William H. Holley

The Relationship of Performance Appraisal System Characteristics to Verdicts in Selected Employment Discrimination Cases

This study examined empirically the effects of 13 appraisal system characteristics on the verdicts rendered in 66 employment discrimination cases. Of the 13 characteristics, 5 were found to differe...

Guidelines for Overcoming Empirically Identified Evaluation Problems of Organizational Development Change Agents

Several authors have written about the problems of conducting organizational development (OD) evaluations, but two inadequacies still remain. First, many of these problems are quite likely indigenous to the situations experienced by the writer in his evaluations, and they may not be widely applicable or generalizable to a large number of practitioners. Thus, one may be concerned as to whether these are the problems that OD practitioners can expect to experience in their OD evaluations. The second inadequacy is that the problems reportedly experienced by OD practitioners are rarely found in the literature on OD evaluations. In fact, only one or two problems are generally discussed, and these problems have been experienced by the researcher in a specific evaluation. Due to these inadequacies, a survey questionnaire, the OD Survey Questionnaire, was developed to ascertain the evaluative problems of OD practitioners. With the members of the OD Network serving as the survey population, questionnaires were mailed to 269 members. We classified 101 of the returned questionnaires from change agents as usable responses because the respondents indicated that they had previously conducted OD efforts. A total of 107 evaluative problems were identified and subsequently clustered into three problem categories, i.e., methodological, administrative, and miscellaneous problems. Subproblems of each category are discussed and some guidance for dealing with each problem is offered for those practitioners concerned with OD evaluation.

Job Enrichment Versus Traditional Issues at the Bargaining Table: What Union Members Want

The article focuses on the reaction of union leaders toward job enrichment and motivation programs. The study presented attempts to examine the attitudes of union members to the use of job enrichment as a possible collective bargaining issue. According to the author, this study differs from earlier works in a number of ways, including its request that union members allocate the percentages of time that representatives will spend for traditional negotiation issues as well as issues surrounding job enrichment.

Human Resource Considerations in Textile Work Redesign

Evidence is presented that the textile industry is beginning to recognize the severity of the employee turnover problem. Work redesign has been a proposed solution in other industries whereby the intent was to provide employees with work that satisfied their psychological and social needs. However, research has not shown work redesign to produce consistently positive results. Investigators have concluded that individual reactions to job characteristics may be moderated by such variables as their background (urban vs. rural), the existence of a Protestant Work Ethic (strong vs. weak) and the individuals need strength (high vs. low). If the textile industry does undertake work redesign as a solution to the turnover problem, it would be of extreme importance to know what moderates individual reactions to job characteristics. The results of this research indicate that individual need strength is a better moderator than Protestant Work Ethic for employees in a Southeastern textile mill. The authors present alternative ways of dealing with individual reactions to job characteristics so that results of work redesign will be positive.

The Effects of Anonymity Versus Identified But Confidential Response Conditions In Organizational Research

An important consideration when using questionnaires in organizational research is whether or not they should be administered under anonymous or identified but confidential response conditions. If the responses are to be used with other data (e.g., that obtainable from personnel files), respondent identification is mandatory. Research findings in the literature on the anonymity question suffer from two main inadequacies. First the research subjects may be students, thereby making inferences for research using employees impractical. Second, the research using employees as subjects does not deal with issues of high risk (e.g., a subordinates perception of the technical expertise of his supervisor). The present study recognized these limitations by (1) using employees of a public agency as subjects and (2) dealing with high risk issues. The researchers concluded that under the anonymous condition, responses will be significantly more negative than under the IBC condition.

GRADUATE STUDENTS' SATISFACTION WITH GRADUATE EDUCATION: INTRINSIC VERSUS EXTRINSIC FACTORS

AbstractVarious investigators have proposed that factors intrinsic to a particular situation, i.e., training, education, specific jobs, should have a significantly higher relationship with overall satisfaction than should factors extrinsic to that situation (4, 10). This study was designed to investigate the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic factors on graduate students’ satisfaction with their graduate education. To achieve this purpose, an instrument, the Graduate Education Questionnaire (GEQ), was administered to sixty-two graduate students in business at a large, southeastern university. Essentially, they were asked to rate their degree of satisfaction with a series of variables suggested as being important to their graduate education. Contrary to expectations, the results of this study indicated that a set of variables intrinsic to graduate students’ education did not predict overall satisfaction significantly better than a set of extrinsic variables. Similar results have also been confirmed in othe...

Computerized Answer Sheets: What Effects on Response to a Mail Survey?

Computerized answer sheets in mail surveys have not been systematically examined for their effects on rate of return and response bias. To evaluate these effects, 170 job satisfaction questionnaires, half to be answered on a computerized answer sheet and half on the questionnaire itself, were randomly given to employees of a medium-size city. The use of a computerized answer sheet had no significant impact on the return of questionnaires of varying lengths. Subjects returning the questionnaires, under the two response formats, did not differ in terms of race, sex, age, or educational level. Although the result approached significance, there was no significant difference for expressed job satisfaction between the two formats. Results suggested that computerized answer sheets may be used in mail surveys without significantly affecting rate of return or producing response bias.

Effects of Role-Playing on Perceptions of Union Leaders

By use of a semantic differential scale changes in perceptions of union leaders were examined. While no significant changes occurred in the comparison group, significant changes occurred with the experimental group on six of the descriptive adjectives, two favorable, three unfavorable, and one neither favorable nor unfavorable.

Subordinates' Characteristics, Supervisors' Ratings, And Decisions To Discuss Appraisal Results

The article discusses the results of a 1977 study pertaining to subordinate characteristics, supervisory ratings, and decisions to discuss appraisal results. The research indicated that voluntary d...

An Empirical Identification of the Evaluative Problems of Organizational Development (OD) Change Agents.

Several authors have written about the problems of conducting OD evaluations, but two inadequacies in research on the topic still remain. First, many of these problems are quite likely indigenous t...