Using field study data collected from 175 line employees and 114 supervisors, from three manufacturing plants in Mexico this study tested hypothesized indirect relations between supervisors' and subordinates' performance at the individual and group levels of analysis. Specifically, declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge and skills, and motivation were examined as mediators of the relationship between two behavioral performance factors within Campbell's (1990) performance taxonomy, Supervision and Facilitating Peer and Team Performance. The results provided partial support for hypotheses involving the mediating role of procedural knowledge and skills and motivation. In addition, correlations between alternate source performance ratings indicated that peers ratings, self-ratings, and supervisory ratings are dissimilar. The implications of these findings for studying and managing performance in organizations are discussed / acase@tulane.edu

Procedural justice was operationalized through the use of self-appraisal (SA). The effects of SA on employees' attitudes toward the organization and behavior in the organization were examined Data for this study were gathered from employees of the retail outlets of Goodwill Industries in New Orleans. Pre-appraisal data included employees' current attitudes toward the organization (job satisfaction, perceptions of voice in and commitment to the organization, and trust in supervisor) and their supervisors' rating of their OCB. Each retail outlet was randomly assigned a condition--self-appraisal or traditional appraisal (TA.) Each store manager participated in performance appraisal training and the appraisals were conducted shortly thereafter. Immediately following the appraisal session employees were administered a questionnaire to assess their experience in the appraisal session. Twelve to fifteen weeks following the administration of the pre-appraisal attitude and behaviors surveys, those surveys were readministered as post-appraisal measures. All of the instruments used were previously developed and validated. The results were analyzed using analysis of variance, correlation and regression Self-appraising employees reported greater levels of contribution, discussion, participation and influence in the appraisal session than did TA employees. They left the meeting with greater understanding of the issues discussed, more accepting of their work goals, feeling more respected and that they had received more feedback. Subordinates who self-appraised also reported that the appraisal session was fairer than subordinates who participated in traditional appraisal These experiential differences, did not, however help the self-appraising subjects to accept the outcome of the performance appraisal (a small pay raise) more easily; nor were self-appraising subjects' attitudes toward the organization or their OCB changed significantly. Exploratory analysis revealed that the post-appraisal measures were more strongly related to perceptions of fairness of the pay raise than they were to the activities associated with the appraisal process. A unique finding was, for subjects in the traditional appraisal group, only those who reported a good typical relationship with the supervisor reported the appraisal session as fair, but in the self-appraisal condition, subjects reported the appraisal as fair regardless of the type of relationship they held with their supervisor / acase@tulane.edu

In organizational behavior, the most visible line of research on customer service comes from the climate for service perspective (Schneider, 1990), where research has demonstrated significant associations between employee attitudes about their jobs and organizations, and evaluations of satisfaction and service quality. A separate line of research in organizational behavior and sociology has studied customer service as a type of emotional labor (Hochschild, 1983; Rafaeli & Sutton, 1989). Using insights from both of these literatures, in this dissertation I focus on the importance of affect in the service encounter, and predict that (a) employee affective states influence the emotions they display to customers, (b) customers 'catch' the affect of employees through the process of emotional contagion (Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1994) and (c) customer affect influences customer judgements of satisfaction and service quality. The results were partially supportive of the hypotheses. Employee displayed emotions were positively associated with customer positive affect, and both employee emotional displays and customer positive affect were significant predictors of customer evaluations of service quality. The implications of these findings for advancing the study of service are discussed / acase@tulane.edu

Must service organizations have climates for employee well-being to ensure organizational effectiveness, and if so, why? Addressing these important questions, this dissertation introduces and examines three competing models of organizational climate for employee well-being effects on organizational effectiveness, indexed as customer satisfaction. Model I suggests that a climate for employee well-being is an antecedent of a climate for service, which in turn affects service performance and customer satisfaction. Model II suggests that both a climate for employee well-being and a climate for service have main effects on service performance and subsequent customer satisfaction. Model III is an exploratory model that proposes an interaction effect of climates for employee well-being and for service on service performance and customer satisfaction. That is, in the absence of a positive climate for service, the relationship between a climate for employee well-being and service performance (and customer satisfaction) is posited to be negligible. In the presence of a positive climate for service, however, this relationship is posited to be positive Cross-sectional and longitudinal tests of the three models in a sample of 160 bank branches produced high fit indices for each model, but the patterns of path coefficients were not supportive of the models with one exception, namely a longitudinal version of Model I. The discussion highlights two story lines. First, I suggest that the absence of cross-sectional relationships between the 1995 climate for service and the 1995 customer variables, while relationships between the 1993 climate for service and the 1995 customer variables were found, can be explained as the result of changing climates and time lags in climate effects on customer variables. Indeed, post-hoc analyses showed that the climate for service had changed to the worse from 1993 to 1995. Second, in light of the high fit indices for all models, I could not identify one best fitting model. The interpretational ambiguity, which resulted from the high fit indices across the models, is informative because it helps to put past one-model research into perspective. The implications of the findings for service researchers and practitioners are also discussed / acase@tulane.edu

Recent research in the area of organizational obedience and wrongdoing has focused on examining the contextual factors that influence race-based selection in organizations (Brief, Buttram, Elliott, Reizenstein, & McCline, 1995; Pugh, Brief, & Vaslow, 1995; Reizenstein & Brief, 1995). Brief and his colleagues have found that subordinates will comply with instructions from their superiors to use race as a selection criterion even though such instructions are unethical and illegal. These researchers have also found that the degree of compliance from subordinates is a function of their racial attitudes. The current study was an attempt to constructively replicate Brief and his colleagues as well as an attempt to expand on their findings. One topic that these researchers have failed to address is the cognitive processes that subordinates engage in when given an illegal or unethical instruction from their superiors. This study attempted to discover more about organizational obedience by examining the cognitive processes of individuals as they were deciding whether or not to comply with instructions to discriminate against a job candidate. In addition, this study attempted to determine how racial attitudes relate to decision behavior. Support was found for the hypothesis that individuals will comply with instructions not to hire job candidates on the basis of race. Support was not found, however, for the hypothesis that there would be an interaction between condition and modern racist attitudes such that the relationship between scores on a measure of modern racism and compliance behaviors would be stronger in the instruction condition than in the no instruction condition. Potential explanations for this finding were presented. Finally, the hypotheses concerning the cognitions of the participants in this study could not be tested. Nevertheless, post-hoc analyses provided some support for the hypotheses that individuals' cognitive processes reflect thoughts concerning their role obligations and expectations as well as the mechanisms of moral disengagement as they are engaging in discriminatory behavior. These results were discussed in terms of their implications for contributing to our understanding of what is occurring in real organizations that are facing issues of racial discrimination on a regular basis / acase@tulane.edu

Based on theory and research in the areas of role transition, organizational socialization, work-related stress, and psychological contracts, this dissertation presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of likely behavioral and attitudinal responses to temporary employment. The analysis indicates that work history factors, (e.g., number of jobs held over a given period of time), are related to perceptions of stress, satisfaction with temporary work, and overall life satisfaction. Also, duration and frequency of employment within a particular organization are related to job-involvement and affective commitment toward that organization / acase@tulane.edu

The current work aims to understand the relationship between threat perception and ethical decision making in the light of an individual's identity and personality. Specifically, the paper addresses the role of identity and neuroticism in threat perception and conscientiousness in ethical decision making. These relationships are understood in light of a hypothesized link between threat perception and ethical decision making. Results indicate support for a relationship between threat and ethical decision making, but fail to support other study hypotheses. Study results and implications are discussed / acase@tulane.edu

There are often large mean differences between Blacks and Whites on the general mental ability tests used in selection systems. These large mean differences between subgroups can result in adverse impact against Blacks in selection contexts. Therefore, finding ways to reduce subgroup differences, and thus adverse impact, is important. This study investigated whether or not large mean differences between Blacks and Whites would be reduced by using alternative testing modalities (e.g., video-based testing, oral responses). To this end, a theoretical framework is provided through which it was hypothesized that an individual's culture leads to differences in cognitive style. Differences in cognitive style may explain the mean differences found on traditional paper-and-pencil and alternative modality examinations. Analyses of three archival data samples collected for a police department in a southern city were conducted to test the hypothesized theoretical framework. These samples included individuals taking employment tests for the positions of Recruit, Sergeant, and Captain. The results indicated that in some cases, using alternative modalities and test response formats did reduce Black-White subgroup differences. A variety of boundary conditions are provided that may explain some of the aberrant results found. Finally, a discussion of how the results fit within the theoretical framework of culture and cognitive style is provided / acase@tulane.edu

There is a recent rekindled interest concerning the stability, reliability, and predictive validity of skilled performance across repeated measurements. One common phenomenon resulting from the repeated measures of subjects' performance across trials during skills acquisition is the superdiagonal correlation matrix, also known as the simplex matrix, in which correlations of performance decrease as a function of the separation of trials (or as a function of time). The present study collected fifty such correlation matrices from both published and unpublished sources. Next, the standardized item coefficient alphas were calculated from correlations for all possible combinations of adjacent trials to identify rules for which trials should be used to maximize reliability. When early or late adjacent trials showing low correlations were dropped from the computation of the standardized item coefficient alpha, reliability sometimes increased, although not dramatically. The rows of correlations above the diagonal of a superdiagonal matrix were plotted across trials and it was found that the resulting graphs could be used in deciding which adjacent early and/or late trials to drop to maximize the reliability. Seven figures, representative of the different sorts of published matrices, provide graphical decision rules for determining which trials to average to maximize reliability. The standardized coefficient alpha for the entire matrix should also be computed as a benchmark reliability / acase@tulane.edu

The present study extends previous research on prospect theory to decision-making processes in business settings, proposing a psychological climate model as a frame for decisions. Flawed decision processes have been alternatively explained in the literature by self-interested behaviors, groupthink, and by prospect theory. Relying on the explanation provided by prospect theory, this study proposes a model of psychological climate that integrates both the hierarchical model, PCg, (James & James, 1989) and the strategic climate focus or 'climate for something' (Schneider, 1990) as a decision frame, and posits that individuals' goal-orientation---specifically avoid-goal orientation---will moderate the relationship between climate and individuals' reference points for decisions. Using a quasi-experiment with 122 MBA students from Ecuador, this study manipulated climate conditions: a positive condition perceived as beneficial to the individuals' well-being and conducive to gains, and a negative condition perceived as detrimental to the individuals' well-being and conducive to losses. In the simulated business setting, participants confronting a decision under uncertainty were expected to behave as predicted by prospect theory. In general the results do not support the study hypotheses---not even the hypothesized moderating role for avoid-goal orientation. However, those participants in the positive climate condition behaved as expected, and exploratory analysis indicates that individuals' learning-goal orientation moderated the relationship between climate and reference point. The results are discussed in terms of the decision frame, the interpretation of decision choices, individual differences, and participants' background / acase@tulane.edu