THE EFFECTS OF ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGES ON EMPLOYEE COMMITMENT: A MULTILEVEL INVESTIGATION

Organizations are concerned with the impact organizational change can have on both individuals' response to the change itself and their ongoing relationship with the organization. This study investigated how organizational changes in 32 different organizations (public and private) affected individuals' commitment to the specific change and their broader commitment to the organization. The results indicate that both types of commitment may be best understood in terms of a 3-way interaction between the overall favorableness (positive/negative) of the change for the work unit members, the extent of the change in the work unit, and the impact of the change on the individual's job. In addition, the fairness of the change process was found to interact with the effects of work unit change on organizational commitment. The implications of these results for future research and practice are discussed.     

THE CONCEPT OF DYNAMIC CRITERIA: A CRITICAL REANALYSIS

Discussions of "the criterion problem" stress the assumedly frequent incidence of dynamic criteria. However, different concepts of dynamic criteria have not been distinguished. Three views of dynamic criteria are clarified in this paper. These are dynamic criteria conceptualized as (a) changes in group average performance over time, (b) changes in validity over time, and (c) changes in the rank-ordering of scores on the criterion over time. The evidence cited for each concept of dynamic criteria is critically analyzed and submitted to significance tests. The results of analyses of 735 r 's and 532 paired r 's across time from studies pertinent to dynamic criteria are reported. It is concluded that dynamic criteria are rare phenomena, with the significant changes found in key studies explainable by methodological artifacts. Though many sources suggest that dynamic criteria have dire consequences for the overall selection process, we argue that the phenomena have been over-emphasized in the literature, and that practitioners' concern should focus instead on removing sources of criterion unreliability.     

Mental health problems in rural contexts: A broader perspective: Response to Jackson et al. (2007) Mental health problems in rural contexts: What are the barriers to seeking help from professional providers?

The objectives of this article are to expand and comment upon a recent review in Australian Psychologist of the literature in relation to mental health problems in rural contexts by Jackson et al. (2007). In the present article we review recently published qualitative research on the help‐seeking attitudes and experiences of rural Australian adolescents. While we agree on the utility of the Macintyre, Ellaway, and Cummins (2002) conceptual framework based on notions of health and place, we note that this framework specifically emphasises the importance of the collective dimension. We present a broader perspective on health and place than Jackson et al. (2007) by incorporating social geographic research. We argue that rural mental health research has been hampered by a simplistic view of social stigma of mental illness and that a more thorough conceptualisation of the phenomenon is needed. Finally, we make some further recommendations based on a broader perspective of mental health in rural contexts: one that incorporates an in‐depth understanding of the help‐seeking attitudes and experiences of rural adolescents as well as an appreciation of the collective social functioning of rural communities.