Organizational consulting in the local newsroom.

The local TV newsroom is a relatively high-profile community organization that has received little formal attention to date in the organizational literature. A number of challenging trends and issues have emerged for this type of organization, and the challenges appear to have a national breadth. Local TV news organizations are experiencing the seemingly conflicting demands of a mission historically rooted in community service and civic responsibility now moving toward a mission increasingly driven by corporate profit motives. The rapidly evolving and demanding world of local TV news is briefly reviewed here, with a focus on the potential value of organizational consultants and organizational development in managing increasing change demands in these settings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

4. Organizational Development and Change.

Introduces the articles in this section, which focus on the issue of power. The authors in this section address such issues as the analysis of the industrial power structure and its relevance for organizational development interventions, approaches to organizational interventions, the sociotechnical framework for organizational change, and the blind spots industrial/organizational psychologists might have about power and about the distribution of rewards in their efforts at organizational restructuring. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A Case Study of Executive Coaching as a Support Mechanism During Organizational Growth and Evolution.

This case study follows the evolution of an executive coaching consultation provided to the leaders of an organizational system over a 5-year period. The clients were part of a community outreach center in an academic medical center, and the coach-consultant was part of an internal service group. During this extended engagement, the clients' organizational system experienced a dramatic period of growth and change. The diversification of leadership roles, the dynamics of moving beyond the leadership of an organizational founder, and the challenges of rapid growth are all highlighted in the coaching content. Lessons learned from this coaching experience include an understanding of (a) the advantages of using coaching as an adjunct to other forms of organizational consultation, (b) how to manage changes in contracting and intervention goals over time, (c) how to meet the challenges of coaching to a leadership pair, and (d) mechanisms for using coaching to support leadership succession. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Organizational stages and processes of change for continuous quality improvement in health care.

This article provides an overview of the transtheoretical model of change (TTM, or stage model) and how it can guide the development of stage-matched interventions to increase physicians' readiness for continuous quality improvement (CQI) in health care. In addition, this article describes the development and initial validation of two TTM measures—stages and processes of change—designed to assess the extent to which hospitals are engaging in activities that can facilitate individual providers' movement through the stages of change for CQI. 299 Ss participated in the study. A majority (57%) of informants reported that their organizations were in the maintenance stage for CQI. Organizational-level processes of change differed significantly across the stages: Hospitals in the precontemplation stage tended to use the processes least, and hospitals in the maintenance stage tended to use them most. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Moral and ethical issues in human systems.

Human systems are primarily social and moral entities by their very nature. Although many in business organizations have argued that business and ethics cannot be integrated, the fundamental lack of attention to basic requirements for the moral development of human systems has contributed to intolerable levels and forms of systemic mismanagement. It is argued that consultation, too, inevitably has powerful moral influences, whether or not they are intended. This article addresses three approaches to optimizing moral influences on organizational clients. First, moral issues can be fully integrated into the usual organizational structure models that are employed. Second, conditions helpful in understanding and facilitating meaningful moral discourse as a routine process can be delineated. Third, important functions of the organization's leadership structure are proposed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The experimental change of a major organizational variable.

A field experiment in an industrial setting is conducted in order to test hypotheses concerning the relationship between the means by which organizational decisions are made and (a) individual satisfaction, and (b) productivity. Two programs are instituted in the clerical operations of an organization. One program, Autonomy, is designed to increase the role of rank-and-file employees in the decision making process of the organization. The other, the Heirarchically controlled program, increased the role of management in making decisions. After a year of observation and measurement, it is found that: (1) The experimental programs produced changes in the decision making allocations. (2) The individual satisfactions of the members of the work group increased significantly in the Autonomous program and decreased in the Heirarchical program. (3) Using one measure of productivity, both decision-making systems increased productivity, with the Heirarchically-controlled program resulting in a greater increase. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Introduction: What's What in Industrial/Organizational Psychology.

Career and personality development in the context of organizational dynamics, development, and change are discussed, and the search for the individual's quality of life, as well as quality of work life, is emphasized in this section on industrial organizational (I/O) psychology. The five articles augment the special issue of Professional Psychology, "Industrial/Organizational Psychology: 1980 Overview" (Meltzer & Stagner, 1980), and we hope that the contributions will be helpful in reviewing the rapidly growing I/O field; projecting goals for I/O psychology; and in accord with the current trend, linking the quality of work life with the quality of life. The task of organizing this section was not without difficulty. Because the entire June 1980 issue of Professional Psychology was devoted to providing "snapshots" of a changing field, the present section of this issue had to cover omissions and changes in directions, integrate the field as a whole, or become a vehicle for propagating a particular cause. The last purpose was manifestly avoided. Contributions were sought that provided an integrated overview or covered omissions and changes in direction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Organizational crisis management: Overview and opportunities.

The field of modern organizational crisis management emerged largely in response to the 1982 cyanide tampering of Tylenol capsules (Mitroff, 2001). Since that time, a substantial body of scholarly research and practical wisdom has developed. Despite the use of psychological research by crisis management scholars, organizational crisis management has received substantially less attention within psychology itself. This article provides an overview of the field and highlights current frameworks for understanding the stages of organizational crisis/response. It extends previous theory by applying the "levels of prevention" framework often used in community and health psychology and by offering a new assessment tool based on the "4 factor" (4 P) framework used in clinical assessment. Areas for psychological consultation and research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Consultation as a moral process.

This article identifies several common elements of different consulting processes and reviews 5 moral principles that might be used in evaluating relationships and action. An analysis of the moral implications of the common elements of the consulting process is provided. The conclusion drawn is that consultation not only has important moral impact in human systems, but that consultation is, in fact, an essentially moral process. A recommendation is made that consultation increasingly provide for critical moral discourse within our client systems and the consulting process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Burnout and coping in human service practitioners.

Do many Spanish human service practitioners suffer from burnout? What coping strategies are used to combat work stress, and are they associated with lower burnout? Which strategies may the psychologist promote to improve organizations? With an eye toward helping organizations improve their workers' quality of work life and service delivery, 211 professionals, either child protection workers or in-home caregivers, completed an inventory on coping and another on burnout. Coping strategies alone do not preclude burnout but may help prevent worker turnover. High job and salary satisfaction, together with active coping strategies play an important role in promoting personal accomplishment. Low job and salary satisfaction and the use of passive or emotional strategies predict elevated emotional exhaustion. The results suggest some possible points of intervention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Role of Fairness in Mediating the Effects of Voice and Justification on Stress and Other Outcomes in a Climate of Organizational Change.

Organizational change can become a source of resistance and stress if it is implemented without attention to the needs of organizational members. The participants in the present study (604 government employees) work in a climate of ongoing change and, thus, are at particular risk for experiencing high levels of stress and other deleterious consequences. This study examines and finds support for the central role played by procedural and distributive fairness in mediating the effects of change justification and voice on the extent to which employees experience stress, which, in turn, predicts their levels of work effort, intention to leave, and a host of physiological and affective symptoms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of transformational and change leadership on employees' commitment to a change: A multilevel study.

The effects of transformational leadership on the outcomes of specific change initiatives are not well understood. Conversely, organizational change studies have examined leader behaviors during specific change implementations yet have failed to link these to broader leadership theories. In this study, the authors investigate the relationship between transformational and change leadership and followers' commitment to a particular change initiative as a function of the personal impact of the changes. Transformational leadership was found to be more strongly related to followers' change commitment than change-specific leadership practices, especially when the change had significant personal impact. For leaders who were not viewed as transformational, good change-management practices were found to be associated with higher levels of change commitment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

3. Understanding Organizational Behavior.

Introduces the articles in this section, which relate primarily to what is labeled as organizational behavior or organizational diagnosis, as distinguished from organizational change and development. The editors asked the authors in this section to address several questions: What basic principles of psychology can be detected in the functioning of organizations? How does the observer modify the organization? (Is it possible to observe and diagnose an organization without modifying it?) What is the significance of the labor as a component of any effort to develop a diagnosis of any industrial enterprise? In addition, an article by Richard Walton has been included on the quality of work life movement, because it represents a linkage between the processes of observation, taxonomy, and categorization and the processes of intervention, change, and development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotion regulation in customer service roles: Testing a model of emotional labor.

The study used a time-sampling method to test aspects of A. Grandey's (2000) emotion regulation model of emotional labor. Eighteen customer service employees from a call center recorded data on pocket computers every 2 hr at work for 2 weeks. Participants completed ratings of emotion regulation, events, expressed and felt emotions, well-being, and performance on 537 occasions and completed questionnaires containing individual and organizational measures. Multilevel analyses supported many aspects of the model but indicated that it has to be implemented precisely in terms of regulating emotion for organizational goals. Results also showed that deep and surface acting had different consequences for employees. Overall, the study found that emotion regulation is a viable platform for understanding emotional labor. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Predictors of change in postmerger identification during a merger process: A longitudinal study.

Adopting an intergroup perspective, the authors examined predictors of change in postmerger identification throughout a merger. Data were collected over 3 points of measurement from 157 students of a newly merged university. The 1st questionnaire was distributed 4 months after the implementation of the merger; the following 2 were distributed 6 months and 1 year thereafter. With its longitudinal design, this study replicates and extends past results by revealing predictors of change in organizational identification for members of the dominant and subordinate organizations throughout a merger process. As predicted, postmerger identification increased only slowly for members of both the dominant and the subordinate organizations. Multilevel models for change confirmed that the predictive effect of premerger identification on postmerger identification for members of the dominant organization dissipates over time. The effect of in-group typicality unexpectedly varied as a function of organizational membership and was stable over time. Perceived fairness in the merger process positively influenced postmerger identification across members of both organizations; over time the effect of fairness amplified. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Consultation to Help Individuals Cope With Lifestyle Modification.

The escalating prevalence of chronic health problems related to lifestyle is extremely costly to organizations. It is likely that organizational consultants will have increasing opportunities to plan and implement interventions at the individual level for health behavior change. This article describes the importance of such consultation, emphasizing the role of coping in the behavior change process. In addition to identifying relevant research and theoretical literature, specific recommendations for how to conduct lifestyle change consultation are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Women's liberation: A case study of organizations for social change.

Acase study approach was used to investigate the history and organizational structure of five women's liberation groups. The organizations were analyzed from a systems frame of reference. The most salient organizational features to emerge included: (1) a splintering effect which was related to inadequate conflict resolution; (2) a narrow range of input with membership in all groups primarily radical, well educated, professional women; (3) lack of feedback and output specifications indicating that these organizations are unable to determine the extent of their effectiveness, primarily because of insufficient resources. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Organizational culture and organizational effectiveness: A meta-analytic investigation of the competing values framework's theoretical suppositions.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 96(4) of Journal of Applied Psychology (see record 2011-06260-001). In this article the supplemental materials doi was incorrect. The correct doi is: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0021987.supp All versions of this article have been corrected.] We apply Quinn and Rohrbaugh's (1983) competing values framework (CVF) as an organizing taxonomy to meta-analytically test hypotheses about the relationship between 3 culture types and 3 major indices of organizational effectiveness (employee attitudes, operational performance [i.e., innovation and product and service quality], and financial performance). The paper also tests theoretical suppositions undergirding the CVF by investigating the framework's nomological validity and proposed internal structure (i.e., interrelationships among culture types). Results based on data from 84 empirical studies with 94 independent samples indicate that clan, adhocracy, and market cultures are differentially and positively associated with the effectiveness criteria, though not always as hypothesized. The findings provide mixed support for the CVF's nomological validity and fail to support aspects of the CVF's proposed internal structure. We propose an alternative theoretical approach to the CVF and delineate directions for future research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Industrial/Organizational Psychology in Poland.

The author discusses his impressions of industrial psychology in Poland. The purpose of the article is to inform others who have stereotyped notions of the psychology situation in Poland and invite them to change their stereotypes into knowledge and discover facts about industrial and organizational psychology there. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)