Michael E. Gordon

PUBLICATION RECORDS AND TENURE DECISIONS IN THE FIELD OF STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

To better define levels of accomplishment for publishing journal articles in strategic management, a bibliometric study was performed on the publication records of 96 doctorates in the field whose first post-degree job was in academics. By examining 20 journals that are outlets for research in strategic management, publication records were developed for each individual for the first 5-10 years following receipt of the doctoral degree. Two factors influenced the publication records of these new faculty. Having publications prior to receiving the doctorate and getting a first job at an institution with a graduate program in management were associated with more frequent publishing after an academic career began. As expected, the number of papers published was related to the likelihood of receiving tenure. However, despite the fact that they had produced more papers during the first 5 years than male faculty members and had higher citation rates, female faculty members were less likely to receive tenure. The findings are discussed in terms of institutional policy for hiring and evaluating new faculty.

Impact of early socialization on union commitment and participation : a longitudinal study

New members of a union (N=305) were surveyed twice over a 1-year period to assess the effects of institutional and individual socialization practices on union commitment and participation. Whereas individual socialization practices were found to impact on both affective and behavioral involvement in the union, institutional socialization practices were shown to be ineffective at best and counterproductive at worst. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed

The Effects of Grading and Teaching Practices on Students' Perceptions of Grading Fairness.

To examine the antecedents of perceptions of grading fairness, approximately 600 college students were surveyed about the prevalence and desirability of 1) teaching practices that assisted students to prepare for examinations, and 2) common test scoring manipulations used to transform poor scores into acceptable ones (e.g., curving low scores upward). Students also described the fairness of the grading they had experienced. Regression analysis revealed that grading fairness was predicted best by exposure to the teaching practices rather than the scoring practices. Results are discussed in terms of the possible effects of these teaching and grading practices on grade inflation.

The Dialectics of the Exit Interview: A Fresh Look at Conversations About Organizational Disengagement

Despite being a staple of human resource management since the 1920s, the exit interview (EI) has contributed information about employee turnover that has produced as much skepticism as confidence regarding its authenticity. As the EI is a situated conversation about organizational disengagement, research on relevant communication phenomena is applied to extend our understanding of the EI. A model of the EI is presented that is based on two dialectical processes that address the conversational purposes of the interviewee and interviewer. Petronio’s treatise on the reveal-conceal dialectic is used to identify factors that influence the departing employees’ self-revelations, that is, the authenticity of personal information regarding their reasons for voluntarily leaving their jobs. Lamiell’s dialectic process is used to account for the interviewer’s sense of authenticity-inauthenticity about the departing employee’s responses.

Students as a Resource for Introducing Intercultural Education in Business Schools.

Despite a recognized need for a global mindset, opportunities for US business school students to gain hands‐on diversity training regarding intercultural issues remain rare. The reasons for this neglect include a lack of agreement on how to teach intercultural awareness and a paucity of faculty qualified to do so. In order to introduce intercultural education into a core business course, students were offered the opportunity to participate in an extra‐credit project that required the development of a proposal for an international joint venture and afforded them the chance to learn about each other while pursuing a superordinate goal of value to each. Thirty‐nine cross‐cultural teams were created, each of which had a partner from the US and a partner from a different country. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed that the value of the project was closely related to the amount of learning that reportedly took place in both the business and cultural realms. Importantly, 73% of the students reported a strong interest in meeting people from different cultures as a result of participation in the project.

Factors associated with the success of the implementation of statistical process control

Abstract Implementation of new technologies intended to improve the quality of manufactured products has been hindered by a lack of knowledge of appropriate practices to manage its introduction into the workplace. The present study was designed to identify specific management activities associated with successful implementation of Statistical Process Control (SPC). Hypotheses were tested regarding the effects on SPC implementations of higher management commitment, the structure of SPC training, the involvement of operatives in decision making about quality issues, and the salience of concerns about job security. SPC implementations in two samples of manufacturing departments ( N = 73 and 86) were investigated. After providing evidence of the construct validity of the implementation-success criterion, additional statistical tests indicated the importance of top management support for the implementation, the effectiveness of an inclusive approach to SPC training, the significance of relying on trainers who are organization members, and the salutary influence of frequent meetings to discuss quality problems.