Leader–Member Exchange (LMX) and Performance: A Meta‐Analytic Review

This paper reports a meta‐analysis that examines the relationship between leader–member exchange (LMX) relationship quality and a multidimensional model of work performance (task, citizenship, and counterproductive performance). The results show a positive relationship between LMX and task performance (146 samples, ρ = .30) as well as citizenship performance (97 samples, ρ = .34), and negatively with counterproductive performance (19 samples, ρ = ?.24). Of note, there was a positive relationship between LMX and objective task performance (20 samples, ρ = .24). Trust, motivation, empowerment, and job satisfaction mediated the relationship between LMX and task and citizenship performance with trust in the leader having the largest effect. There was no difference due to LMX measurement instrument (e.g., LMX7, LMX‐MDM). Overall, the relationship between LMX and performance was weaker when (a) measures were obtained from a different source or method and (b) LMX was measured by the follower than the leader (with common source‐ and method‐biased effects stronger for leader‐rated LMX quality). Finally, there was evidence for LMX leading to task performance but not for reverse or reciprocal directions of effects.     

Professionalism in career guidance and counselling – how professional do trainee career practitioners feel at the end of a postgraduate programme of study?

This paper explores the extent to which students on a vocational postgraduate programme identify with characteristics and competences that define a professional career guidance and counselling practitioner. Literature suggests professionalism in careers work is characterised by a focus on the needs of the client with the practitioner in a facilitative role. Competences are often couched in developmental terms, with practitioners moving from inexperienced to experienced. Students identified the most valued characteristics as adherence to professional values and ethical standards with an emphasis on person-centred practice. They recognised that competence was a developmental process, characterising themselves as at an early stage on completion of their course. Supporting the client took precedence over issues such as advocating for the profession, supporting employers and social responsibility. Generally, students saw completing a programme of study either as a beginning to a process of development of professionalism or as part of their professional development.     

Do You See What I See? An Exploration of Congruence in Ratings From Multiple Perspectives1

This paper provides a comparative analysis of behavioral observations made on 152 service providers in a business advisory and professional services firm from 5 distinctly different ratings sources (self, direct reports, peers, supervisor, and clients). Results focused on differences in ratings level and degree of congruence with self-assessments by observer type. The data suggested that service providers and their clients may have a different perceptual frame of reference than do internal observers (e.g., direct reports, peers, and supervisors). Moreover, congruence in self-others' ratings was found to be a significant predictor of performance assessments from the same observer source. Implications of these results for the use of multirater appraisal systems are discussed.     

Biomedical science in supermarket tabloids

Supermarket tabloids present, as truthful, stories about biomedical science that are greatly exaggerated and often fictitious. Apparently a sizable portion of their large readership accepts these stories as correct. This is "scientific journalism" at its worst, but its standards are not wholly different from those of the mainline press. Reprinted from Knowledge and Policy: The International Journal of Knowledge Transfer and Utilization, Fall 1989, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 74–81. Allan Mazur is both a sociologist and a technologist. He received an M.S. in Engineering from UCLA and worked for several years as an aerospace engineer before obtaining a Ph.D. in sociology from Johns Hopkins University. He has been a member of the social science faculties of MIT and Stanford University, and is currently a professor in Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. The Dynamics of Technical Controversy (1981) is his major work on public disputes over technology, and he continues to work in this area as well as in biosociology.     

A new temporal illusion or the TOE once again?

Recently, Nakajima, ten Hoopen, and van der Wilk (1991) and Nakajima, ten Hoopen, Hilkhuysen, and Sasaki (1992) described what they believed to be a new illusion of auditory time perception. They reported that the perceived duration of a temporal interval was influenced by an immediately preceding or succeeding temporal interval The influence of a neighboring temporal interval on perceived duration is not a new illusion, however, but is another demonstration of the time-order error     

On the relationship between the psychological environment and the development of individual differences in abilities

Some previous attempts at dimensionalizing human psychological environments are briefly considered. The problem is reformulated within the context of the development of dimensions of individual differences in abilities. The human psychological environment is viewed within the context of general systems theory. The latter permits an integrated view with respect to dimensions of the psychological environment and dimensions of individual differences within a developmental context. Critical in this formulation is the idea that, within the framework of the development of individual differences, it is of value to postulate the dimensions of the psychological environment as isomorphic to dimensions of individual differences.     

Is there a constant minimum perceptual duration?

It has been suggested in the recent literature that all stimuli briefer than a critical duration have identical perceptual durations. Relevant simultaneity, reaction time, temporal order and duration discrimination data are discussed, and new data are presented. It is concluded that the relationship between the physical duration of a stimulus and its perceptual duration is not yet understood.     

Letter versus dot stimuli as tools for “splitting the normal brain with reaction time”

Filbey and Gazzaniga (1969) found simple dot-present or -absent reports averaged 35 ms slower for the left than for the right visual field. Other data suggests that verbal processing efficiency differences between the cerebral hemispheres, rather than transcallosal transfer time alone, must be tapped to obtain half-field differences as large as 35 ms. Three experiments were conducted. The first failed to show any half-field differences in vocal RT for dot detection; the second replicated previous reports of significant right field superiority of vocal RT to letter stimuli for right handers, and also showed a substantially smaller half-field difference for left handers; the third experiment, utilizing the fixation control procedure of the second experiment, again failed to show half-field differences for the dot detection paradigm. Differences between the Filbey and Gazzaniga and present results probably reflect important procedural differences. We conclude that transcallosal transfer time for simple dot information is much smaller than assumed by Filbey and Gazzaniga and that the letter report-time task taps hemispheric asymmetries of verbal processing efficiency.