Jonathan C. Ziegert

Employment Discrimination: The Role of Implicit Attitudes, Motivation, and a Climate for Racial Bias.

This study is an attempt to replicate and extend research on employment discrimination by A. P. Brief and colleagues (A. P. Brief, J. Dietz, R. R. Cohen, S. D. Pugh, & J. B. Vaslow, 2000). More specifically, the authors attempted (a) to constructively replicate the prior finding that an explicit measure of modern racism would interact with a corporate climate for racial bias to predict discrimination in a hiring context and (b) to extend this finding through the measurement of implicit racist attitudes and motivation to control prejudice. Although the authors were unable to replicate the earlier interaction, they did illustrate that implicit racist attitudes interacted with a climate for racial bias to predict discrimination. Further, results partially illustrate that motivation to control prejudice moderates the relationship between explicit and implicit attitudes. Taken together, the findings illustrate the differences between implicit and explicit racial attitudes in predicting discriminatory behavior.

Why Are Individuals Attracted to Organizations

Applicant attraction is vital to the success of an organization. Despite its importance, however, research on it has tended to proceed in a relatively piecemeal way. Accordingly, the authors present a framework for attraction research through an examination of the underlying relevant theories. Specifically, they identify three overarching metatheories focusing on environment processing, interactionist processing, and self-processing that form the basis for their theoretical model. The authors conclude with an examination of future research directions.

Understanding Racial Differences on Cognitive Ability Tests in Selection Contexts: An Integration of Stereotype Threat and Applicant Reactions Research

This study integrates research on stereotype threat with research on applicant perceptions to examine how these two paradigms jointly enhance the understanding of racial subgroup cognitive ability test differences in selection contexts. A simulated selection context was used so that both stereotype threat and face validity could be manipulated. Participants were 250 White and 144 Black students. Using a 3 (stereotype threat: diagnostic, non-diagnostic, control) × 2 (face validity: face valid, generic) × 2 (race: Black, White) between-subjects design, our results found that stereotype threat interacted with face validity and race, but only for individuals highly identified with their racial group. Results suggested that Blacks performed best when taking the generic test in the control condition, whereas when taking the face valid test, they performed best in the non-diagnostic condition. Across all threat and face validity conditions, Black performance was worst in the diagnostic condition. In addition, correlational analyses found important individual differences in perceptions of stereotype threat, such that these perceptions contributed to lower face validity, lower test-taking motivation, and higher anxiety. Further, motivation positively and anxiety negatively influenced actual test performance. Thus, this study finds that research on stereotype threat and applicant perceptions are complementary, and together contribute to a better understanding of subgroup differences on cognitive ability tests.

An Examination of Stereotype Threat in a Motivational Context

This study was conducted to explore 2 potential boundary conditions of the stereotype threat effect. First, we sought to determine if threat would occur for a test administered in a motivational context where consequences were linked to test performance. Second, we examine if the threat elicited by 1 test would generalize to a different measure administered in the same testing session. Using a 2 (control vs. threat) × 2 (order of administration of a personality and intelligence test) × 2 (Black vs. White) between-subjects design, we found that threat can influence test scores, but the relationship between threat and test scores is dependent on both domain identity and racial identity. Interestingly, we found that changes in racial identity (assessed before and after the test) had a significant and positive relationship with cognitive ability test performance for Black test-takers, but not for Whites. It seems that Black individuals who dis-identified themselves from their race (during the course of the testing) were able to perform better on the cognitive ability test. Finally, we find that those in the threat condition performed significantly better on the personality test than those in the control condition, suggesting that threat can generalize and influence performance on tests for which no stereotype exists. Implications of these results for research and practice are discussed.

The Human Side of Strategy: Employee Experiences of Strategic Alignment in a Service Organization

Excerpt] There is now good research to substantiate the idea that practices internal to the organization have important implications for service quality and customer satisfaction. Prior literature, especially the work on The Service Profit Chain by researchers at the Harvard Business School about large organizations and Len Berry’s On Great Service and Discovering the Soul of Service in smaller organizations, suggests that a key to service excellence is implementing a service strategy. Such a strategy would consist of having both explicit goals vis-à-vis customer delight and loyalty, and explicit processes that are in place to achieve those goals. In this paper, we offer an organizing concept—namely alignment. In what follows, we first describe how we think about service and service delivery, and then how we think about alignment. Then we illustrate, through a case study of a small consumer bank known for its service excellence, how the components of an aligned service strategy look and feel to organizational members. It is this focus on how the service strategy looks and feels to organizational employees that yields our title: The human side of strategy. We then show how an outcome of the processes we describe is a very high level of organizational commitment. Finally, we conclude with some surprises and insights gained, as well as some practical implications for executives seeking to improve service quality.

Web-based recruitment in the Millennial generation: Work–life balance, website usability, and organizational attraction

In this digital era, traditional recruitment efforts have increasingly been supplemented with or replaced by recruiting applicants on the Web. Concurrently, organizations are increasingly adapting to younger individuals from the Millennial generation as they enter the workforce. We combine these salient issues to examine Web-based recruitment of the Millennial generation by assessing predictors of organizational attraction. Using a sample of Millennials (N = 493), we found that perceptions of both work–life balance and website usability incrementally predicted attraction, when controlling for perceptions of other organization characteristics. In addition, person–organization fit mediated these relationships. These findings speak to the importance of examining how aspects of Web-based recruitment influence Millennial applicants.

Team Communication Patterns as Measures of Team Processes: Exploring the Effects of Task Urgency and Shared Team Experience

Inter-member team communication is a rich yet challenging data source for understanding team processes. In this paper, we present a quantitative analysis of team communication based on videotaped real-life trauma patient resuscitation. Team communication patterns were compared under varying conditions: (a) when the teams task — patient treatment — was high versus low in urgency; and (b) when team members had more or less shared experience as a team. The results provide initial support for the utility of communication analysis for the study of team performance and team leadership. Tools for assessment of team processes are a key to effective research in team performance, especially in complex, time-pressured tasks. The team communication patterns depicted the adaptive nature of team structures, especially when the teams were confronted with potentially competing goals, such as on-the-job training and treatment of trauma patients.

Multi-Leader Teams in Review: A Contingent-Configuration Perspective of Effectiveness

Multi-leader teams are characterized by multiple leaders exhibiting mutual influence on each other while working towards a common team goal. An unexplored assumption in this literature is that increasing the number of leaders is related to heightened team effectiveness. The authors propose that this notion is oversimplified and suggest a contingency model of multi-leader team effectiveness. The authors suggest that the context determines the effectiveness of a particular multi-leader team configuration, because each formation has unique internal team mechanisms. To investigate this perspective, we review the multi-leader team literature (175 articles) by categorizing the extant theory and research as falling within nine multi-leader configurations along two key dimensions: (1) the proportion of leaders within a team; and (2) the dispersion of leadership through role co-enactment of team leaders. This framework enables a more coherent understanding as to the benefits and the costs of each specific multi-leader team configuration and a clearer evaluation of the contexts in which varying configurations are most effective. Four emerging themes related to configuration–contextualization are explained and theoretical implications for interpreting leadership effectiveness in multi-leader team settings are discussed.

Adaptation of team communication patterns: Exploring the effects of leadership at a distance, task urgency, and shared team experience

This volume offers insights from a noted group of scholars who discuss the complex phenomenon of leadership in distributed work settings - also known as leadership at a distance. Editor Suzanne Weisband addresses the ubiquitous roles leaders play, their scale of work, and the range of technologies available to them, while setting new directions in studying leadership at a distance. A unique perspective of empirical research unfolds, representing a variety of fields and methods to foster a better understanding of the role technology plays in leadership, and how leadership is shaped by the use of technology.Leadership at a Distance begins with an overview of the challenges leaders face in the 21st century, followed by a discussion of:field studies and innovative ways of thinking about leadership in distributed work settings;experiments on the group dynamics and social processes involved in leading teams at a distance; andresearch on leadership in large-scale distributed collaborations, as well as lessons learned about leadership at a distance and future research directions.Managers, organizational behavior psychologists, human factors and industrial engineers, and sociologists will consider this book of interest and will appreciate its interdisciplinary scope.

Supervisor-Employee Power Distance Incompatibility, Gender Similarity, and Relationship Conflict: A Test of Interpersonal Interaction Theory.

According to interpersonal interaction theory, relational harmony surfaces when two individuals have compatible interaction styles. Building from this theory, we propose that supervisor-employee power distance orientation incompatibility will be related to employees’ experience of higher levels of relationship conflict with their supervisors. Additionally, we propose an asymmetrical incongruence effect such that relationship conflict will be highest when supervisors are high in power distance and employees are low in power distance. Furthermore, we address calls in interpersonal interaction research for more direct attention to the social context of the dyadic interaction and explore the moderating effects of supervisor-employee gender (dis)similarity on the relationship between this incompatibility and conflict. We propose that supervisor-employee gender dissimilarity (e.g., male-female or female-male pairs) acts as a conditional moderator, neutralizing the power distance incongruence effect and the asymmetrical incongruence effect. Using 259 supervisor-employee dyads in the physical therapy industry, the hypotheses were generally supported. Theoretical and practical implications regarding the unique benefits of power distance compatibility and gender diversity in supervisor-employee dyads are discussed.