UNDERSTANDING REACTIONS TO JOB REDESIGN: A QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF THE MODERATING EFFECTS OF ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT ON PERCEPTIONS OF PERFORMANCE BEHAVIOR

Redesigning jobs from a traditional workgroup structure to a semi-autonomous team structure has become increasingly popular, but the impact of such redesigns on employee effectiveness criteria has been mixed. The present longitudinal quasi-experimental study showed that although such a redesign had positive effects on 3 performance behaviors (effort, skill usage, and problem solving), its effectiveness also depended on aspects of the organizational context. In conditions where the organizational reward and feedback and information systems were effective, redesigning work into a semi-autonomous team structure had no discernible effect on performance behaviors. In conditions where these systems were poor, however, such a redesign produced large positive benefits. This suggests that work redesigns that enhance worker autonomy are most effective in contexts where other supportive management systems are absent.     

MINIMIZING TRADEOFFS WHEN REDESIGNING WORK: EVIDENCE FROM A LONGITUDINAL QUASI-EXPERIMENT

Although cross-sectional job design research highlights a tradeoff between motivational and mechanistic work design, the redesign literature is more equivocal. We develop a work redesign process that suggests the tradeoffs can be minimized if both motivational and mechanistic approaches are explicitly considered when work is designed and the ultimate outcomes of the design effort (e.g., satisfaction, efficiency, or both) are taken into account when work is redesigned. In a longitudinal quasi-experiment, we examined how jobs can be differentially changed in terms of their motivational and mechanistic properties. Results showed at least partial support for all expected relationships. This suggests that the tradeoffs previously considered inherent in job design may not always occur, particularly if conceptual and methodological consideration is given to their minimization.     

Rules: The Invisible Family

Family rules occur in groups of five and more. Because they are implicit and multidimensional, family rules are beyond visualization. These characteristics have unsettling effects on clinicians and researchers. Knowing the rules of a family, however, allows precise intervention, and using rules concepts makes learning family therapy techniques less threatening to students. The concept of homeostasis in the context of rules has been examined and placed in an understandable perspective. Rules provide the connection between family process and individual behavior. They also constitute an integrated theory of families and individual personality development.     

Going Beyond Cultural Sensitivity on the Road to Multiculturalism: Using the Intercultural Sensitizer as a Counselor Training Tool

Using the American Psychological Association (APA) Division 17 position paper on cross-cultural counseling competencies as an organizing framework, this article provides an overview of the various cross-cultural counseling training models and points to the need to go beyond sensitivity training to actually providing culture-specific knowledge in our training models. The Intercultural Sensitizer (IS) is presented as a training tool that can serve this need. The history, rationale, and development of the IS, previously called the Culture Assimilator, is described. Some illustrative critical incidents from the Asian American Intercultural Sensitizer are also presented. Finally, future direction for the use of the Intercultural Sensitizer as a training tool and potential problems are discussed. Este artículo usa la positión del APA Division 17 en competencias de consejería intercultural como un cuadro organizational para proporcionar un panorama de los diferentes modelos de preparación de consejería intercultural y para indicar la necesidad de llegar más alla que la preparación sensitiva para dar en realidad a los modelos de entrenamiento un conocimiento culturalmente específico. Se presenta El Sensibilizador Intercultural como un instrumento de entrenamiento para cumplir esta necesidad. Se describe la historia, razonadamente, y el desarrollo de El Sensibilizador Intercultural, anteriormente llamado Asimilador Cultural. También se presentan unos incidentes ilustrativos del Sensibilizador Intercultural Americo-asiatico. Finalmente, ademas de discutir la dirección futura para el uso de El Sensibilizador Intercultural como un instrumento de entrenamiento, se habla sobre los posibles problemas.     

A MULTIDIMENSIONAL APPROACH FOR EVALUATING VARIABLES IN ORGANIZATIONAL RESEARCH AND PRACTICE

One of the most difficult tasks facing industrial-organizational psychologists is evaluating the importance of variables, especially new variables, to be included in the prediction of some outcome. When multiple regression is used, common practices suggest evaluating the usefulness of new variables by showing incremental validity beyond the set of existing variables. This approach assures that the new variables are not statistically redundant with this existing set, but this approach attributes any shared criterion-related validity to the existing set of variables and none to the new variables. More importantly, incremental validity alone fails to answer the question directly about the importance of variables included in a regression model—arguably the more important statistical concern for practitioners. To that end, the current article reviews 2 indices of relative importance, general dominance weights and relative weights, which may be used to complement incremental validity evidence and permit organizational decision makers to make more precise and informed decisions concerning the usefulness of predictor variables. We illustrate our approach by reanalyzing the correlation matrices from 2 published studies.     

Is Society “Sick”? Comment on Zerbe Enns's Article

The author responds critically to the argument (Zerbe Enns, 1988) that an integration of “feminist perspectives” within a “family systems” epistemology will advance the latter's treatment of “power” and “equality” issues.