Marcus W. Dickson

An organizational climate regarding ethics: The outcome of leader values and the practices that reflect them

Abstract In this article, we argue that the organizational climate regarding ethics — the shared perception of what is ethically correct behavior and how ethical issues should be handled within an organization — is an outgrowth of the personal values and motives of organizational founders and other early organizational leaders. We begin by arguing that one common label for the climate regarding ethics construct — “ethical climate” — is inappropriate. We also argue that climate regarding ethics has an impact on organizational outcomes, including organizational outcomes that do not have explicit ethical components. We propose that this impact largely occurs through the mediating mechanisms of organizational cohesion and morale. We conclude by discussing the variety of antecedents and outcomes related to climate regarding ethics.

An Information‐processing Perspective on Leadership and Culture: A Case for Connectionist Architecture

Un mode`le de la relation entre la culture et le leadership est pre´sente´ dans cet article; ce mode`le est centre´ sur le traitement de l’information. Nous estimons qu’un re´seau connectionniste s’impose pour une bonne compre´hension de la faµon dont la culture et le leadership influencent les re´actions et la comprotement du suiveur, ce qui nous diffe´rencie des travaux ante´rieurs dans ce domaine. On examine brie`vement les structure connectionnistes en remarquant qu’il y a recouvrement entre la conceptualisation des sche´mas inclus dans ces structures et les re´flexions actuelles sur les sche´mas concernant la culture et le leadership. Ce mode`le est suffisamment souple pour expliquer les processus cognitivement efficients qui e´mergent consciemment ou subconsciemment. En outre, il peut rendre compte de la sensibilite´ a` l’information (provenant de la situation) des sche´mas du leadership et des syste`mes culturels. On traite enfin du caracte`re critique de la notion de concept de soi dans la compre´hension des processus a` travers lesquels culture et leadership interagissent pour influencer les re´action et la conduite des suiveurs.

When Organizational Climate Is Unambiguous, It Is Also Strong

Several recent studies have addressed the topic of climate strength--the degree to which there is agreement among an organizations members regarding the practices and policies as well as the shared values that characterize the organization. To further investigate antecedents of climate strength, the authors used data from the GLOBE Project, totaling 3,783 individuals from 123 organizations. The authors hypothesized that they would find greater climate strength in organizations with climates reflecting mechanistic as opposed to organic organizational forms. Although the authors did in fact find such a trend, they also unexpectedly uncovered significant and strong nonlinear effects, such that climates that are clearly mechanistic or clearly organic have strong climates, with weaker climates emerging for organizations with more ambiguous climates. These findings provide interesting new avenues to pursue in understanding the origins of climate strength.

Using Life-Span Models in Industrial-Organizational Psychology: The Theory of Selective Optimization With Compensation

Life-span models and their emphasis on individual differences in aging and development fit perfectly with industrial-organizational (I-O) psychologys underlying theoretical assumptions. Furthermore, certain life-span metatheories can provide an overarching framework from which to understand various I-O research areas. This article attempts to demonstrate how a specific life-span model of successful aging-selective optimization with compensation (SOC)-can be used as a metatheory for 3 specific areas of I-O psychology: work-family conflict, leadership, and organization-level functioning. Finally, methodological issues that researchers should consider when using the SOC model in the I-O arena are also discussed.

Personnel selection and the five-factor model: Reexamining the effects of applicant's frame of reference

Recently, 2 separate yet related criticisms have been levied against the adequacy of the five-factor model (or Big Five) as a descriptive taxonomy of job applicant personality: frame of reference effects (M. J. Schmit & A. M. Ryan, 1993) and socially desirable responding (A. F. Snell & M. A. McDaniel, 1998). Of interest, although both criticisms suggest that the five-factor model is inadequate, the frame of reference effects criticism suggests that the factor structure should be more complex, whereas socially desirable responding suggests that it should be less complex in job applicant contexts. The current research reports the results of a new study demonstrating the adequacy of the five-factor model as a descriptor of job applicant, job incumbent, and student personality. Implications for personality assessment and concurrent validation designs using personality measures are also discussed.

Ethical Leadership Across Cultures: A Comparative Analysis of German and Us Perspectives

This paper examines beliefs about four aspects of ethical leadership Character/Integrity, Altruism, Collective Motivation and Encouragement in Germany and the United States using data from Project GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness) and a supplemental analysis. Within the context of a push toward convergence driven by the demands of globalization and the pull toward divergence underpinned by different cultural values and philosophies in the two countries, we focus on two questions: Do middle managers from the United States and Germany differ in their beliefs about ethical leadership? And, do individuals from these two countries attribute different characteristics to ethical leaders? Results provide evidence that while German and US middle managers, on average, differed in the degree of endorsement for each aspect, they each endorsed Character/Integrity, Collective Motivation and Encouragement as important for effective leadership and had a more neutral view of the importance of Altruism. The findings are reviewed within the social-cultural context of each country.

Trends, developments and gaps in cross-cultural research on leadership

Literature on leadership and literature on culture are each rich and deep, but the two were largely unrelated during the first several decades of their development. In more recent years, many researchers have explored relationships between these two literatures. In this chapter, we identify four developments or trends in the last 25 years of cross-cultural leadership literature. First, our understanding of etic or universal findings has advanced and become more complex, but also more realistic. Second, there has been refinement in the definition of “culture” and the identification of the dimensions of culture, with several researchers having identified particular cultural dimensions that seem to be directly relevant to leadership. Third, the social information processing literature has been extended to the leadership and culture literatures. Finally, there is a movement toward larger studies that not only collect data from multiple countries, but also through multiple research methodologies.

Seeking explanations in people, not in the results of their behavior: Twenty-plus years of the attraction-selection-attrition model.

Without question, one of Ben Schneider’s most important contributions has been to formulate and test the attraction-selection-attrition (ASA) model (e.g., Schneider, 1987). One can view his 1987 seminal paper in the context of research and debates that preceded it, particularly through the theoretical lens of the person-situation debate. Though psychologists had long struggled to answer the nature-nurture question of whether stable person characteristics or situational attributes account for more variation in behavior, the debate became most heated after Walter Mischel wrote a treatise on the primacy of situations in 1968. Many, such as Block (1978) and Bowers (1973), argued against Mischel’s initial position. Most researchers in organizational psychology now accept that behavior is a function of characteristics of the person and the environment (Magnusson & Endler, 1977). The challenge, however, as Schneider (1987) astutely noted, has been to develop concepts and methods that determine not only

Culture, corruption, and the endorsement of ethical leadership

In this chapter, we propose that society- and organization-level social context cues influence the endorsement of ethical leadership. More specifically, we propose that certain organizational culture values provide proximal contextual cues that people use to form perceptions of the importance of ethical leadership. We further propose that specific societal culture values and societal corruption provide a set of more distal, yet salient, environmental cues about the importance of ethical leadership. Using data from Project GLOBE, we provide evidence that both proximal and distal contextual cues were related to perceptions of four dimensions of ethical leadership as important for effective leadership, including character/integrity, altruism, collective motivation, and encouragement.

Alternate Views of Global Leadership: Applying Global Leadership Perspectives to Leading Global Teams

The literature around global leadership and global teams has expanded dramatically over the last decade. There have, however, been few integrative approaches to examining the intersection between these constructs. The present chapter reviews the dominant paradigms in global leadership and in teamwork in a global context. Specifically, the global leadership and cross-cultural leadership literatures are reviewed, along with the literatures on multinational teams, virtual teams, and cross-cultural teams. The leadership literatures are further broken down into competencies and styles (for global leadership) and universal or contingency-based approaches (for cross-cultural leadership). The literature on global teams is integrated into these overviews.