Michael Horvath

Antecedents and potential moderators of the relationship between attitudes and hiring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation

A sample of 236 undergraduates (most of whom were White women) rated resumes in which gender, masculinity/femininity, and sexual orientation were manipulated while qualifications were kept constant. Overall, participants rated lesbian and gay male applicants less positively than heterosexual male applicants, but more positively than heterosexual women. Religiosity, beliefs in traditional gender roles, beliefs in the controllability of homosexuality, and previous contact with lesbians and gay men were related to attitudes toward lesbians and gay men, which was in turn related to beliefs about employing them. Several factors were hypothesized to moderate the relationship between beliefs about employing lesbians and gay men and discrimination, although the expected relationships were not found. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Attitudes toward Surveys: Development of a Measure and Its Relationship to Respondent Behavior

Attitudes toward surveys were conceptualized as having two relatively independent components: feelings about the act of completing a survey, called survey enjoyment, and perceptions of the value of survey research, called survey value. After developing a psychometrically sound measure, the authors examined how the measure related to respondent behaviors that directly impact the quality and quantity of data collected in surveys. With the exception of a response distortion index, survey enjoyment was generally related to all the respondent behaviors studied (item response rates, following directions, volunteering to participate in other survey research, timeliness of a response to a survey request, and willingness to participate in additional survey research). Survey value was related to item response rates, following directions, and willingness to participate in additional survey research. A respondent motivation and intentions explanation is provided. Although the identified effect sizes were generally small, a number of practical implications emerge and are discussed.

The Role of Recruiting Source Informativeness and Organizational Perceptions in Decisions to Apply

Although recruitment researchers often discuss influences on decisions to apply for jobs, few studies assess actual application behavior. This study of individuals who expressed an interest in a firefighter job revealed that applying was related to recruiting source informativeness and organizational familiarity. Source informativeness was not related to self-selection out of the process after application or performance on the selection process, but was related to perceptions of familiarity and to applicant demographics. Implications for recruitment are discussed.

The role of fairness perceptions and accountability attributions in predicting reactions to organizational events.

Researchers have found that fairness perceptions relate to many different outcomes (e.g., J. A. Colquitt, D. E. Conlon, M. J. Wesson, C. Porter, & K. Y. Ng, 2001). However, they cannot predict when an employee will react against a specific individual or against the organization itself. To address this question, the authors integrated the fairness and blame-attributions literatures. They predicted that blame attributions would strengthen the relationship between fairness perceptions and reactions to specific organizational agents. They surveyed 48 employees who believed there were inaccuracies in their most recent performance appraisals. Employees reported perceptions of fairness and attributions of blame to both their supervisor and the organization and rated their commitment to both targets. Supervisors simultaneously rated each employees citizenship behavior toward each target. For supervisor reactions and organizational citizenship behavior directed at the organization, blame and fairness perceptions interacted; unique positive reactions were elicited only when the supervisor was perceived as blameless and fair.

Generalizing the appeal of B2C site features across domains

Purpose The purpose of this paper is threefold: first, to present a framework of five “facets,” i.e., distinct but complementary ways in which the observed appeal of a consumer shopping site’s features can potentially be generalized across product/service domains (the authors call this framework the feature appeal generalization perspective); second, to determine if and how observed feature preferences for consumer electronics, bookstores, and sites “in general” generalize across domains; third, to test hypotheses about the impact of frequency of domain usage upon feature generalizability. Design/methodology/approach Via an online survey administered in a controlled laboratory setting, 313 respondents evaluated 26 website features in three domains (books, electronics, general) for a total of 24,414 preference judgments. Findings Two facets, individual feature values and within domain evaluative dimensions, revealed minimal generalizability, while there was moderate comparability across all domains in between domain feature correspondence. Personal preference elevation could be generalized between books and general, but not between these two and electronics. Differentiating dimensions showed that preferences were not generalizable from electronics to books and general because consumers wanted electronics features to provide “flashy sizzle” and books/general features to give “comfortable safety.” As hypothesized, patterns of generalizability coincided with frequency of domain usage. Research limitations/implications Practitioners should not apply published studies of feature appeal to their domain of interest unless those studies directly analyzed that domain. Scientists should incorporate all five facets in modeling what attracts consumers to commercial websites. Originality/value This is the first multidimensional analysis of the generalizability of site feature appeal across business-to-consumer product/service domains, and the first to propose this integrated evaluative framework with its unique facets.

An integrative model of recruitment source processes and effects

Recruitment sources, the means through which job seekers learn about organizations and job openings, are related to many organizational and job seeker outcomes. However, although many mechanisms have been proposed to explain recruitment source effects, each mechanism appears to address only one part of a larger process. Our theoretical understanding of this phenomenon is limited by the lack of a comprehensive model integrating these perspectives, and such an integration is possible by differentiating among the ways that job seekers use recruitment sources. In this article, I outline three distinct functions of recruitment source use. I then propose a model that integrates these functions with the proposed mechanisms and show how the model can be used as a springboard for increasing our theoretical understanding of the phenomenon and advancing future empirical research on the topic.