Frank Linnehan

The Impact of Gender Similarity, Racial Similarity, and Work Culture on Family-Supportive Supervision:

This study examines the relationship between demographic similarity in the supervisor-subordinate dyad and family-supportive supervision. The authors found that supervisors provided more family support to subordinates who were similar in either gender or race than to those subordinates who were dissimilar. In addition, family-supportive supervision was highest when subordinates were similar to supervisors in both gender and race. A family-supportive organizational culture was positively related to family-supportive supervision, although contrary to what was predicted, it did not attenuate the effects of gender similarity and racial similarity on family-supportive supervision. Implications of the findings and directions for future research are discussed.

A longitudinal study of work-based, adult–youth mentoring

Abstract Using a longitudinal design, this study explored the relation of urban high school student attitudes toward school, work, and self-esteem beliefs to work-based mentoring, mentor satisfaction, and employment status. Participants included high school students taking part in a formal work-based mentoring program, students who established informal mentoring relationships at work, students who worked without a mentor, and students who were not employed during the academic year. While there were no significant group differences in the measures at the start of the year, results at the end of the year showed that students in the formal mentoring program believed more strongly that school was relevant to work than those who worked without a mentor. Students with mentors had higher levels of self-esteem than those who did not work. Students who were highly satisfied with their mentors had higher levels of self-esteem and believed more strongly that school was relevant to the workplace than students who did not work. The implications of these results are discussed and future research areas are identified.

Testing the Impact of Job Search and Recruitment Source on New Hire Turnover in a Maquiladora

En faisant appel a un echantillon de 345 travailleurs mexicains d’une maquiladora , cette etude met a l’epreuve l’impact d’echelles de comportement de recherches preliminaires et actives de travail, l’impact de l’orientation des salaries et de mesures des sources de recrutement americaines et mexicaines sur le changement de personnel. Au dela des variables sous controle, la recherche active de travail et les mesures des sources de recrutement et d’orientation des salaries entretenaient des relations positives et significatives avec le changement de personnel. Beaucoup des sources de recrutement mexicaines presentaient avec les demissions une liaison negative plus forte que beaucoup des sources de recrutement americaines. Les resultats montrent qu’une prise en consideration attentive de la culture mexicaine est indispensable si l’on veut favoriser un developpement reussi des multinationales au Mexique. Using a sample of 345 Mexican maquiladora workers, this study tested the impact of preparatory and active job search behavior scales, employee referral, US and Mexican recruitment source measures on new hire turnover. Beyond controlled-for variables, active job search and employee referral recruitment source measures were found to have significant, positive relationships to new hire turnover. Number of Mexican recruitment sources used had a stronger negative relationship to voluntary turnover than number of US recruitment sources used. These findings suggest that careful consideration of Mexican culture is needed to enhance the successful growth of international firms in Mexico.

Second hand smoke: ambient racial harassment at work

– Like “second hand smoke,” the harmful repercussions of racial harassment may extend well beyond the target to impact others at work. This study seeks to examine the “second hand smoke effect”, or ambient racial harassment, which involves exposure to racial harassment aimed at others. The paper examines race differences in awareness of racial harassment and explored work and health‐related outcomes associated with exposure to racial harassment. It also examines organizational tolerance for harassment as a moderator of these relationships., – A diverse sample of 245 employees from three data sources were surveyed. One data source involved White and Black employees in the same organization; the others worked in a variety of organizations across the USA., – Whites were less likely than Blacks to be aware of racial harassment, even when employed in the same workplace. However, awareness of racial harassment predicted negative job attitudes and psychological strain for both Whites and Blacks. These relationships were amplified by perceptions of organizational tolerance for racial harassment., – The study documents ramifications of ambient racial harassment and illuminates a racial divide in awareness of harassment at work that may exacerbate racial conflict and prevent needed organizational change., – The paper extends the construct of ambient racial harassment by measuring a range of overt and subtle forms that vary in type and intensity, and by examining the role of organizational tolerance for racial harassment as a moderator of the relationship between ambient racial harassment and work and health‐related outcomes.

Examining racial and family educational background differences in high school student beliefs and attitudes toward academic performance

This study examined differences across racial groups and class-based factors in student beliefs and attitudes toward grades. The Fishbein and Ajzen theory of reasoned action was used to focus on two potential outcomes of academic performance, going to college and obtaining employment. Using two samples of 9th–12th grade students, one from a suburban school (n = 499) and the other from a career academy program in six urban high schools (n = 602), results showed racial and class-based differences in these attitudes and beliefs. In the suburban sample, Asian American students had a stronger desire for college outcomes than students of other races and, in both samples, expressed the least desire for the employment outcomes. These results were found even after controlling for the effect of parental educational background. Students in both samples whose parents had college degrees believed that doing well in high school would lead to college more strongly than students whose parents had less education. It was also found that the desire to go to college moderated the significant, positive relationship between the instrumentality of grades to college and GPA. Implications of these findings are discussed and avenues for further research arebreakidentified.

The Problem of Emergency Department Overcrowding: Agent-Based Simulation and Test by Questionnaire

Overcrowding of hospital emergency departments is a recognized public health problem in the United States. This paper develops and simulates a noncooperative game model of emergency department overcrowding. This hypothesis naturally takes the form of an agent-based computer simulation. The predictions of the model are validated by a questionnaire administered to patients with experience in an urban hospital emergency department. These results favor the Nash equilibrium hypothesis, implying that emergency department crowding is the equilibrium of the current state of the U.S. health care system. It is hoped that this paper contributes by 1) improving our understanding of the problem of emergency department overcrowding, and 2) providing an example of the potentiality for questionnaire studies as evidence for agent-based simulation studies.

An experimental investigation of the intentions to accrue and disclose environmental liabilities

There is ample evidence that many firms do not fully disclose environmental liabilities. Since it is likely that full disclosure of these liabilities may lead to greater accountability by a firm, it is important to identify factors related to the treatment and disclosure of these specific liabilities. This study reports on factors found to be related to the intentions of 263 financial executives to accrue and disclose environmental liabilities based on scenarios developed for this research. Using the Theory of Planned Behavior, we find that intentions to accrue and disclose environmental liabilities are positively related to an executives attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and sense of obligation. We also provide evidence that the magnitude of the environmental and financial consequences has a positive, significant relation to these intentions and find that financial executives from privately held companies are less likely to accrue and disclose environmental liabilities than those from companies that are publicly traded. These findings suggest that encouraging positive attitudes toward environmental accruals and disclosures, enhancing the behavioral control of financial executives over the accrual decision, and heightening their moral obligation to disclosure these liabilities may lead to better accounting treatment and transparency of environmental matters.

Measuring Quality, Evaluating Curricular Change: A 7-Year Assessment of Undergraduate Business Student Writing

This article reports the background, methods, and results of a 7-year project (2007–2013) that assessed the writing of undergraduate business majors at a business college. It describes specific issues with writing assessment and how this study attempted to overcome them, largely through a situated assessment approach. The authors provide the results of more than 3,700 assessments of nearly 2,000 documents during the course of the study, reporting on scores overall and for each rubric criterion and comparing the scores of English and business assessors. They also investigate how two curricular interventions were evaluated through this assessment project. Although overall, the writing of these business majors was assessed as good, results showed noteworthy differences between the scores of English and business assessors and a noteworthy impact for one of the curricular interventions, an effort to improve the material conditions of writing instruction. The authors conclude by discussing some next steps and implications of this project.