Group decision and employee participation.

"An experiment was performed to determine whether industrial employees setting their own goals attained higher production output than employees participating in group discussion only. Two pairs of groups simultaneously completed the experimental program. When mean experimental production was compared with mean control production, on an individual basis, it was found that those groups setting their own goals showed significantly greater increases. It is suggested that the group discussion method is a learning process and must be considered as such when plans are being made for application to specific situations." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The measured effectiveness of employee publications.

Reviews the book "The measured effectiveness of employee publications" by the Marketing and Social Research Division of the Psychological Corporation (see record 1954-03370-000). The book is a study of readership, penetration, and readability of seven employee publications. In general, the results show the employee publication to be one of the best of available sources of information about the company--better than such sources as the first-line supervisor, the union steward, and meetings. An incredible 97 per cent of the 1,800 in-plant interviews indicate belief in what they read in the company magazine or newspaper. Readership was likewise quite high, namely 90 per cent reported they had read at least one of the two most recent issues and, on the average, 78 per cent reported that they read the publications regularly. Thoroughness of readership, however, was much less. The reviewer has little to criticize with respect to what is actually presented in this report. However, one misses any reference to other relevant studies to which the scholarly business executives could turn for further information if he so desired. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Annual reports: Committee reports.

Presents annual reports from committees of the Canadian Psychological Association. The individual committees included are: Accreditation Committee; By-laws, Rules and Procedures Committee; Continuing Education Committee; Convention Committee; Committee on Education and Training; Elections Committee; Committee on Ethics; Committee on Fellows and Honorary President; International Relations Committee; Membership Committee; Nominating Committee; Professional Affairs Committee; Public Information Committee; Publications Committee; Scientific Affairs Committee; Committee on Sections; and Committee on the Status of Women. Sections reports are also provided, including: Behavioural Science and Applications in the Military; Brain and Behaviour; Community Psychology; Health Psychology; Industrial/Organizational Psychology; Programme Evaluation; Psychological Gerontology; Psychology and Religion; Psychology of Sport and Physical Fitness; Psychophysiology; Social Responsibility; and Women and Psychology. Following the sections reports, division reports are presented. The individual divisions are: Applied Division and Experimental Division. Finally, journal reports are provided, including: Canadian Psychology/Psychologie canadienne and Canadian Journal of Behavioural Sciences/Revue canadienne des sciences du comportement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relationships between job difficulty, employee's attitude toward his job, and supervisory ratings of the employee effectiveness.

Using correlational techniques, an investigation was made of the relationships between job difficulty (estimated by job evaluation factors), employee attitudes toward his job, and job environment, and supervisory ratings of employee performance. As job difficulty increased, employee attitudes were significantly more positive toward the job, management, and communication, and opportunity for advancement. Partial correlations showed that the relationship between job satisfaction and job difficulty increased when the effects of general morale were eliminated. Supervisory ratings of employee effectiveness were significantly rated (negatively) to employee salary and job tenure. Correlations between employee's attitude dimensions indicate increasing complexity of job content and increased content with people as a part of the job, are positively related to an employee's attitude toward his job. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Employee attitudes and employee performance.

An examination is made of the empirical literature bearing upon the relationships between employee attitudes and employee performance. A discussion of methodological questions includes considerations of sampling, of criterion measures, and of general problems of analysis and design. Theoretical considerations include the employee's outside environment, and both union and company structures. Two conclusions are inferred from the literature reviewed: 1. Job satisfaction does not imply strong motivation for outstanding performance; and 2. "… productivity may be only peripherally related to many of the goals toward which the industrial worker is striving." 62 references. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Healthy workplace practices and employee outcomes.

The current study explored the relationship between employee satisfaction with different workplace practices (i.e., employee involvement, growth and development, work-life balance, recognition, health, and safety) and employee outcomes (i.e., organizational commitment, emotional exhaustion, mental well-being, and turnover intentions). A total of 152 university faculty and staff completed a web-survey. Overall, regression results indicated that satisfaction with healthy workplace practices was predictive of employee outcomes. In addition, satisfaction with employee involvement practices played a central role in predicting employee outcomes, whereas satisfaction with the other healthy workplace practices was somewhat less influential. Overall, our results suggest that organizations may increase some of the benefits of different healthy workplace programs for employees if they rely on employee involvement in program development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reactions to merit pay increases: A longitudinal test of a signal sensitivity perspective.

The relationships among merit pay raises, trait positive affectivity (PA), and reactions to merit pay increases (pay attitudes and behavioral intentions) were explored in a longitudinal study of hospital employees. Drawing on signal sensitivity theory, the authors expected that PA would moderate the relationship between merit pay raise size and reactions to the increase such that pay raise size would be more strongly related to pay attitudes and behavioral intentions among those low in PA. Results strongly supported the predictions in the case of reactions to the raise amount (happiness and effort intentions) but not for pay level satisfaction. Implications of the results and directions for future research are identified. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A contingent view of reactions to objective pay conditions: Interdependence among pay structure characteristics and pay relative to internal and external referents.

The authors studied the general proposition that because social comparisons are so central to how people react to pay, the effect of an important pay condition likely depends on a social pay comparison that is relevant to that condition. To investigate this, the authors used actual pay data on more than 2,000 public school teachers across more than 400 school districts and tested whether pay equity perceptions resulted from interactions among objective measures of structural (pay dispersion, entry-level pay, pay range maximum, external competitiveness) and individual (pay relative to internal referents, pay relative to external referents) pay conditions. Cross-level interactions indicated that pay relative to internal referents moderated how pay structure conditions related to pay equity perceptions. Additionally, within-level interactions indicated that the effect of employee standing in the external pay hierarchy depended on where one stood in the internal pay hierarchy; this dynamic emerged both for individual-level measures of current standing and for organization-level measures that suggested future standing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Factors affecting employee selection in two cultures.

4 samples—100 Illinois and 100 Greek students, 32 Illinois and 20 Greek personnel directors (PDs)—were asked to respond to a structured questionnaire which permitted the computation of the relative weights that would be given to various characteristics (competence, age, sex, race, religion, sociability, and wealth) by these people, if they were hiring employees for various levels of jobs in the accounting and finance department of a company. The responses of the 4 samples were similar. However, the American PDs gave more weight to race and the Greek PDs more weight to age than did the other samples. The students differed significantly from the PDs; in both cultures, the students gave larger weights to competence than did the personnel directors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Item weights in employee rating scales.

"Data from three rating forms were analyzed to determine the extent of superiority of statistically determined weights to arbitrarily assigned weights. Correlations between statistically determined and arbitrarily assigned weights were so high that they can be considered to be one and the same. Split-half reliability showed no difference between statistical and arbitrary weights, correlations between two rating forms were the same for both, and inter-rater reliability showed no difference between weights… ." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Correlates of employee evaluations of pay increases.

In a sample of 1500 white-collar, industrial employees, average perceptions of small, average, or large increases in salary formed a relatively constant function of level of current salary. The analogy to the psychophysical Weber/Fechner model, while explaining much of the variance in perceptions of salary increases was not complete. Additional variability was related to a series of demographic variables, with higher dollar expectations registered by college-educated vs. noncollege, younger vs. older, exempt vs. nonexempt, and among nonexempt, male vs. female employees. Results suggest that probable earnings potential, in addition to current earnings level, contributes variance to differences in perceptions of equitable salary increases. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Determining worker preferences among employee benefit programs.

The paired comparison method was applied to measure the preferences of 1133 members of a trade union among a pay raise, a union shop proposal, a vacation plan, a shorter work week, hospital insurance, and a pension increase. Hospital insurance was most preferred while the shorter work week was least preferred. Differences in preference were markedly related to age and seniority, moderately related to physical-clerical job type, marital status, and number of dependent children. Preference for the pay raise was scarcely related to the demographic variables. The preference judgments were highly transitive and allow the 6 compensation options to be ranked in an ordinal scale. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Divergent effects of transformational and passive leadership on employee safety.

The authors concurrently examined the impact of safety-specific transformational leadership and safety-specific passive leadership on safety outcomes. First, the authors demonstrated via confirmatory factor analysis that safety-specific transformational leadership and safety-specific passive leadership are empirically distinct constructs. Second, using hierarchical regression, the authors illustrated, contrary to a stated corollary of transformational leadership theory (B. M. Bass, 1997), that passive leadership contributes incrementally to the prediction of organizationally relevant outcomes, in this case safety-related variables, beyond transformational leadership alone. Third, further analyses via structural equation modeling showed that both transformational and passive leadership have opposite effects on safety climate and safety consciousness, and these variables, in turn, predict safety events and injuries. Implications for research and application are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Annual reports: Committee reports.

Presents the annual committee reports of several committees within the Canadian Psychological Association. The reports include items of business and panel activities for each committee. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Influence of scale administrator on employee attitude responses.

"The results gave support to the following hypotheses: 1. A threat to employees' feelings of anonymity results in their responding more favorably to an attitude survey than employees not so threatened. 2. A threat to anonymity results in differential amounts of response distortion depending upon the content of different items comprising the questionnaire. 3. Employees feeling a threat to anonymity tend to give fewer and shorter responses to open-end questions than employees not so threatened." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Canadian Psychological Association annual reports.

Presents committee reports from the Canadian Psychological Association, including a report on the 1982 Annual Convention was held in Montreal from June 9 to 11. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An under-met and over-met expectations model of employee reactions to merit raises.

The authors developed a model of how raise expectations influence the relationship between merit pay raises and employee reactions and tested it using a sample of hospital employees. Pay-for-performance (PFP) perceptions were consistently related to personal reactions (e.g., pay raise happiness, pay-level satisfaction, and turnover intentions). Merit pay raises were strongly related to reactions only among employees with high raise expectations and high PFP perceptions. The interactive effects of under-met/over-met expectations and PFP perceptions were mediated by the extent to which participants saw the raise as generous and they were happy with the raises they received. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for expectation-fulfillment theories, merit pay research, and the administration of incentives. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of selection and training on unit-level performance over time: A latent growth modeling approach.

Surprisingly few data exist concerning whether and how utilization of job-related selection and training procedures affects different aspects of unit or organizational performance over time. The authors used longitudinal data from a large fast-food organization (N = 861 units) to examine how change in use of selection and training relates to change in unit performance. Latent growth modeling analyses revealed significant variation in both the use and the change in use of selection and training across units. Change in selection and training was related to change in 2 proximal unit outcomes: customer service performance and retention. Change in service performance, in turn, was related to change in the more distal outcome of unit financial performance (i.e., profits). Selection and training also affected financial performance, both directly and indirectly (e.g., through service performance). Finally, results of a cross-lagged panel analysis suggested the existence of a reciprocal causal relationship between the utilization of the human resources practices and unit performance. However, there was some evidence to suggest that selection and training may be associated with different causal sequences, such that use of the training procedure appeared to lead to unit performance, whereas unit performance appeared to lead to use of the selection procedure. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Annual reports: Canadian Psychological Association.

Presents the annual reports for the Canadian Psychological Association. Included are the Auditors' Report to the Members; the CPA Balance Sheet; the Statement of Income, Expenditure and Surplus; Notes to Financial Statements; the CPA General Expenditure; and Income and Expenditures for Journals and for the Annual Meeting. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Impact of positive psychological capital on employee well-being over time.

The recently recognized core construct of psychological capital or PsyCap (consisting of the positive psychological resources of efficacy, hope, optimism, and resilience) has been demonstrated to be related to various employee attitudinal, behavioral, and performance outcomes. However, to date, the impact of this positive core construct over time and on important employee well-being outcomes has not been tested. This study meets this need by analyzing the relationship between a broad cross-section of employees’ (N = 280) level of PsyCap and two measures of psychological well-being over time. The results indicated that employees’ PsyCap was related to both measures of well-being and, importantly, that PsyCap explained additional variance in these well-being measures over time. The limitations, needed future research, and practical implications conclude the article. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)