Effects of organizational citizenship behaviors on selection decisions in employment interviews

This article reports on an experiment examining the effects of job candidates' propensity to exhibit organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) on selection decisions made in the context of a job interview. We developed videos that manipulated candidate responses to interview questions tapping task performance and citizenship behavior content in 2 administrative positions. Results obtained from 480 undergraduates provided support for our hypotheses that job candidates who exhibited higher levels of helping, voice, and loyalty behaviors were generally rated as more competent, received higher overall evaluations, and received higher salary recommendations than job candidates who exhibited lower levels of these behaviors. These effects held even after taking into account candidate responses regarding task performance. We also found that candidate responses to OCB-related questions tended to have a greater effect on selection decisions for the higher level position (supervisor of administrative personnel) than for the lower level one (administrative assistant). Finally, content analyses of open-ended responses indicated that participants' selection decisions were particularly sensitive to candidates who exhibited low levels of voice and helping behaviors. Implications and future research are discussed.     

Effects of message, source, and context on evaluations of employee voice behavior

The article contained a production-related error. In Table 5, the four values in the rows for Study 1 Prosocial motives and Study 1 Constructive voice should have been shifted one column to the right, to the Direct and Total Performance evaluations columns. All versions of this article have been corrected.] Although employee voice behavior is expected to have important organizational benefits, research indicates that employees voicing their recommendations for organizational change may be evaluated either positively or negatively by observers. A review of the literature suggests that the perceived efficacy of voice behaviors may be a function of characteristics associated with the (a) source, (b) message, and (c) context of the voice event. In this study, we manipulated variables from each of these categories based on a model designed to predict when voice will positively or negatively impact raters' evaluations of an employee's performance. To test our model, we conducted 3 laboratory studies in which we manipulated 2 source factors (voicer expertise and trustworthiness), 2 message factors (recommending a solution and positively vs. negatively framing the message), and 2 context factors (timing of the voice event and organizational norms for speaking up vs. keeping quiet). We also examined the mediating effects of liking, prosocial motives, and perceptions that the voice behavior was constructive on the relationships between the source, message, and context factors and performance evaluations. Generally speaking, we found that at least one of the variables from each category had an effect on performance evaluations for the voicer and that most of these effects were indirect, operating through one or more of the mediators. Implications for theory and future research are discussed.     

Preferred tempo in the learning of a gross cyclical action

Seventy-five subjects, randomly assigned to one of five training conditions, were required to learn to make large-amplitude, high-tempo, fluent movements on a so-called ski-simulator over a period of four days. Subjects trained under different tempo conditions. In four of the conditions the tempo was prescribed (“preferred”, high, low, or increasing), augmented feedback being provided to enable subjects to stay on “target”. “Preferred” tempo was based on the weight of the subject and was derived from a regression equation based on previous empirical research. In a fifth condition, subjects trained on “discovery learning” principles, i.e. without the tempo being prescribed. The results obtained on the three parameters (amplitude, frequency, and fluency) during the daily test sessions (in which the tempo was not prescribed) formed the data for the analyses.

A learning effect was apparent on all three parameters over the four-day training period. Subjects who trained under the high or the low prescribed tempos, however, were shown to produce significantly smaller amplitude movements than subjects who trained under the other three conditions. Training under the low-tempo condition was also shown to have disadvantageous effects on the parameters tempo and fluency. It was concluded that, for these kinds of action, training at a high or a low tempo—and particularly the latter—has undesirable effects. Such disadvantageous effects, however, were shown to be avoidable if training is begun with the “preferred” tempo of the subject and increased successively by 7% over days.     

Hylomorphic virtue: cosmology,embryology, and moral development in Aristotle

Aristotle is traditionally read as dividing animal souls into three parts (nutritive, perceptive, and thinking), while dividing human souls into four parts (a rational part, with theoretical and practical subparts, and non-rational part, with nutritive and desiderative subparts). But careful reading of Nicomachean Ethics 1.13 suggests that he divides the human soul into three parts – the nutritive, the theoretical, and the “practical” – but allows that the “practical” part is sometimes divided, as in akratic and other non-virtuous agents. In a fully virtuous agent, practical reason is the proper form of – and so in the hylomorphic sense one with – the desiring part of soul. It is thus contingent how many parts a given soul has, three being the norm, but four being common. Reading Aristotle this way is supported by appeal to his cosmology, where the superlunary world provides the unitary norm, and his embryology, where male offspring are the norm (in which menstrual fluid is fully mastered by the male principle) but female offspring commonly occur when the menstrual fluid (analogous to desire) is only partially mastered by the male principle (analogous to practical reason).