The politics of counseling

The career of the counselor is influenced by the bureaucratic structure of his institution, whether secondary school, university, or public agency. Important elements in the client-counselor interaction are found in the limitations imposed upon the counselor by the values and modus operandi of the institution and its preconceptions of the client's problem. To cope effectively with such matters, counselors should be trained as social critics and develop a greater awareness of how their professional roles are shaped by institutional power structures.     

THE WORLD OF NONWORK: SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR JOB RE-DESIGN EFFORTS1

The compensatory and spillover models of adjustment to work are described. Data from a pharmaceutical firm and two different research and development organizations are examined to illustrate the operation of these two models. Evidence of both the compensatory and spillover models were found for several different groups of workers. Furthermore, some groups of workers displayed complex combinations of both compensatory and spillover adjustments to their work experiences. Implications of these results for job re-design efforts are described.     

Effects of Eye Contact on the Evaluation of Job Applicants

This experiment attempted to determine if eye contact affects job interviewers' evaluations of applicants. Photographs were taken of a male and a female in two eye positions: looking straight into the camera and looking downward. Forty-four job interviewers in an employment agency were randomly assigned to one of the four photographs. Each subject was told to assume that he or she was interviewing the stimulus person for a job as a management trainee and was instructed to rate the stimulus person on a series of scales. The findings supported the hypothesis that eye contact is a determinant of the decision to hire. The findings also suggested that the effects of eye contact are mediated by the perceived attributes of applicants; that is, eye contact affected the interviewers' evaluations of the applicants, and those evaluations were related to the decision to hire.     

JOB ORIENTATION OF BLACK AND WHITE COLLEGE GRADUATES IN BUSINESS

Differences in job orientation between black and white male and female business college graduates were examined. Significant race differences were found on 10 of 25 job characteristics, with blacks rating 9 of these more important than whites. Significant race by sex interactions exist on four characteristics, while sex differences were found on nine. Factor analysis indicates that blacks value long-range career objectives and structure considerably more than do whites, while their preference for intrinsic and extrinsic factors was less pronounced. Methods by which organizations can satisfy the greater importance placed on many job characteristics by blacks are explored.     

JOB ANALYSIS: THE COMPOSITION OF SME SAMPLES

It is common for job analysts to solicit information from incumbents and supervisors (Subject Matter Experts or SMEs) when conducting a job analysis. These SMEs are asked to provide ratings on salient dimensions (e.g., frequency and importance of tasks that comprise the job). In constructing samples of SMEs for this purpose, it is reasonable to consider any possible influences that might bias or systematically influence the task ratings. The present paper considers the possible influence of SME demographic characteristics on task ratings of frequency. The tasks comprising the job of patrol officer in a large city were rated for frequency by approximately 700 incumbents. These ratings were gathered in two different years, 1982 and 1984. The total data set was used to conduct a components analysis of the 444-item task inventory. The first eight principal components were considered the dependent variables and four demographic characteristics the independent variables in an analysis of the 1982 data set. Analysis of variance and follow-up tests indicated that incumbent experience had a substantial influence on task ratings. Educational level and race had minimal effects on ratings. The sex factor was confounded by the experience factor, making interpretation of the sex effect equivocal. Mechanisms that might account for the experience effect are discussed. It was concluded that incumbent experience is a salient issue in job analysis using SME groups.