Joyce Hogan

What We Know about Leadership: Effectiveness and Personality.

Although psychologists know a great deal about leadership, persons who make decisions about real leaders seem largely to ignore their accumulated wisdom. In an effort to make past research more accessible, interpretable, and relevant to decision makers, this article defines leadership and then answers nine questions that routinely come up when practical decisions are made about leadership (e.g., whom to appoint, how to evaluate them, when to terminate them.

Using theory to evaluate personality and job-performance relations: A socioanalytic perspective

The authors used socioanalytic theory to understand individual differences in peoples performance at work. Specifically, if predictors and criteria are aligned by using theory, then the meta-analytic validity of personality measures exceeds that of atheoretical approaches. As performance assessment moved from general to specific job criteria, all Big Five personality dimensions more precisely predicted relevant criterion variables, with estimated true validities of .43 (Emotional Stability), .35 (Extraversion-Ambition), .34 (Agreeableness), .36 (Conscientiousness), and .34 (Intellect-Openness to Experience).

Personality Measurement and Employment Decisions. Questions and Answers.

The invisible college of psychologists who do research with measures of normal personality now largely agrees about the structure of personality; this group also agrees that competently developed personality measures are valid predictors of real world performance. Outside that college, however, there is still considerable skepticism regarding the meaning and validity of these measures. This article attempts to summarize the data needed to answer the most frequent questions about the use of personality measures in applied contexts. Our major conclusions are that (a) well-constructed measures of normal personality are valid predictors of performance in virtually all occupations, (b) they do not result in adverse impact for job applicants from minority groups, and (c) using well-developed personality measures for preemployment screening is a way to promote social justice and increase organ izationalproductivity.

Assessing Leadership: A View from the Dark Side

This article concerns leadership effectiveness studied from the reverse angle. We review the literature on managerial derailment and propose a taxonomy of derailment factors. We then describe an inventory designed to assess these factors, provide some evidence regarding the psychometric features of the inventory, and some evidence regarding its validity. We suggest that the base rate for managerial incompetence in any organization is quite high, and we propose our inventory is a useful device for management development – because it focuses on dysfunctional dispositions known to be associated with failure as a manager.

Conscientiousness and Integrity at Work

Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on the dimension of conscientiousness. Conscientiousness is a product of the superego that develops from resolving conflict, between childhood sexuality and parentally guided forces of socialization. Conscientiousness begins in the process of resolving conflicts with authority. The conscientiousness dimension led the personality assessment revival in applied psychology because: (1) lack of conscientiousness is a major problem in the workplace. Conscientious employees are good organizational citizens. Delinquent employees are non productive and erode the economic health of an organization. (2) Empirical findings support the validity of conscientiousness measures for predicting counterproductive behavior and job performance. Some personality measures that were developed to predict organizational delinquency criteria are widely used. Conscientiousness is part of an identity choice—an interpersonal strategy for dealing with the members of ones group. In childhood, one might receive attention and approval for being tidy, compliant, and dependable. A child is likely to repeat activities that bring such approval from authority. However, by adulthood, the processes by which one supports a conscientious identity are unconscious. It is easy to understand the way conscientiousness promotes survival in the group and survival in the organization.

Issues and non-issues in the fidelity–bandwidth trade-off

This paper makes seven points in response to certain claims made by Ones and Viswesvaran (1996, this issue). First, we see no evidence that the fidelity–bandwidth trade-off has become a crisis in the empirical literature. Moreover, we seen no evidence that anyone prefers narrow band personality measures over broad bandwidth scales. In addition, because job performance is complex and multidimensional, broad bandwidth predictors are normally required in personnel selection. Finally, our conclusion is simple—the nature of the criterion dictates the choice of predictors and matching predictors with criteria always enhances validity.

Personality Measurement, Faking, and Employment Selection

Real job applicants completed a 5-factor model personality measure as part of the job application process. They were rejected; 6 months later they (n = 5,266) reapplied for the same job and completed the same personality measure. Results indicated that 5.2% or fewer improved their scores on any scale on the 2nd occasion; moreover, scale scores were as likely to change in the negative direction as the positive. Only 3 applicants changed scores on all 5 scales beyond a 95% confidence threshold. Construct validity of the personality scales remained intact across the 2 administrations, and the same structural model provided an acceptable fit to the scale score matrix on both occasions. For the small number of applicants whose scores changed beyond the standard error of measurement, the authors found the changes were systematic and predictable using measures of social skill, social desirability, and integrity. Results suggest that faking on personality measures is not a significant problem in real-world selection settings.

Personality and Status

Stratification and status attainment have been major research topics in sociology for years (cf. Weber, 1946). Because status differences typify every human (and primate) group (Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1989) and because these differences profoundly affect our lives, it is important to inquire about their origins.

The measurement of effort

Abstract A series of studies examined the reliability and validity of an index of perceived physical effort assessing the metabolic and ergonomic costs of task performance. In one set of studies, a wide variety of occupational and recreational tasks were rated on the physical effort required. Groups doing the rating included personnel specialists, non-specialists, males and females. Subjects had not necessarily performed the tasks previously, nor did they know the metabolic values of these tasks. In all groups, interrater agreement was high on the ratings of the effort required of these tasks. Also, predictions of various indices of actual metabolic costs from these ratings were high. In other studies, high correlations were obtained between ratings on the effort index and actual performance in manual materials-handling tasks. These studies also determined the particular physical ability requirements of tasks most related to perceived effort. The usefulness of the physical effort scale as a job-analysis m...

Validation of a personality measure of managerial performance

Recent interest in the characteristics of effective managers raises the notion that personality factors may be part of the effectiveness syndrome. Modern research in personality systematics makes it possible to refine and extend earlier analyses of this topic. A job analysis of three levels of management in a large trucking company identified the personality characteristics of good managers, as described by peers and subordinates. These managers and a large group of incumbents (n=372) completed the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI). Managers were assigned scores reflecting their status in the organization; they also were rated by their supervisors. A subset of HPI components were significantly associated with the criteria, with correlations ranging from .22 to .66. These components were combined and used in five separate validity studies. The resulting measure was significantly associated with managerial performance in a variety of organizational settings. These results are consistent with the growing body of evidence suggesting that a coherent set of noncognitive characteristics promotes managerial performance across organizational types.