Deniz S. Ones

The Big-5 Personality and Counterproductive Behaviours

Employees can engage in a wide spectrum of misbehaviour in organizations. Such counterproductivity costs employers billions of dollars annually worldwide (Ones, 2002). The extent of actual, psychological and societal costs to organizations can be better understood when one considers the multitude of different ways employees can misbehave. Geddes and Baron (1997) found that 69 per cent of managers reported having experienced verbal aggression. Wimbush and Dalton (1997) used multiple methods and samples to estimate the base rate for employee theft, and found ‘Depending on the level one ascribes to nontrivial employee theft, .. . [the different techniques of estimating employee theft] . . . converge on theft rates over 50 per cent’ (p. 756). It is estimated that substance abuse costs the United States alone more than

The SAGE Handbook of Industrial, Work and Organizational Psychology

135 billion each year (DeCresce et al., 1990). Harwood, Fountain and Livermore (1992) estimated that in the United States economy

Integrating Responses across Surveys Using Item Response Theory

82 billion in lost potential productivity could be attributed to alcohol and drug abuse in 1992 (

Psychological contracts in employment

67.7 billion and

Leadership in organizations

14.2 billion, respectively).

HOW DEFINITIVE ARE CONCLUSIONS BASED ON SURVEY DATA: ESTIMATING ROBUSTNESS TO NONRESPONSE

INTRODUCTION The content of every job reflects a series of work design decisions made when the job is first set up or during its enactment over time. Example ‘work design’ decisions include: Which tasks should be grouped together and performed within a job? What (and how many) procedures guide the work of the job incumbent? How much control over work methods does the incumbent have? How does the job connect to tasks carried out by other individuals? Does the work have some degree of mental challenge? Sometimes these work design decisions are conscious and deliberate; other times people unconsciously or indirectly configure their work roles for themselves or others. Either way, these work design decisions create a configuration of ‘job characteristics’ for each job. Some of the most well-established job characteristics include job autonomy, job variety, job demands, and social support. Job characteristics, in turn, affect multiple outcomes, including employees’ well-being at work and outside of work, their learning and development, and potentially their performance.

Introduction to the Handbook and Volume 1 — Personnel Psychology: Where We Have Been, Where We are, (and Where We Could Be)

This short note proposes and demonstrates the application of an Item Response Theory model to integrate responses across surveys. A preliminary illustration of the model is provided using three union attitude surveys with a total sample of 3,148. Advantages of applying Item Response Theory to survey data are discussed and directions for further use of the model are indicated.