Benjamin B. Dunford

Teams in Organizations Prevalence, Characteristics, and Effectiveness

This article offers a typology of team types found in organizations and reports the results of two surveys sent to U.S. organizations asking about the prevalence, duties, composition, and structure of groups and teams in practice. One sample was randomly selected from the entire population of U.S. organizations; the second sample consisted of organizations known or believed to use teams. Nearly half (48%) of the respondents in the random sample indicated that their organization used some type of team, and ongoing project teams were reported most frequently. Teams were more prevalent in organizations with multiple departments, multiple divisions, higher sales, and more employees. Interpersonal conflict was the best predictor of perceived team effectiveness, but several structural and composition characteristics of the team were related to conflict and/or effectiveness as well. Organizations that reported using teams generally did not support them in terms of team-level performance feedback or compensation practices.

Jury decision making: 45 years of empirical research on deliberating groups.

This article provides a comprehensive review of the empirical research on jury decision making published between 1955 and 1999. In total, 206 distinguishable studies involving deliberating juries (actual or mock) were located and grouped into 4 categories on the basis of their focal variables: (a) procedural characteristics, (b) participant characteristics, (c) case characteristics, and (d) deliberation characteristics. Numerous factors were found to have consistent effects on jury decisions: definitions of key legal terms, verdict/sentence options, trial structure, jury—defendant demographic similarity, jury personality composition related to authoritarianism/dogmatism, jury attitude composition, defendant criminal history, evidence strength, pretrial publicity, inadmissible evidence, case type, and the initial distribution of juror verdict preferences during deliberation. Key findings, emergent themes, practical implications, and future research directions are discussed. The petit jury is a well-known component of the U.S. legal system that needs little introduction. More than 150,000 jury trials take place each year in the United States ( Landsman, 1999 ; Saks & Marti, 1997 ), and tens of thousands more in other countries throughout the world. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens serve on juries each year and a sizable percentage of the population will do so at some point in their lives. The jury system has been around for hundreds of years and it is considered a cornerstone of democracy ( Abramson, 1994 ). Despite frequent criticism (see Penrod & Heuer, 1998 , for a review), it has proven to be a remarkably resilient institution. Although juries have been used in the United States since its founding, scientific interest in jury decision making is a relatively recent phenomenon. Isolated studies were conducted before World War II (e.g., Weld & Danzig, 1940 ), but systematic research on juries did not begin until 1953 and the initiation of the Chicago Jury Project. This multiyear effort was undertaken by a team of researchers at the University of Chicago and financed by two large grants from the Ford Foundation ( Ellsworth & Mauro, 1998 ).

Is burnout static or dynamic? A career transition perspective of employee burnout trajectories

Despite decades of theory and empirical research on employee burnout, its temporal and developmental aspects are still not fully understood. This lack of understanding is problematic because burnout is a dynamic phenomenon and burnout interventions may be improved by a greater understanding of who is likely to experience changes in burnout and when these changes occur. In this article, we advance existing burnout theory by articulating how the 3 burnout dimensions should differ in their pattern of change over time as a result of career transition type: organizational newcomers, internal job changers (e.g., promotions or lateral moves), and organizational insiders (i.e., job incumbents). We tested our model in a broad sample of 2,089 health care employees, with 5 measurement points over 2 years. Using random coefficient modeling, we found that burnout was relatively stable for organizational insiders but slightly dynamic for organizational newcomers and internal job changers. We also found that the dimensions of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization were more sensitive to career transition type than reduced personal accomplishment. Finding some differences among different types of employees as well as the dimensions of burnout may begin to explain longstanding inconsistencies between theory and research regarding the dynamics of burnout, offering directions for future research that address both dynamism and stability.

The outcomes and correlates of job search objectives: searching to leave or searching for leverage?

The authors investigate a previously overlooked yet important objective for employee job search--seeking leverage against the current employer. They explore the outcomes and correlates of leverage-seeking search and how it may differ from the more traditional objective for engaging in job search--to change jobs. Results show that leverage-seeking and separation-seeking search objectives associate with different outcomes. The authors also find that characteristics of the work situation and individual differences associate with leverage-seeking search and relate differently with the 2 job search objectives. Implications for practice and the advancement of job search research are discussed.

Explaining the Pathways Between Approach-Avoidance Personality Traits and Employees’ Job Search Behavior

Research suggests that certain personality characteristics lead to greater (or lesser) withdrawal from work, yet little research has examined exactly how personality translates into withdrawal behavior. To address this question, the present study demonstrated that the approach-avoidance personality traits of extraversion and neuroticism each showed simultaneous positive and negative effects on job search behaviors of employed individuals depending on the mediating mechanism involved (i.e., ambition values, job search self-efficacy, perceived job challenge, work burnout, perceived financial inadequacy, and job satisfaction). The authors’ findings extend theoretical insights on the pathways linking dispositional traits and employee withdrawal behaviors and suggest how employers can more precisely anticipate and mitigate employees’ search for new employment.

The impact of participative management perceptions on customer service, medical errors, burnout, and turnover intentions.

&NA; Numerous challenges confront managers in the healthcare industry, making it increasingly difficult for healthcare organizations to gain and sustain a competitive advantage. Contemporary management challenges in the industry have many different origins (e.g., economic, financial, clinical, and legal), but there is growing recognition that some of managements greatest problems have organizational roots. Thus, healthcare organizations must examine their personnel management strategies to ensure that they are optimized for fostering a highly committed and productive workforce. Drawing on a sample of 2,522 employees spread across 312 departments within a large U.S. healthcare organization, this article examines the impact of a participative management climate on four employee‐level outcomes that represent some of the greatest challenges in the healthcare industry: customer service, medical errors, burnout, and turnover intentions. This study provides clear evidence that employee perceptions of the extent to which their work climate is participative rather than authoritarian have important implications for critical work attitudes and behavior. Specifically, employees in highly participative work climates provided 14 percent better customer service, committed 26 percent fewer clinical errors, demonstrated 79 percent lower burnout, and felt 61 percent lower likelihood of leaving the organization than employees in more authoritarian work climates. These findings suggest that participative management initiatives have a significant impact on the commitment and productivity of individual employees, likely improving the patient care and effectiveness of healthcare organizations as a whole.

Minimizing deviant behavior in healthcare organizations: the effects of supportive leadership and job design.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY In an era when healthcare organizations are beset by intense competition, lawsuits, and increased administrative costs, it is essential that employees perform their jobs efficiently and without distraction. Deviant workplace behavior among healthcare employees is especially threatening to organizational effectiveness, and healthcare managers must understand the antecedents of such behavior to minimize its prevalence. Deviant employee behavior has been categorized into two major types, individual and organizational, according to the intended target of the behavior. Behavior directed at the individual includes such acts as harassment and aggression, whereas behavior directed at the organization includes such acts as theft, sabotage, and voluntary absenteeism, to name a few (Robinson and Bennett 1995). Drawing on theory from organizational behavior, we examined two important features of supportive leadership, leader‐member exchange (LMX) and perceived organizational support (POS), and two important features of job design, intrinsic motivation and depersonalization, as predictors of subsequent deviant behavior in a sample of over 1,900 employees within a large US healthcare organization. Employees who reported weaker perceptions of LMX and greater perceptions of depersonalization were more likely to engage in deviant behavior directed at the individual, whereas employees who reported weaker perceptions of POS and intrinsic motivation were more likely to engage in deviant behavior directed at the organization. These findings give rise to specific prescriptions for healthcare managers to prevent or minimize the frequency of deviant behavior in the workplace.

Sustainable Change in the Public Sector: The Longitudinal Benefits of Organization Development

This article examines the impact over a 30-year period of a 4-year organization development project in the Metro County Sheriff’s Department. Interventions included confrontation team-building sessions, management training, process consultation, survey feedback, third-party consultation, technological interventions, implementation of methods for increasing accountability, and changes in the organization structure, the physical setting, and the policy formulation procedures. Results include improved organization climate and leader effectiveness; decreased employee turnover, jail breaks, and citizen complaints; increased resources allocated to the organization; and improved organizational effectiveness, as measured by criminal justice leaders in the community. This research becomes the longest longitudinal study of the effects of organization development interventions in the behavioral science literature.

UNDERWATER STOCK OPTIONS AND VOLUNTARY EXECUTIVE TURNOVER: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVE INTEGRATING BEHAVIORAL AND ECONOMIC THEORIES

In a longitudinal study of top US executives between 1996 and 2006, we examined the impact of underwater stock options on voluntary turnover. We took a multi-disciplinary perspective, which recognizes the financial and economic logic suggesting that while underwater options may carry a positive valuation based on Black-Scholes pricing, there are also a variety of psychological and behavioral theories suggesting that underwater option portfolios may motivate voluntary turnover to a greater extent than what can be captured by Black-Scholes pricing. We investigated whether BS valuation can be usefully augmented, as a predictor of voluntary turnover, by adding insights from psychology and other behavioral theories. Supporting a multi-disciplinary view, we found that the degree to which executive stock option portfolios were underwater was positively related to voluntary turnover, after controlling for the time value of the options and other factors.

The relative importance of psychological versus pecuniary approaches to establishing an ownership culture

This study used dominance analysis to examine the relative importance of psychological versus pecuniary approaches to the development of employee ownership attitudes and behaviors. In a sample of 409 non-unionized employees from a commercial real estate firm, we found that perceptions of information and control (i.e., psychological ownership) had a much stronger impact on ownership-related outcomes than did voluntary investment in company stock (i.e., pecuniary ownership), as hypothesized. These findings are consistent with the predictions of the employee ownership literature, suggesting that ownership culture initiatives should be directed at increasing employees’ perceptions of information and control.