 206207, 213215, 221, 231, 257, 260262, 281282, 286, 289, 291, 294, 295, 308, 311312, 318, 328, 330332, 347, 356, 359, 360, 362365, 405406, 408409, 417, 419, 421, 450, 452, 455, 478, 484, 486, 489499 criterion, 125, 489 predictor, 125126, 161, 164, 289 Variate, 125 Variety, 67, 15, 27, 43, 47, 55, 82, 115, 118119, 121, 123124, 126131, 176, 212, 270, 330331, 333334, 347, 374, 379, 396, 404405, 419, 450, 452, 461, 471, 477, 489, 505 Visual distraction, 451 Vitamin model, 4243, 113, 121, 130132, 509, 510
Wellbeing, 37, 39, 4243, 57, 65, 73, 80, 89, 107, 113134, 136, 155, 157, 169, 170, 181, 190, 199, 203204, 206207, 223, 250, 255, 264, 281285, 287, 289, 291293, 295297, 299, 362, 381, 389, 409, 424, 461462, 470472, 474476, 479, 485487, 495, 497, 503504 affective, 42, 117118, 122, 124, 126, 129, 133, 504 of managers, 107 Within-person variation, 403405, 407408 Work environment, 111, 112, 115116, 133, 147, 174, 179, 186, 188, 194, 204, 293294, 299, 429, 443, 445, 446, 449, 453, 456, 458, 466 Workfamily issues, 485 Workfamily balance, 4142, 44, 7378, 83, 86, 8891, 462, 468, 485, 504 Workfamily conflict, 7377, 7992, 364, 486, 493 Workfamily facilitation, 7576, 83 Work pressure, 47, 120, 129, 131, 181, 182, 190 Work-related attitudes and experiences scale, 286, 287, 299 Work-related driving, 175177, 179, 181, 184185, 187189, 194195 Work-related fatalities, 175 Workforce diversity, 479 Workload, 44, 124, 137, 139, 142, 148, 153, 158, 159, 167, 169, 398 Workplace, 6, 20, 2526, 34, 37, 39, 41, 43, 47, 70, 73, 7678, 82, 89, 93112, 114115, 128, 131132, 134, 136139, 143, 149, 157, 164, 169, 171, 173, 180, 191, 193, 202203, 236, 256, 281283, 285, 287, 289293, 295296, 298299, 313, 339, 340, 347, 349351, 353, 356, 358359, 362, 364366, 368374, 377, 379383, 386387, 389391, 393395, 397, 399401, 406, 408, 409, 445446, 448449, 451, 453455, 471, 481, 485486, 489, 492493, 497, 500507
523
workplace familism, 371372, 377, 379383, 386 Workplace bullying, 93107, 109112, 137, 504 downwards bullying, 93 horizontal bullying, 93, 96
and social identity, 94, 496 upwards bullying, 39, 41, 9398, 100108, 493 Workplace diversity, 104, 111 Workstation, 453, 456
524
If anyone ever doubted the viability of I/O psychology in Australia, then this is the book that will change their mind. Professor Neal Ashkanasy, University of Queensland, Australia
Advances in Organisational Psychology presents an impressive array of contemporary topics in industrial and organisational psychology from the AsiaPacific region. With edited contributions drawn from the very best of material showcased originally at the 2005 10th Anniversary Australian Psychological Society I/O Psychology Conference, this book is a must read for anyone in the field. Contributors include many prestigious I/O researchers and practitioners and cover 24 chapters grouped into five sections: Overview, Perspectives on Workplace Health, Organisational Structures and Processes, Work Performance, and Conclusions. Nowhere else will readers find such a depth and breadth of writing on current conceptualisation and research in AsiaPacific industrial and organisational psychology.
Peer into your disciplinary future by reading this astutely selected set of cutting-edge papers! Professor Michael Harris Bond, Chinese University of Hong Kong A testament to the vitality of AsiaPacific organisational psychology. Professor Paul R. Sackett, University of Minnesota, USA This valuable collection illustrates the variety and vitality of applied psychology in the region. Professor Peter Warr, University of Sheffield, UK
Australian Academic Press

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Advances in Organisational Psychology

Editors A. Ian Glendon Briony M. Thompson Brett Myors

Advances in Organisational Psychology

Editors A. Ian Glendon Briony M. Thompson Brett Myors

Preface ..................................................................................................vii Acknowledgments ................................................................................vii

A Perspective on the Current State of Organisational Psychology ....................................................................3

Organisational Psychologys Greatest Hits and Misses: A Personal View ......................................................................11

WorkFamily Conflict and Facilitation: Achieving WorkFamily Balance ..........................................................73

The Bullied Boss: A Conceptual Exploration of Upwards Bullying ............................................................................93

Wellbeing at Work: A Multivariate Analysis of Warrs Vitamin Model ..................................................................................113

Safety Climate and Work-Related Driving in Australian Organisations ....................................................................175

Whatever Happened to Bureaucracy? And why does it Matter? ........209

Developing Models for Analysing Team Mental Model Data ............269

Emotional Intelligence at Work: A Review of Research ....................355

Experience Sampling Methodology in Organisational Psychology ................................................................403

Referee Reports: Applying Best Practice Principles ............................427

Open Plan Office Environments: The Rhetoric and the Reality..........443

Section V: Conclusions Introduction to Section V ..................................................................461

Future Directions for Organisational Psychology ..............................483

Beryl Hesketh Sydney January 2007

Advances in Organisational Psychology

Advances in Organisational Psychology

The ScientistPractitioner Perspective

The Current State of Organisational Psychology

Advances in Organisational Psychology

The Current State of Organisational Psychology

Advances in Organisational Psychology

Organisational Psychology Hits and Misses

The Current State of Organisational Psychology

Advances in Organisational Psychology

Advances in Organisational Psychology

Organisational Psychology's Hits and Misses

Advances in Organisational Psychology

Organisational Psychology's Hits and Misses

Advances in Organisational Psychology

Organisational Psychology's Hits and Misses

Advances in Organisational Psychology

Organisational Psychology's Hits and Misses

Advances in Organisational Psychology

Organisational Psychology's Hits and Misses

Advances in Organisational Psychology

Organisational Psychology's Hits and Misses

Advances in Organisational Psychology

Organisational Psychology's Hits and Misses

Advances in Organisational Psychology

Organisational Psychology's Hits and Misses

Advances in Organisational Psychology

Organisational Psychology's Hits and Misses

Maslows Need Hierarchy

Advances in Organisational Psychology

Organisational Psychology's Hits and Misses

Advances in Organisational Psychology

Organisational Psychology's Hits and Misses

Advances in Organisational Psychology

Organisational Psychology's Hits and Misses

Advances in Organisational Psychology

Advances in Organisational Psychology

Advances in Organisational Psychology

Achieving WorkFamily Balance

Advances in Organisational Psychology

Advances in Organisational Psychology

Advances in Organisational Psychology

Advances in Organisational Psychology