A common form of training or education evaluation involves the examination of course participant reactions towards various aspects of the course for summative evaluation purposes. Participant reactions have been examined within the framework of a comparison between online and face to face courses often with a slight positive weight towards online courses (Sitzmann et al., 2006). Past research on this topic has denoted a need for studies examining the relationship between objective course characteristics and participant reactions. This paper seeks to examine the relationship between participant reactions of a sample of geographically disbursed teachers enrolled in a large, national professional development company and objective course characteristics as communicated by course syllabi within a framework of comparison between online and face to face courses. The delivery format, knowledge base, specificity of course objectives, and student interaction levels were all related to some degree to various participant reactions, although the effect sizes were notably small. In many cases, an interaction between the delivery format and objective course characteristic in question influenced the participant reaction. Objective course characteristics as communicated by the syllabi appeared to be major predictors of participant reactions within the face to face courses that were examined, but not for the online courses. Course development stakeholders are recommended to pay attention to the course syllabus design process and craft quality syllabi that communicate relevant information while concurrently anticipating potential participant reactions. Organizations may be able to align the outline for instruction or “contract” as presented by the syllabus with recommendations as offered by participant evaluations so as to instill consistent expectations within the participants and maximize positive reactions towards the courses within which they are enrolled

Leading multicultural teams is one of the main challenges faced by today’s leaders. The advantages often associated with multicultural teams (e.g., collaboration and integration of different knowledge, ideas, and approaches to a task) are often the major challenges in leading these teams. The literature on effective multicultural teams has identified leadership as an important factor for team effectiveness. Therefore, the goal of this study was to examine the effect of leader social distance in multicultural teams. A lab study was designed to test the impact of experimentally-manipulated leader social distance (socially close or socially distant) on the relationship between team member diversity and team affect, processes, and performance. Results varied for female and for male teams. Specifically, the nature of the interactions between leadership and team diversity depended on the specific cultural dimension measured and the gender of the team. In the end, the impact of diversity on culture in female teams was improved by close leaders (the relationships were positive), and worsened by distant leaders (the relationships were negative) for team affect, processes and viability. For male teams, the impact of diversity was always negative in both leader conditions; however, in distant leader conditions the relationship was more negative. Implications for theory and practice are discussed along with suggestions for future research.

Individuals’ personal improvement efforts are pervasive and the benefits associated with successful self-improvement are both tangible (e.g., healthier lifestyles, more intimate relationships) and intangible (e.g., personal accomplishment, enhanced well-being). As evidenced by research on work-family spillover, self-improvement also has important implications for organizations, as there is considerable crossover between work and non-work domains. The current study tested the effectiveness of Truly Accomplished, an intervention designed to help individuals develop personalized systems for measuring and improving behavior, and examined the extent to which the outcomes associated with such behavior change exhibit positive spillover effects into the workplace. Participants (N = 44) experienced large gains in effectiveness (d = 2.93). Effectiveness gain was predicted by conscientiousness (r = .40), core self-evaluations (r = .42), and psychological safety (r = .64). Learning goal orientation and performance goal orientation interacted with perceived goal difficulty to predict effectiveness gain. Overall effectiveness gain was negatively related to stress and positively related to future change efficacy, job-related efficacy, and satisfaction with the intervention. Job satisfaction and job efficacy increased following feedback, providing some evidence of spillover. Results have implications for individual behavior and attitude change, and its impact seems to extend into subjective well-being above and beyond actual behavior change. Evidence of spillover has implications for organizations, suggesting that TA may be used as a mechanism through which job-related outcomes can be improved.

Mentoring is an important means of developing talent. Typically, mentoring involves two individuals – a mentor, who provides career development and psychosocial support to a less experienced counterpart (the protégé). Because mentoring is related to several desired outcomes such as career advancement, and job satisfaction, it is important to understand which individual characteristics are important to obtaining or providing effective mentoring. It is also necessary to examine potential but unconfirmed outcomes of mentoring such as social network status. This study examined the relationships between several individual characteristics, namely social intelligence and emotional intelligence, and mentoring relationships. In addition, this study examined the relationships between mentoring and social network status. In this nonexperimental study, there were several unique relationships among these constructs. The results indicate a person‟s social intelligence is indicative of their status as a mentor (or not a mentor) but is not related to status as a protégé (or not a protégé). In addition, a mentor‟s perception of the costs and benefits of mentoring were explained by the protégé‟s social intelligence and emotional intelligence. A mentor‟s social intelligence also explained the quality of the mentoring given. Finally, a mentor‟s social network status was related to the protégé‟s social network status but this relationship was not due to the mentoring received. This study provides one of the first examinations of the relationship between mentoring and social network status and provides areas for future research and practical considerations.

Organizations across work domains that utilize teams to achieve organizational outcomes experience change. Resources change. Project deadlines change. Personnel change. Within the scientific community, research has recently surged on the topic of team adaptation to address the issue of change specifically within teams. There have generally been two lines of research regarding team adaptation (task and membership). This effort is focused on membership. Teams are not static— members come and go. The membership adaptation literature has traditionally focused on the performance effects of newcomers to teams. Yet in practice, more and more teams today experience membership loss without replacement. Military units are stretched to capacity. Economic conditions have forced organizations to do more with less. When members leave, they are rarely, if ever, replaced. The very nature of some organizations lends itself to fluid team memberships. Consider an emergency room where a team of nurses and doctors work on Patient A. When a more critical Patient B arrives that requires the expertise of one of those team members, that doctor will leave the Patient A to tend to the Patient B. This practice is common in such work environments. Yet despite the prevalence of this practice, the scientific community knows very little about the impact of losing members on team performance. The current study examines the impact of membership fluidity on team performance. The purpose of this study was twofold. First, there was the need to address an empirical gap in the adaptation literature by focusing on membership changes (loss and loss with replacement) in non-creative tasks. Second was the consideration of the processes underlying adaptation—namely learning, operationalized as the development of effective shared mental models (SMMs). Thus, a primary goal was to determine the magnitude of team performance decrements associated with such changes within a decision-making task as well as the associated changes in team process. Results suggest that three-person intact teams demonstrated greater adaptive performance iv than membership loss with replacement teams. Furthermore, two-person intact teams developed more similar task and team interaction SMMs than membership loss teams when SMMs were indexed as a Euclidean distance score. There were no differences in the level of sharedness regarding task, team interaction or teammate SMMs for three-person intact teams as compared to membership loss with replacement teams. However, when teammate SMMs were operationalized as the personality facets (i.e., the Big 5) in exploratory analyses, three-person intact teams did develop more similar SMMs regarding the agreeableness facet than membership loss with replacement teams. Additionally, when operationalized as Euclidean distance, the agreeableness facet significantly predicted adaptive team performance—specifically, the smaller the distance (i.e., more similar the MMs), the greater the adaptive performance in teams. When operationalized as the similarity index, the neuroticism facet significantly predicted adaptive team performance such that the more similar the SMMs, the greater the adaptive performance in teams. Results suggest that membership fluidity does negatively influence the development of shared mental models among teammates. Furthermore, this study provides additional evidence that teammate and team interaction mental models, which are typically not examined together in team studies, are differentially influenced by membership fluidity and differentially predict outcomes like adaptive team performance. This suggests researchers should include both of these cognitive components of team performance to fully understand the nature of these constructs.

Multiteam systems are an integral part of our daily lives. We witness these entities in natural disaster responses teams, such as the PB Oil Spill and Hurricane Katrina, governmental agencies, such as the CIA and FBI, working behind the scenes to preemptively disarm terrorist attacks, within branches of the Armed Forces, within our organizations, and in science teams aiming to find a cure for cancer (Goodwin, Essens, & Smith, 2012; Marks & Luvison, 2012). Two key features of the collaborative efforts of multiteam systems are the exchange of information both within and across component team boundaries as well as the virtual tools employed to transfer information between teams (Keyton, Ford, & Smith, 2012; Zaccaro, Marks, & DeChurch, 2012). The goal of this dissertation was to shed light on enabling the effectiveness of multiteam systems. One means of targeting this concern was to provide insight on the underpinnings of MTS mechanism and how they evolve. The past 20 years of research on teams supports the central role of motivational and affective states (Kozlowski & Ilgen, 2006; and Mathieu, Maynard, Rapp, & Gibson, 2008) as critical drivers of performance. Therefore it was my interest to understand how these critical team mechanisms unravel at the multiteam system level and understanding how they influence the development of other important multiteam system processes and emergent states. Specifically, this dissertation focused on the influence motivational and affective emergent states (such as multiteam efficacy and multiteam trust) have on shaping behavioral processes (such as information sharing-unique and open) and cognitive emergent states (such as Transactive memory systems and shared mental models). Findings from iv this dissertation suggest that multiteam efficacy is a driver of open information sharing in multiteam systems and both types of cognitive emergent states (transactive memory systems and shared mental models). Multiteam trust was also found to be a critical driver of open information sharing and the cognitive emergent state transactive memory systems. Understanding that these mechanisms do not evolve in isolation, it was my interest to study them under a growing contextual state that is continuously infiltrating our work lives today, under virtual collaboration. This dissertation sought to uncover how the use of distinct forms of virtual tools, media rich tools and media retrievability tools, enable multiteam systems to develop needed behavioral processes and cognitive emergent states. Findings suggest that the use of media retrievability tools interacted with the task mental models in promoting the exchange of unique information both between and within component teams of a multiteam system. The implications of these findings are twofold. First, since both motivational and affective emergent states of members within multiteam systems are critical drivers of behavioral processes, cognitive emergent states, and in turnmultiteam system performance; future research should explore how we can diagnose as well as target the development of multiteam system level efficacy and trust. Second, the virtual communication tools that providemultiteam systems members the ability to review discussed materials at a later point in time are critical for sharing information both within and across component teams depending on the level of shared cognition that multiteam system members possess of the task.Therefore the ability to encourage the use and provide such tools for collaborative purposes is beneficial for the successful collaboration of multiteam systems.

The purpose of this research project was to explore differences in perceptions of organizational justice and related attitudes. Through the use of a 3 x 2 experimental design, participants were randomly assigned to groups in which they were exposed to a fictitious organization’s mock recruitment document publicizing different types of affirmative action programs and varying levels of information regarding the mechanics of such programs. Results did not demonstrate statistically significant differences across groups. Project implications, limitations, and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Incivility is a common form of low-grade aggression that lacks a clear intent to harm, that violates community norms and values for interpersonal conduct, and is often chronic in nature (Andersson & Pearson, 1999; Cortina, Magley, Williams, & Langhout, 2001). Because of its subtleties, it is difficult at times to detect and even more difficult to prevent. However, it is an essential phenomenon to research, due to its ubiquity and negative impact on worker outcomes such as job satisfaction and psychological health (Cortina et al., 2001). Incivility instigated by those in authority may be an even bigger problem, due to victims’ fear of retaliation in the event that they choose to report the incivility (Estes & Wang, 2008). Furthermore, as the global economy shrinks and intercultural interactions become the rule rather than the exception, the norms for “good interpersonal conduct” become blurred, leading to even greater and more frequent incivility (Milam, Spitzmueller, & Penney, 2009; Pearson & Porath, 2005). Yet while it logically follows that incivility may be defined differently across different cultures, little research has been done on this topic. Furthermore, it is unclear how to “fix” the incivility problem in the workplace. Pearson and Porath (2005) suggested that organizational norms strongly endorsing civility could mitigate the occurrence of workplace incivility. The purpose of this research is to test the effects of internal cultural values and external group norms on perceptions of and reactions to leader incivility in a group setting. To test this, I manipulated leader incivility, cultural values, and group civility norms in a laboratory setting. Participants were exposed to a cultural value prime in which they were primed to endorse either high or low power distance values. Then, in a group setting, participants were presented with either a pro-civility or neutral group norm, and proceeded to engage in a group iv discussion with a confederate leader. This confederate leader was inconspicuously selected from among the participants and followed a script in which he consistently engaged in incivility towards both group members while conducting the group discussion. After completing the group discussion, the leader left for leader training and the participants engaged in an interdependent business simulation. At periodic segments throughout the experiment, I assessed participants’ affective states as well as their perceptions of interactional justice and intragroup conflict. Regression analyses generally supported hypotheses regarding the moderating effect of values on perceptions of and reactions to incivility. Power distance predicted individuals’ assessment of justice in the face of leader incivility; the interaction effect of power distance values and civility norms approached (but did not achieve) significance. Justice perceptions were strongly negatively correlated with participants’ experience of anger; anger was found to mediate the relationship between participants’ justice assessments (when the leader was present) and their perceptions of intragroup conflict (when the leader was absent). Power distance values and civility norms both moderated the relationship between anger and individual-level perception of intragroup conflict. At the group level of analysis, relationship conflict negatively predicted group performance, but task conflict positively predicted group performance, when there were pro-civility norms in place. These findings have implications for diverse organizations attempting to promote justice, harmony, and civility within their organizations. Incivility is a nuanced phenomenon and one that is perceived and responded to differently across individuals. Cultural values play a role, but so do organizational norms. Future research is needed to explore further the interactive effects of cultural values and organizational norms, and how organizations can leverage these to prevent the occurrence and negative consequences of workplace incivility.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relations among culture, information sharing, and performance among culturally-homogeneous NATO Officer teams. Forty-eight teams participated from five countries, namely, Bulgaria, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and USA. Teams of four participants were randomly assigned to a role and the task was an interdependent computer-based mission using an adapted version of Neverwinter Nights™ (Bioware, 2003), where they had to communicate among teammates and with non-human players to find weapons caches and other mission objectives. Not one individual had all of the information needed to perform the tasks; thus, they needed to share information with each other. The results of the study suggested that total information sharing was related to both team performance and cultural values (Power Distance, Individualism, and Uncertainty Avoidance). Specifically, Situation Update was the information sharing dimension that was significantly related to team performance. In addition, culture moderated the relations between information sharing and team performance. Specifically, there were hypotheses regarding Individualism moderating the relations between (a) Supporting Behavior, (b) Information Exchange, and (c) Reinforcement / Punishment and team performance. The results were that for high Individualists, the more supporting behavior, the better the teams performed. For low Individualists, the more supporting behavior, the worse the teams performed —a finding that was in the opposite direction than hypothesized. In support of the hypotheses, for high Individualists, as Information Exchange and Reinforcement / Punishment increased, team performance also increased. Conversely, for low Individualists, as Information Exchange and Reinforcement / Punishment increased, team performance decreased. A Task Direction x Power Distance interaction was also hypothesized and supported. Task Direction was positively related to team performance for high- iv Power Distance teams. For low-Power Distance teams, an increase in task direction was associated with a decrease in team performance. In addition, the effective teams exchanged more information and communicated similarly during the beginning, middle, and end of the missions. Moreover, high-Individualist teams were more successful and spent more time communicating about Planning in the beginning, and Situation Update for both the middle and end of the task. In contrast, teams low on Individualism spent more time communicating about Planning for all three phases of the task. There were also interesting rank differences in Information Sharing between senior and junior Norwegian Officers that are noteworthy. Study limitations, contributions, and practical implications for military teams and similar career fields were discussed.

The current study investigated the Pritchard-Ashwood (P-A) Theory of Motivation (Pritchard & Ashwood, 2008) by examining a measure of P-A Theory labeled the Motivation Assessment System (MAS). P-A Theory combines prior motivation theories such as expectancy theory, goal setting theory, justice theory, and needs theory and consolidates them into one integrated theory of motivation. In essence, P-A theory posits that one’s motivation is determined by four perceptions, including the extent to which one believes: (a) his/her actions will lead to results, (b) his/her results will lead to positive evaluations, (c) his/her evaluations will lead to positive outcomes, and (d) his/her outcomes will satisfy his/her needs. The MAS is designed to capture P-A Theory by assessing these four perceptions, and this dissertation examined tenets of P-A Theory by investigating the measurement properties of the MAS via confirmatory factor analysis. Findings showed that the model set forth by P-A Theory had the best fit compared to the other competing models when analyzing MAS data, suggesting the MAS is an appropriate measure of P-A Theory. This research should help to bridge the gap between motivation theory and practice by providing initial evidence of support for a practical measure that captures the full spectrum of employee motivation as set forth in P-A Theory. Recommendations for future research using the MAS to study motivation are suggested.