Academic literature on the topic 'Psychology, General|Psychology, Industrial|Sociology, Organizational'

Innovation is essential for organizational survival and effectiveness and often requires a balance between managing existing competencies, skills, and resources, and pursuing newer and radical aspirations. Organizational leaders play an important role in fostering innovation in the workplace and striking a unique equilibrium between these competing priorities to maximize individual creativity and organizational innovation outcomes. By employing path analyses, this study examined the relationship between two leadership styles—transformational leadership (TFL) and leader-member exchange (LMX) and two forms of organizational innovation (exploration and exploitation). The study also investigated the role that individual and organizational variables played in explaining the leadership-innovation relationship.

Results suggested positive but non-significant relationships between leadership styles and organizational innovation due to the high correlations and overlap between the two leadership styles. Follower autonomy was positively and significantly related to exploration innovation. When analyzed separately, positive and significant associations were found for both leadership styles and organizational innovation. Results of this study suggest the equal importance of transformational and relational styles of leadership towards fostering both forms of organizational innovation. In particular, organizational support for innovation was found to mediate the leadership-innovation relationship, suggesting the importance of social mechanisms in translating the effects of leadership into innovation outcomes for the organization.

The present research study examined the strength and direction of the correlations between three leadership styles (transformational, transactional, & servant) and satisfaction with leadership and motivation as outcomes of leadership style. A web-based survey was used to collect data from 181 professional Latino employees in the U.S. The Leadership Style Survey was combined from the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) and the Servant Leadership Questionnaire (SLQ), which measured transformational, transactional, and servant leadership styles, as well as satisfaction with leadership and motivation. Data was collected about Latino employees' perceptions of their supervisors' leadership styles, and satisfaction with leadership and motivation. Results from one-sample t-tests indicated Latino employees' responses to the leadership, satisfaction, and motivation scales were significantly lower than the norm. All Pearson correlations indicated there were strong positive relationships between each of the leadership styles and satisfaction with leadership and motivation. More importantly, Fisher r-to- Z transformations demonstrated that correlations found on the Latino sample were significantly higher than the correlational norms. The findings suggest Latinos are less motivated and less satisfied with their current leaders, however characteristics of transformational, transactional, and servant leadership are highly important to Latino employees and are highly correlated to their motivation and satisfaction with leadership. Cultural values may have a strong impact on Latino professional employees' evaluation of their supervisors. The results also highlight that the responses from the Latino sample are significantly higher in terms of the relationship between servant, transformational, and transactional leadership and satisfaction with leadership and motivation.

This study explored authentic leadership behaviors to determine if the behaviors would relate to follower satisfaction with supervisor, overall job satisfaction and the intent to quit and in age groups of 20-24, 25-34 and 35 and over and predict the same relationships in age groups of 20-24 and 25-34. The intent was to determine if authentic leaders could positively affect the intent to quit in younger workers that in turn may attenuate turnover. This non-experimental quantitative study significantly supported the relationship to and the prediction between authentic leadership behaviors, follower satisfaction with supervisor, overall job satisfaction and a lower intent to quit. Age groups did not significantly moderate the relationships. This study demonstrated that authentic leaders significantly related to and predicted follower satisfaction with supervisor, overall job satisfaction and the intent to quit with all age groups, suggesting that authentic leaders may attenuate turnover, including younger workers.

This study examined the relationship of sales employees' emotional intelligence (EI) to their organizational justice (OJ) perceptions, and examined if sales employees' job satisfaction (JS) moderated the strength of the relationship between their EI and OJ perceptions. Three assessments were administered electronically and completed by 135 participants. The Job In General (JIG) assessment measured overall JS of employees. The assessment used to measure employee EI was the Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i 2.0). The assessment used to measure employee justice perceptions was the Perceived Overall Justice scale. Hierarchical moderated multiple regression analysis (MRA) was used to identify any relationships. No statistically significant finding between EI, JS, and OJ were found when using hierarchical moderated MRA. Because of the violations of assumptions for MRA, it was determined that follow-up non-parametric testing was required. Non-parametric testing found a significant relationship between employees' EI and their OJ perceptions. The non-parametric testing confirmed previous findings of significant relationship between EI and OJ. Recommendations for future research include examining individual facets of EI and OJ, using different assessment to measure EI and OJ, and using a controlled environment to recruit participants.

Previously, a worker one set of skills for an occupational lifetime. In today's environment, the need for constant skill changes have created difficulties for individuals who must unlearn, store and use knowledge in new processes to update the old. Today's workers must keep pace with changes to maintain competency. The amount of wasted time, additional energy and resources required continues to increase when actions are not updated through unlearning. Confusion regarding unlearning remains a persistent problem because a clear definition does not exist. This study: 1) investigated and collected descriptive unlearning characteristics; 2) proposed a theory to define unlearning. Study results: Ninety-three interviews with 31 participants were conducted. The participants' responses were categorized into unlearning experiences and perceptions. One Hundred-Seven participant quotations referred to Experimentation in unlearning of their Windows-based system or application. Experimentation was divided into Subcategories: 1) Unstructured Experimentation, 2) Structured Experimentation, and, 3) Resource-Based Experimentation. Employee perceptions were identified as category with subcategories of Incompetence and Competence. The third category, factors, suggests participant unlearn with, availability of support, time constraints and opportunities for experimentation. This definition was proposed: Unlearning is the process of using experimentation and available resources to promote the disuse of previous actions. Additionally, to propose a new theory of the unlearning process, the force-field theory was used as a basis for this new unlearning theory. From the study results, organizations can develop effective employees to maintain a competitive advantage.

Most companies lack the ability to implement organizational change; over 70% of Organization Change Initiatives (OCIs) fail. This inability has negative economic and survival implications for companies. OCIs must be effective and rapid to match the high pace of change in the business environment. Transformational leadership (TL) has been linked to successful OCIs through its positive influence on employee commitment and reduced resistance to change, yet little research has been done to identify its association with OCI implementation speed. This study tested TL and change theory and their association with change implementation. It sought to determine if a relationship exists between TL behavior and OCI implementation time. Archival survey and change data from 98 domestic and international manufacturing plants were used to examine relationships between employees' perceptions of leadership communication and trustworthiness and the speed of change. Hierarchical linear regression was used to determine if these behaviors could predict the change speed of an OCI. The study confirmed the association between effective leadership communication and employee trust in leadership, but it found no significant relationship between TL behavior and the speed of change. This finding is inconsistent with the majority of TL literature; however, companies may still benefit from exploring the potential of the study's theoretical concepts to help them improve the speed of organizational change. The limitations of the study were also noted as a potential contributor to the lack of significant findings, and recommendations are offered to reduce validity risk for similar studies in the future.

The unemployment rate for people with developmental disabilities is almost 7 times higher than the current national unemployment statistics. Research indicates that the majority of those with developmental disabilities do wish to work and moreover, have many skills and talents that organizations can benefit from. This paper aims to use common industrial and organizational psychological measures in a unique population--developmentally disabled adults. Specifically, the present study examines the job satisfaction, affective commitment, and turnover intentions of adults with developmental disabilities from the Harbor Regional Center and Regional Center of Orange in Southern California. This is the first research h that examines affective feelings about employment in the developmentally disabled population in Los Angeles and Orange counties. Results from the study show that adults with developmental disabilities had higher than expected job satisfaction and affective commitment towards their job. They also had lower turnover intentions than expected.

This study investigated whether pet-friendly workplace policies, specifically dog-friendly policies, serve as a buffer against stress, as well as impact perceived organizational support (POS). Using a mediational questionnaire design, this study examined whether the availability of a pet-friendly policy was significantly related to employee occupational stress levels and employee POS, with POS mediating the relationship between a pet-friendly policy and stress. One-hundred eighty-eight full-time employees recruited via crowdsourced and snowball sampling methods completed an online survey, including several measures of workplace attitudes. Results supported all hypotheses, revealing that the presence of a pet-friendly policy was significantly related to lower stress, and POS fully mediated this relationship. Significant interactions were also found, indicating that this effect was stronger for dog owners than for employees without dogs. Ultimately, these findings provide support for the affordance of a pet-friendly policy in organizations, when appropriate.

The Matrix Predictive Uniform Law Enforcement Inventory (M-PULSE ™) is a self-report, actuarial instrument used to predict job performance and liability risk, as well as assist law enforcement agencies in selecting qualified candidates. This study examined whether there is a statistically significant difference between two clusters of candidates' Empirical Scales scores as they relate to applicants' mean scale score differences on the M-Pulse™ liability scales. This study was conducted in an effort to confirm predictive and ecological validity and used archived data from a proprietary database retained by MHS, Inc. This data consisted of 1,000 randomly selected individuals from a normalized database of 5,000 individuals who had previously completed the M-PULSE ™ and were subsequently hired by a law enforcement agency. A series of independent-samples t-tests were conducted to compare each of the M-Pulse ™ liability scales scores of law enforcement applicants in each cluster. Post hoc Bonferroni correction resulted in &agr; ≤ .003. Statistically significant differences were found in Potential for Resignation when comparing scores for Cluster 1 (M = 49.49, SD = 9.85) and Cluster 2 (M = 51.85, SD = 10.97); t(998) = -3.545, p < .003; d = .226 and in Potential for Termination: Cluster 1 (M = 49.05, SD = 9.48) and Cluster 2 ( M = 52.14, SD = 10.57); t(998) = -4.833, p < .003; d = .308. This study suggests the M-PULSE ™ can tease out candidates who show a propensity to prematurely resign or be terminated. Predicting foreseeable liability risks helps law enforcement agencies manage ecological issues that affect officers.

Employees' retaliatory behaviors in relation to perceptions of injustice have recently become a subject of interest. Findings have established that perceptions of injustice increase ones' propensity to engage in retaliation. The present study extends prior work by examining identity threat as a mediator and organizational retaliatory behaviors (ORBs) towards three distinct targets (i.e., organization, leader, and work group members). In contrast to previous studies, data are to be analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) as it allows greater insight and can determine whether retaliation is greater for certain targets over others. Responses collected from 220 individuals are used. Results from the present study may demonstrate that certain parties in an organization (i.e., group members) have a higher likelihood of being targets of retaliatory behaviors in comparison to others (i.e., the organization and group leader). Moreover, insight into the underlying mechanisms driving retaliation after experiencing injustice may be afforded.