Communicating the validity of structured job interviews with graphical visual aids

The structured job interview is often resisted by human resource (HR) professionals despite its superior predictive validity compared to the traditional unstructured interview. However, HR professionals may underestimate the utility of structured interviews because of how validity information is presented. Three online experiments with MTurk samples were conducted to examine the effect of statistical visual aids (Binomial effect size display; expectancy chart; icon array) on people's perceived usefulness of validity information and intentions toward using the structured interview. Results showed that graphical visual aids (expectancy chart and icon array) were perceived as more useful for communicating validity evidence than a nongraphical effect size display. People also judged the structured interview as more useful and were more willing to use it when validity evidence was presented graphically. Individual differences in graph literacy and nationality were also examined.     

Ethics and HRM Education

Human resource management (HRM) education has tended to focus on specific functions and tasks within organizations, such as compensation, staffing, and evaluation. This task orientation within HRM education fails to account for the bigger questions facing human resource management and employment relationships, questions which address the roles and responsibilities of the HR function and HR practitioners. An educational focus on HRM that does not explicitly address larger ethical questions fails to equip students to address stakeholder concerns about how employees are treated or the ethical dilemmas facing employers with regard to the employment relationship, and ironically makes the HRM function less strategic to the organization. In this paper, we identify some of the key ethical issues within the employment relationship, discuss how extant HRM education often fails to address these issues or help students to become aware of them, and offer a framework for integrating ethics into HRM education.     

Profiling: The Efficacy of Using Social Networking Sites for Job Screening

Social networking sites (SNS) are a rich source of extractive information about job applicants. Human resources (HR) professionals now use SNS to gather additional information about job applicants; consequently, job applicants begin interviewing even before the actual interview. The authors examine SNS in the context of hiring decisions, using uncertainty reduction theory as a framework of analysis to explain how individuals obtain and process information about interpersonal relationships to reduce uncertainty before a face‐to‐face meeting. The authors recommend mandatory training for HR professionals, recruiters, and applicants in the strategic use and placement of SNS profiles in the public domain.     

What members of Alcoholics Anonymous really believe

Many mental health professionals work with people who are members of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) or may benefit from AA attendance. This article provides practical information about AA that professionals can use to understand and work with people in AA. It is a summary of a survey of 187 members of AA as well as synthesising the literature on AA. Specifically, it describes what AA is, the twelve steps and principles that underlie them, common AA expressions and how they can be used in therapy, common concerns about AA, and how to get more information about AA. Implications of how AA's steps and language can be incorporated into therapy, how therapy can facilitate working the steps of AA, and how to address consumers’ (or professionals’) concerns about AA are addressed.     

Relations Among Ethnicity, Gender, Beliefs, Attitudes, and Intention to Pursue a Career in Information Technology

Using data from 159 African Americans and 98 Anglo Americans, we examined relations among ethnicity, gender, information technology (IT) self-efficacy, occupational stereotypes, attitudes toward IT, and IT career intentions. Results revealed that IT self-efficacy and occupational stereotypes were related to attitudes toward IT jobs, and these attitudes were positively related to career intentions. In addition, there were ethnic and gender differences in IT self-efficacy and occupational stereotypes. In particular, African American men reported higher levels of IT self-efficacy, whereas Anglo American women reported lower levels of IT self-efficacy than did members of all other groups. Furthermore, Anglo Americans had more negative stereotypes of IT professionals than did African Americans. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Letters of Recommendation: What Information Captures HR Professionals' Attention?

HR professionals evaluated the credentials of job candidates based upon actual letters of recommendation (LORs). The LORs contained both relevant and irrelevant information about the job candidate. Policy capturing revealed that professionals differed in both their consistency in evaluating candidates and in the relative weights they gave various forms of information. Some sex differences in decision policies also were discovered. Results are discussed in terms of how to strengthen the LOR as a selection tool.     

IS IT WORTH IT TO WIN THE TALENT WAR? EVALUATING THE UTILITY OF PERFORMANCE‐BASED PAY

Although the business press suggests that "winning the talent war," the attraction and retention of key talent, is increasingly pivotal to organization success, executives often report that their organizations do not fare well on this dimension. We demonstrate how, through integrating turnover and compensation research, the Boudreau and Berger (1985) staffing utility framework can be used by I-O psychologists and other HR professionals to address this issue. Employing a step-by-step process that combines organization-specific information about pay and performance with research on the pay-turnover linkage, we estimate the effects of incentive pay on employee separation patterns at various performance levels. We then use the utility framework to evaluate the financial consequences of incentive pay as an employee retention vehicle. The demonstration illustrates the limitations of standard accounting and behavioral cost-based approaches and the importance of considering both the costs and benefits associated with pay-for-performance plans. Our results suggest that traditional accounting or behavioral cost-based approaches, used alone, would have supported rejecting a potentially lucrative pay-for-performance investment. In addition, our approach should enable HR professionals to use research findings and their own data to estimate the retention patterns and subsequent financial consequences of their existing, and potential, company-specific performance-based pay policies.     

Money, Work–Life Balance and Autonomy: Why do IT Professionals Choose Self-Employment?

This article deals with the reasons why IT professionals chose self-employment, as well as advantages and drawbacks of this form of employment. A growing number of workers in industrialized countries are now self-employed, most notably in the IT sector. In order to understand this trend better, we carried out a quantitative survey in collaboration with a professional association of independent IT workers in Quebec (Canada). We examined the different reasons why self-employment is attractive for IT professionals, the advantages they experience and the disadvantages they point out. While some authors postulate that self-employment is attractive because it facilitates work–life balance, our results show a strong predominance of the financial advantages and a weak impact of factors related to work–life balance. We also find high levels of job satisfaction, but the effects on work–life balance remain indirect.     

To read two pages,I need 5 minutes,but give me 5 minutes and I will read four: how to change productivity estimates by inverting the question

Past research has shown that people underestimate the time they need to complete large tasks, whereas completion times for smaller tasks are often overestimated, suggesting higher productivity estimates for larger than for smaller tasks. By replacing the traditional question about how much time a given work will take with a question about how much work can be completed within a given amount of time, we also found the opposite pattern. Both trends could reflect a general tendency to underestimate large amounts (of work as well as time) relatively to small ones. This ‘magnitude bias’ was explored in two studies where students estimated reading tasks, a third where IT‐professionals estimated software projects, and a fourth where participants imagined a familiar walk, divided into time segments or part distances of varying lengths. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Social Networking Web Sites in Job Search and Employee Recruitment

The use of professionally and nonprofessionally oriented social networking Web sites (SNWs), such as LinkedIn and Facebook, has become widespread from both sides of the Atlantic. The current paper presents and discusses the results of two surveys conducted in Greece exploring the role of SNWs among employees–job seekers and recruiters–human resource professionals. The first study explores how SNWs are used during job search activities and the second how recruiters use them in the attraction recruitment and screening process. Special note is given in the relationship between SNWs and the more established Internet job boards. Our results showed that job seekers still seem to use job boards more extensively than SNWs. It is interesting to note that the association between LinkedIn usage and its effectiveness, on the one hand, and time spent on SNWs and LinkedIn effectiveness, on the other, is stronger for ‘passive’ candidates, demonstrating the important role of SNWs for attracting ‘passive’ candidates. HR professionals are more engaged in LinkedIn than Facebook and were considering the former as more effective than the latter in the recruitment process. The current study sheds more light in the use of SNWs, being one of the first studies conducted in a non‐English speaking country.     

Predictors of Occupational and Organizational Commitment in Information Technology: Exploring Gender Differences and Similarities

Purpose

Despite growing demand, the information technology (IT) field suffers from a labor shortage compounded by the underrepresentation of women in the IT field. This study examined predictors of occupational and organizational commitment outcomes among IT professionals and explored gender differences and similarities in the relative importance of predictors.

Design/Methodology/Approach

1,229 IT professionals provided web-based survey data, which were analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling and relative weight analysis.

Findings

Satisfaction with growth opportunities, job security, job stress, and work–family culture generally were related to commitment outcomes as expected, accounting for the greatest variance in organizational commitment. Relative weights for men and women differed in the prediction of occupational commitment, where growth satisfaction and work–family culture were weighted more strongly by women and job stress was more strongly weighted by men. For organizational commitment, the relative weights among predictors were similar for men and women, except that men weighted job security more strongly than women.

Implications

Findings suggest that garnering commitment to the IT field requires a gender-specific approach, highlighting growth and work–family support for women and addressing job stress for men. Increasing organizational commitment for both men and women calls for an emphasis on opportunities for growth and development.

Originality/Value

This is the first study to simultaneously examine predictors for organizational and occupational commitment among IT professionals and to assess the relative importance of predictors discussed in the extant literature. Results inform efforts to increase retention in the IT field and provide guidance for improving the representation of women in IT.     

Telling stories to communicate the value of the pre‐employment structured job interview

In an effort to bridge the scientist–practitioner gap in the employee selection, some researchers have advocated telling stories to better communicate the value of evidence‐based hiring practices to human resource (HR) professionals. In this paper, we conducted two experiments that examine the efficacy of storytelling for overcoming managers’ resistance to use structured job interviews. In two experiments, we found that participants who read a story regarding the effectiveness of structured interviews, as opposed to receiving evidence‐based advice, reported more favorable attitudes toward structured job interviews. Serial mediation analysis revealed that the observed attitude change was mediated by an increase in narrative transportation and reduction in counterarguing. Implications for using stories in communicating the value of evidence‐based HR practices are discussed.     

Best Practices in Communicating Best Practices

We send messages as much in how we communicate as by what we communicate. Learning best practices, such as those for data management proposed in the accompanying article, are components of becoming a responsible and contributing member of the community of scholars. Not only must we teach the principles underlying best practices, we should model and teach approaches for implementing those practices and help students come to view them within the larger context of becoming members of a professional community. How to collaborate across differences and how to have disputes professionally are skills all professionals need, and they should be taught along with the content itself.     

EMPLOYEE ATTRIBUTIONS OF THE “WHY” OF HR PRACTICES: THEIR EFFECTS ON EMPLOYEE ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIORS,AND CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

The construct of human resource (HR) attributions is introduced. We argue that the attributions that employees make about the reasons why management adopts the HR practices that it does have consequences for their attitudes and behaviors, and ultimately, unit performance. Drawing on the strategic HR literature, we propose a typology of 5 HR‐attribution dimensions. Utilizing data collected from a service firm, we show that employees make varying attributions for the same HR practices, and that these attributions are differentially associated with commitment and satisfaction. In turn, we show that these attitudes become shared within units and that they are related to unit‐level organizational citizenship behaviors and customer satisfaction. Findings and implications are discussed.     

Understanding the Relationship Between Information Technology and Creativity in Organizations

Creativity is vital to organizational success. Information technologies (IT) have increasingly become a major influence on organizational efficiency and effectiveness. However, there has been a paucity of research aimed at specifying the relationship between these two areas of scholarship. This article will begin to fill this gap by exploring the ways that IT might influence creativity in organizations. This is important for organizational studies, given that knowledge and information are among the most important ingredients for creativity and are the very things that IT exist to manage. In this article, the creativity literature and much of the management oriented IT literature will be explored to suggest that IT plays an integral role in the creative process within organizations. Specifically, the main benefits that IT affords organizations will be considered and then applied to the requirements for creative production, the stages of the individual creative process, the process of organizational learning as related to creativity, and the creative process within large-scale project-based work. In addition, the conclusion will address the potential limitations of IT in relation to creativity as well as several thoughts concerning future research.     

Overconfidence in interval estimates: What does expertise buy you?

People’s 90% subjective confidence intervals typically contain the true value about 50% of the time, indicating extreme overconfidence. Previous results have been mixed regarding whether experts are as overconfident as novices. Experiment 1 examined interval estimates from information technology (IT) professionals and UC San Diego (UCSD) students about both the IT industry and UCSD. This within-subjects experiment showed that experts and novices were about equally overconfident. Experts reported intervals that had midpoints closer to the true value—which increased hit rate—and that were narrower (i.e., more informative)—which decreased hit rate. The net effect was no change in hit rate and overconfidence. Experiment 2 showed that both experts and novices mistakenly expected experts to be much less overconfident than novices, but they correctly predicted that experts would provide narrower intervals with midpoints closer to the truth. Decisions about whether to consult experts should be based on which aspects of performance are desired.     

INTERRUPTING IRONIC PROCESSES

Abstract— Research on ironic mental control processes makes the under appreciated point that attempts to solve problems sometimes make them worse. Social scientists now know much about what ironic processes look like less about why they occur and too little about how to change them. Features of the exacerbation process itself suggest parsimonious approaches to treatment based on interrupting the "solutions" that keep ironic mental processes going (e.g. compliance-based paradoxical intervention). Extending Wegner's explication of ironic interpersonal (mental) processes we propose that ironic interpersonal (social) processes also maintain many human problems in this area will benefit from attending more to how problems persist between people as well as within them.     

检测时与智力关系的研究述评

检测时是信息加工速度的重要指标,它与一般智力测验分数之间存在着稳定的相关,两者之间的相关常被解释为智力个体差异的认知或生理学的基础。文章介绍了检测时与智商之间的相关研究。讨论了研究者对检测时和智力之间相关本质的几种理论解释。同时,总结了从生物学和发展的角度对检测时与智力之间相关的本质理解的研究。在此基础上,文章分了检测时与智力之间关系研究中存在的问题和未来的研究方向     

MEASUREMENT ERROR IN RESEARCH ON HUMAN RESOURCES and FIRM PERFORMANCE: HOW MUCH ERROR IS THERE AND HOW DOES IT INFLUENCE EFFECT SIZE ESTIMATES?

Studies of the relationship between human resource (HR) practices and firm performance typically use a single respondent to assess firm level HR practices or HR effectiveness. However, previous research in other substantive areas suggests that rater differences are a potentially important source of measurement error. We demonstrate analytically the potential consequences of both random and systematic measurement error in research on HR and firm performance. However, our main focus is on random error and we show how generalizability theory can be applied to obtain better estimates of reliability by simultaneously recognizing multiple sources (e.g., items, raters) of random measurement error. These more inclusive reliability estimates, in turn, offer the possibility of more precisely quantifying substantive relationships in the HR and firm performance literature. In our sample, reliabilities (as estimated by generalizability coefficients) for single-rater assessments of HR variables were generally below .50. This degree of measurement error, if present in substantive studies on HR and firm performance, could lead to considerable bias, given that an unstandardized regression coefficient is corrected for measurement error in the independent variable by dividing by its reliability coefficient (not its square root). We also found only limited convergent validity between HR and line managers ratings of a second type of HR measure, HR effectiveness. In general, our findings suggest that future researchers need to devote greater attention to measurement error and construct validity issues. Our study provides an example of how generalizability theory can be useful in this pursuit.     

Effects of Seeking Accommodation and Disability on Preemployment Evaluations

Within the context of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, we examined the impact of requesting accommodation and having a disability on ratings of applicant suitability for employment. Psychology students and human resources (HR) professionals reviewed application materials from a hypothetical job candidate and then evaluated the candidate's qualifications for the job. Participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 5 conditions that consisted of a candidate seeking or not seeking accommodation partially crossed with disability type (none, physical, or psychiatric). Three potential covariates were considered: HR employment status, and knowledge of and attitude toward the ADA. Results showed that asking for reasonable accommodation lowered suitability ratings, even when controlling for HR employment status, the only significant covariate. Also, a candidate with a psychiatric disability was given significantly lower employment suitability ratings than was a candidate with no disability. Implications for applicants with disabilities and employers are discussed.