Shannon G. Taylor

Publish or Perish: Academic Life as Management Faculty Live It

Purpose – Although many in academe have speculated about the effects of pressure to publish on the management discipline – often referred to as “publish or perish” – prevailing knowledge has been based on anecdotal rather than empirical evidence. The aim of the present paper is to shed light on the perceptions of management faculty regarding the pressure to publish imperative.Design/methodology/approach – The authors surveyed faculty in 104 management departments of AACSB accredited, research‐oriented US business schools to explore the prevalence, sources, and effects of pressure to publish.Findings – Results indicate that pressure to publish affects both tenured and tenure‐track management faculty, although the latter, as a group, feel significantly more pressure than those who are tenured. The primary source of this pressure is faculty themselves who are motivated by the prospects of enhancing their professional reputation, leaving a permanent mark on their profession, and increasing their salary and jo...

An empirical investigation of dispositional antecedents and performance-related outcomes of credit scores.

Many organizations use credit scores as an employment screening tool, but little is known about the legitimacy of such practices. To address this important gap, the reported research conceptualized credit scores as a biographical measure of financial responsibility and investigated dispositional antecedents and performance-related outcomes. Using personality data collected from employees, objective credit scores obtained from the Fair Isaac Corporation, and performance data provided by supervisors, we found conscientiousness to be positively related and agreeableness to be negatively related to credit scores. Results also indicate significant relationships between credit scores and task performance and organizational citizenship behaviors. Credit scores did not, however, predict workplace deviance. Implications for organizations currently using or planning to use credit scores as part of the screening process are discussed.

Linking personality to interpersonal citizenship behaviour: The moderating effect of empathy

To account for generally low direct relationships between Big-Five personality traits and interpersonal citizenship behaviour (ICB), researchers have suggested that Big-Five traits are associated with such helping-related behaviour in interactive rather than direct fashion. This study investigated empathy as a potential moderator of Big-Five trait - ICB relations. Hypotheses were tested with data obtained from employees of a youth treatment facility and their supervisors. Results provided evidence that empathy interacts with three Big-Five personality traits, suggesting traits functioning at conceptually different hierarchical levels may jointly explain specific behaviours. Empathy could play an important role in understanding connections between these Big-Five traits and ICB.

The Fred Taylor baseball myth: a son goes to bat for his father

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to refute allegations from various sources that, as a pitcher for the Phillips Exeter Academy baseball team, Frederick W. Taylor cheated by using an illegal overhand delivery.Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on archival research, including a recently discovered letter by his son, Robert, this paper dispels the “myth” surrounding Taylors alleged cheating as a member of the Phillips Exeter Academy baseball team.Findings – This research suggests that the “myth” of Freds purported cheating may be traced to a January 1934 Esquire Magazine article by American Novelist John R. Dos Passos.Originality/value – As a consequence, of the information only a son could have provided, this paper sets the record straight concerning Taylors alleged cheating, and in doing so, demonstrate how a reliance on “myth” rather than “fact” stands in the way of capturing the elusive past.

From boardroom to bunker: How Fred Taylor changed the game of golf forever

Abstract Frederick Taylor devoted his life to establishing management as a profession with high standards of scientific accuracy. Rather than revisit Taylor’s efforts to enhance workplace efficiency through improved management, this paper chronicles a little-known aspect of his personal life, his passion for the game of golf. In particular, it recounts how Taylor, building on his belief that there was ‘one best way’ to do everything, extended the principles of scientific management beyond the workplace to the world of sports and made contributions that continue to influence how golf is played today. True history begins when the historian has discerned beyond the mists of ages the living, active man, endowed with passions, furnished with habits, special in voice, feature, gesture, and costume, distinctive and complete, like anybody that you have just encountered in the street. (Hippolyte A. Taine 1900, 2)

Breaking the cycle of abusive supervision: How disidentification and moral identity help the trickle-down change course.

Studies show that abusive leader behaviors “trickle down” to lower organizational levels, but this research ignores that many abused supervisors do not perpetuate abuse by harming their own subordinates. Drawing on social-cognitive theory and related research, we suggest abused supervisors might defy rather than emulate their managers’ abusive behavior. Specifically, we predicted that some abused supervisors—namely, those with strong moral identities—might in effect “change course” by engaging in less abuse or demonstrating ethical leadership with their subordinates to the extent they disidentify with their abusive managers. Across 2 experiments (n = 288 and 462 working adults, respectively) and a field study (n = 500 employees and their supervisors), we show that relations between manager abuse and supervisors’ abusive and ethical behaviors were carried by supervisors’ disidentification, and that the direct and indirect effects of manager abuse were stronger for supervisors with comparatively higher moral identity levels. We discuss our findings’ implications and avenues for future research.

A self-regulatory perspective of work-to-home undermining spillover/crossover: Examining the roles of sleep and exercise.

Research demonstrating that employees who are undermined at work engage in similar behavior at home suggests this connection reflects displaced aggression. In contrast, the present study draws on self-regulation theory to examine the work-home undermining spillover/crossover process. We propose that poor sleep quality transmits the influence of workplace undermining to home undermining per self-regulatory impairment, and exercise moderates this indirect effect per self-regulatory improvement. Using matched data from 118 employees and a member of their household to test our model, results demonstrated that undermining experienced from supervisors increased subjective (i.e., self-reported) but not objective (i.e., actigraph-recorded) sleep difficulties, which, in turn, increased the frequency with which individuals engaged in undermining at home (as reported by cohabitants). Additionally, indirect effects occurred for employees with low but not high levels of physical exercise (as measured by self-reports, step counts, and energy expenditure). Our findings suggest sleep and exercise may serve as valuable intervention points to prevent the spread of harmful behavior across contexts. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.