The following is a summary of the research and practice implications from: Becker, W.J., & Cropanzano, R. (2011). Dynamic aspects of voluntary turnover: An integrated approach to curvilinearity in the performance-turnover relationship. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96(2), 233-246.

If you are like most managers, you probably view voluntary employee turnover as a costly and undesirable occurrence.  In many instances, this is the case.  However, some types of voluntary turnover can actually be good for your company.  When the employees that leave an organization are poor performers, this may be better for the company than if the employees had stayed.  This is known as functional turnover, and is desirable.

Influences on Employee Turnover

There are numerous factors that influence voluntary employee turnover including performance level and performance ratings.

• Performance Level. As touched on above, performance level is one factor that can influence employee turnover.  The lowest performing employees are the most likely employees to turnover.  They are the highest risk, which as mentioned, is not necessarily a bad thing for an organization and a manager should not be as concerned about this type.  The second most common type of employee turnover is among the highest performers in an organization.  The best performing employees are also the most hurtful for the organization to lose. Managers should work to retain these employees.
• Performance Ratings. These are dynamic in that they are constantly changing for better or worse as an employee’s performance changes.  When these ratings go down for employees, they are more likely to turnover and leave an organization.  Poor performers are even more likely than high performers to turnover after a downward change in performance.  In addition, negative performance ratings will have a greater impact on turnover than positive performance ratings.  In other words, positive performance ratings from a manager will not stop turnover in low performers.  High performers are less likely to be affected by short-term changes in performance whether the ratings have decreased or increased from previous ratings.

What Can be done to Help?

Merit-based, or performance-based, pay may lessen the effects of voluntary turnover in relation to performance level and performance ratings.  High performers are less likely to turnover when they are paid based on performance.  As a manager, you should make sure that an employee is rightfully rewarded for their efforts.  This effect is not found among low performers; the method used to pay a low performer does not influence the turnover rate.

Practical Implications

Managers should provide a fair but rigorous performance rating system that holds employees to high standards.  This will help to get rid of any low performers naturally.  High performers should be adequately rewarded for their work as well because this will reduce turnover in high performers.  Without the right compensation for these employees, an organization will risk losing its move valuable assests.

Interpretation by:

Ashley Niemczyk

DeGarmo Group

The following article is a summary of the research and practice implications from: De Pater, I., Van Vianen, A., Bechtoldt, M., & Klehe, U. (2009). Employees’ challenging job experiences and supervisors’ evaluations of promotability. Personnel Psychology, 62 (2). 297-325.

Understanding why certain employees are promoted is critical at both an individual and organizational level. At the individual level, it is important to understand what factors affect career advancement. At an organizational level, a thorough understanding of what factors lead to employee success in a higher position is imperative for succession planning and managing employees. Therefore, a comprehensive understanding of the various factors that contribute to promotion can be beneficial at both the individual and organizational level.

What Makes an Employee “Promotable”?

Many factors influence whether or not an employee will be promoted in an organization including:

• Job performance – Promotion decisions are often made based on job performance. That is, if employees are successfully completing tasks outlined as part of their current position, it is assumed that they will also have the skills necessary to successfully complete tasks in the next position “up the ladder”.
• Challenging experiences – The type of task that is completed is often another important consideration in promotion decisions. As employees engage in more challenging and complex tasks, their likelihood of success in higher positions increases.
• Promotability evaluations – Many organizations conduct promotability evaluations in order to determine if a supervisor believes an individual could adequately perform at a higher level in the organization. These evaluations can include supervisors’ perceptions of current job performance and work experience.

Each of these factors must be examined simultaneously in order to determine if an employee is ready for a promotion. Job performance alone is not a good indicator, as many times one’s current performance will not be predictive of their success in a more complex position.

Therefore, examining current performance in conjunction with how current tasks overlap (or don’t) with those of the higher position is imperative.  This is because tasks required for a higher position are often more challenging and complex and employees who volunteer for those complex tasks may be more qualified and motivated to take on the tasks that would be required by a higher position.

Ultimately, the decision is based upon the individual’s knowledge, skills, and abilities, to determine whether he or she has the potential to succeed in a more complex position.

Practical Implications

In today’s competitive and ever-changing business environment promotion decisions are important not only to organizations for succession planning, but also essential to individuals interested in career development and advancement. Therefore, several considerations should be taken to ensure success.

• Organizations – To ensure employees are ready for promotion, it is important to evaluate not only the level of current individual performance, but also the types of tasks the individuals are partaking in to determine if they qualify for a higher position.
• Individuals – Individuals wishing to advance their career should be encouraged to take on complex tasks that are a good fit for their current skills and abilities.  During this time, staying connected to the organization and working closely with a supervisor will help to avoid any negative effects (i.e. reduced quality of work, decreased productivity, etc.), as the employee works to increase overall contribution and performance.

Ultimately, the decision for promotion will be up to the supervisor. Many times this decision is important for both the individual and the organization as a whole. Therefore, various factors should be taken into consideration before a final verdict is reached.

Interpretation by:

Elizabeth Allen

The DeGarmo Group

The following is a summary of the research and practice implications from: Kaplan, S., Bradley, J. C., Luchman, J. N., & Haynes, D. (2009). On the role of positive and negative affectivity in job performance: A meta-analytic investigation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94, 162-176.

People are predisposed to experiencing certain levels of approach-related arousal emotions and avoidance-related arousal emotions which influence different aspects of their job performance. Approach-related arousal is generally associated with feelings such as happiness, elation, or feeling energetic. Avoidance-related arousal is generally associated with feelings involving negative emotions. These predispositions, which are called positive affect and negative affect, are different from the emotions a person will experience in reaction to specific events in that affect shows stability across time and even situations. It is important to realize that positive affect and negative affect are not opposite ends of a continuum – one can have high levels of one but not the other, or can have high or low levels of both types at the same time.

Examples of different affect profiles include:

• A person who experiences anxiety or fear (high on both levels). This profile is high in positive affect because anxiety arouses a person to be alert, but it is also high in negative affect because it makes a person want to escape from something.
• A person who feels very relaxed, laid-back (low on both levels). Such a person isn’t experiencing particularly high positive or negative arousal.
• A person who is bored (high in negative affect, low in positive affect). This profile indicates someone who is unenergetic and experiencing negative arousal.
• A person who is cheerful and energetic (high in positive affect, low in negative affect). Such a person isn’t experiencing negative feelings but is experiencing a high level of positive arousal.

Emotions and Performance

Recent evidence provides a clearer understanding of the role of dispositional emotions in work performance. Specifically:

• Positive emotions are related to increased task performance ratings by supervisors
• Negative emotions are related to decreased task performance ratings by supervisors
• Positive affect is associated with increases in organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) – i.e., work behaviors that are helpful but not required of one’s position, like volunteering for overtime or assisting a coworker
• Negative affect is associated with decreases in OCBs
• Negative affect is associated with increases in withdrawal and counterproductive workplace behaviors (CWBs) – e.g., theft, absenteeism, abuse, sabotage, etc.
• Negative affect is associated with increased occupational injury

Explaining these Associations

Evidence indicates that the relationships between positive and negative affect and the dimensions of job performance may be mediated by the factors fairness, job satisfaction, and stress. Mediation refers to a factor being a reason why one variable (e.g., emotion) influences another variable (e.g., performance). That is, emotions are thought to influence one or more of these three factors, which then affect performance, in the following ways:

• Perceived fairness is a significant mediator between positive affect and task performance and OCBs
• Perceived fairness is a significant mediator between negative affect and task performance, OCBs, CWBs, and withdrawal
• Job satisfaction is a significant mediator between both positive affect and negative affect and OCBs
• Job satisfaction is a significant mediator between negative affect and withdrawal
• Job stress mediates the association between positive affect and task performance/OCBs
• Job stress mediates the associations between negative affect and CWBs/withdrawal

Affect and Personality

Evidence also indicates that positive and negative affect, which exhibit high associations with the personality traits extraversion and neuroticism respectively, are not redundant with those traits in predicting task performance. Positive and negative affect predict task performance even after extraversion and neuroticism have been accounted for.

Implications for Practice

These results clearly indicate that emotional predispositions are important factors in predicting success in different performance categories ranging from productive behavior to destructive behavior. Suggestions for capitalizing on this knowledge to maximize organizational performance include:

• Screen and hire applicants in part based on their dispositional affect, especially for occupations that are inherently stressful.
• Introduce stress management resources for employees. Examples include employee assistance programs (EAPs) and gym membership information.
• Take steps to increase employee perceptions of fair treatment at work. This can be done by following standard procedures for everyone, letting employees have some input or “voice” when appropriate, or providing sufficient information about why certain workplace decisions have been made.
• Strive to reduce a negative work climate while also striving to create a positive work environment. This can involve reducing personal conflicts in the organization and promoting cooperation among employees.

Recent evidence is much clearer about the roles that positive and negative affect play in employee performance. Employers should consider these emotional dispositions when making decisions about how to increase or maintain worker performance in their organizations.

Interpretation by:

Donnie Johnson

DeGarmo Group

The following article is a summary of the research and practice implications from: Yang, J. & Diefendorf, J.M. (2009). The relations of daily counterproductive workplace behaviors with emotions, situational antecedents, and personality moderators: A diary study in Hong Kong. Personnel Psychology, 62 (2), 259-295.

Counterproductive Workplace Behavior (CWB) - volitional acts that harm or are intended to harm organizations or people within organizations – is a pervasive problem throughout almost all organizations.  CWB can be directed at the organization (CWB-O; can include tardiness or sabotaging the organization) or at individuals (CWB-I; can include spreading rumors or harming another’s possessions)- a distinction that helps to understand precipitating factors that lead to negative emotions.

CWB and Negative Emotion

CWB is thought to be participated in as a means to reduce negative emotions caused by environmental stressors.

Negative emotions elicit individuals to identify an event as incongruent with their personal goals. Therefore, individuals may have difficulty thinking about their work and performing at satisfactory levels, which in turn, lead to negative affect (emotion) and  CWB.

The “What”

Understanding the factors that precipitate negative emotions may be important in understanding the “what” behind underlying relationships of CWB and its fundamental causes (e.g., supervisor injustice).

It is thought that ambiguous tasks (i.e., uncertainty of project/work descriptions) are an antecedent to CWB-O.  Another underlying cause to CWB-O is dealing with rude customers.  On the other hand, CWB-I is related to supervisor injustice.

Who is More Susceptible?

Identifying employee’s personality traits may enhance understanding just “Who” copes with stressors at work, performs organizational citizenship behaviors, and refrains from CWB. Agreeableness (tendency to be compassionate, cooperative towards others), Conscientiousness (tendency to be disciplined, organized), and Negative Affectivity (pervasive disposition to experience situations/objects in a negative manner) are related to CWB.

Those high in agreeableness and conscientiousness may be predisposed to be good citizens and deal with stressors that lead to negative feelings.  Those high in negative affectivity may experience more negative emotions and engage in more CWB.

Implications for Practice

By understanding the “what” and the “who” of CWB it is possible to identify those factors that contribute to counterproductive work behaviors.

This can be accomplished through:

• Decreasing stress associated with ambiguous situations – clearly communicate the tasks given to employees.
• Decreasing the likelihood of customer aggression – ensure that service is consistently satisfactory and that the service environment (e.g., waiting room, temperature) is sufficiently comfortable.
• Decreasing supervisor injustice – develop interpersonal relations training for managers/supervisors, assure better communication, or have employees provide feedback about supervisor performance/behavior.
• Developing training programs that focus on dealing with negative emotions (i.e., stress management or anger management) – this should lead to higher employee capabilities to manage stressors and ultimately, negative emotions.
• Implementing pre-employment screening to identify personality factors associated with lower CWB – those high in agreeableness and conscientiousness, while low in negative affectivity hold traits that lead to decreased CWB.

Interpretation by:

Adam Bradshaw

The DeGarmo Group

The following is a summary of the research and practice implications from: Christian, M.S., Bradley, J.C., Wallace, J.C., Burke, M. J. (2009). Workplace safety: A meta-analysis of the roles of person and situation factors. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94, 1103-1127.

Occupational accidents account for several thousand fatalities and several million injuries and illnesses each year. Ensuring that employees are performing safety behaviors on the job is one way that employers can help create a safe working environment. The more employees engage in safe working behaviors, the fewer accidents occur on the job. There are two broad factors that directly relate to employees’ safety performance:

• Safety Knowledge – An employee’s knowledge about how to perform proper safety behaviors on the job.
• Safety Motivation – An employee’s motivation to act in accordance with safety precautions.

Each employee’s safety knowledge and motivation are influenced by a number of personality traits and situational factors that help determine his or her propensity to perform safety behaviors.

Personality Traits

The personality traits that relate to safety behaviors are inherent to individual employees and vary from person to person.

• Conscientiousness – Includes responsibility, dependability, and the proclivity to set and achieve personal goals. Highly conscientious employees are more likely to have high safety motivation.
• Locus of control – Individuals with an internal locus of control tend to see themselves as being in control of their environment. These employees will likely be higher in safety motivation because they feel that they have the ability to take control of their own safety in the workplace by increasing their safety knowledge. Employees with an external locus of control do not view themselves as being in control of events in their lives, and may have lower motivation to learn about ways to stay safe at work.
• Risk-taking – An individual’s desire to take risks and act impulsively. Employees with higher tendencies towards risk-taking may be more likely to behave in unsafe ways. Employees with less desire to take risks will likely be less likely to behave in an unsafe way at work.

Situational Factors

Situational factors are environmental influences occurring in the workplace. These can come from the organization itself or from others within the organization, like supervisors or peers.

• Safety Climate – Employees’ perceptions of their organization’s safety policies and procedures. The perceived emphasis that the organization places on safety can have a great impact on how individual employees view the importance of safety in the workplace. A positive safety climate will increase employee safety knowledge through training and supportive policies and will increase safety by offering implicit or explicit rewards for behaving in a safe way.
• Leadership – Perceptions of organizational leaders’ behavior; employees who have positive relationships with their supervisor are more likely to engage in safety behaviors. Employees who view their supervisor in a positive way will be more inclined to reciprocate with positive behaviors, including engaging in safety behaviors.

Implications for Practice

Because worker safety is influenced by person and situation factors, employers can improve worker safety through multiple avenues. The authors of this study make several suggestions about how to do so:

• Conscientiousness, locus of control, and risk-taking influence employees’ performance of safety behaviors. Including assessments for these personality variables in the selection process can help determine which employees will be more likely to engage in proper workplace safety behaviors.
• Use training, both formal (such as classroom training) and informal (information-sharing through supervisors and coworkers), to increase safety knowledge and encourage employees’ safety motivation.
• Improve safety climate to increase employee safety performance behaviors. Do this by establishing organizational safety policies and related practices and communicating the organization’s commitment to employee safety.
• Ensure that managers are properly trained and supported. Remember that when leaders and employees have a positive relationship, employees are more likely to engage in safety behaviors.

Interpretation by:

Michelle Toelle

DeGarmo Group

The following is a summary of the research and practice implications from: Shaw, J. D., & Gupta, N. (2007). Pay system characteristics and quit patterns of good, average, and poor performers. Personnel Psychology, 60, 903-928.

Determining the foundations of a pay system can be a very difficult dilemma. In most cases, the basis of the pay system will boil down to two main options: Seniority-based pay systems and performance-based pay systems. While the decision may seem to have implications solely in the area of compensation management, an inappropriate pay system choice can lead to higher turnover rates, especially for high performers.

Seniority Versus Performance Pay Systems

Seniority-based pay systems are those in which the primary basis for pay increases is the employee’s tenure. It should be noted that seniority-based pay systems can take into account performance, but the main factor is tenure. Some benefits of seniority-based pay include loyalty, retention, and stability of all staff members, regardless of performance levels.

Performance-based pay systems consider performance as the primary basis for pay increases. As with seniority-based pay systems, other factors, like tenure, can be accounted for in a performance-based system, but employee performance, however conceptualized by the organization, is the impetus in determining pay raises.

Performance-based pay systems can actually lead to a climate in which all employees are working hard to achieve maximum performance. While this certainly sounds like an ideal option, there are several downfalls, such as the potential for high turnover rates as average and lower performing employees can get discouraged when they regularly fail to receive merit increases.

A common analogy used to help conceptualize this is the tournament analogy. The ‘winners’ are the high performers who often receive increases, and the ‘losers’ are the average and low performers who are being passed over for increases. As you would expect, those who consistently lose the tournament are likely to stop playing the game, i.e. quitting.

What Factors Can Alter This Process?

• Pay System Communication

The amount of communication about how pay increase decisions are made is crucial to the functioning of all pay systems. Workers should be told not only how the system is designed, but also how their pay increases compare to the averages within their jobs. This can be best accomplished by talking about pay increases as percentages, thus avoiding negative feelings related to salary differences. A final, very important note about pay system communication is that low levels of pay communication have shown links to increased union-organizing activities.

• Pay Dispersion

The extent to which pay differs across employees in the same job is very important to the effectiveness and implications of pay systems based on both seniority and performance. When pay dispersion is high, there are important implications, especially to the quit rates of high performing employees.

In a seniority-based pay system, quit rates of high performing employees are higher when there is a great deal of pay dispersion. The assumed cause of this relationship is that high performing employees begin to perceive that their greater amounts of effort and performance are not appropriately appreciated by the organization. As a result, high performing employees are likely to leave the organization.

Conversely, when pay dispersion is high in a performance-based pay system, high performing employees tend to be the highest earners, as their high performance is being highly rewarded. In this type of structure, high performers tend to stay with the company, as they feel they are well compensated for their hard work. The downside is, once again, that average and low performing employees are more likely to leave.

Practical Implications

When choosing the emphasis for the pay system of any job within your organization, be sure to:

• Determine what kind of balance you would like to find between a pay system that encourages only the high performers to stay, and one that is inviting to the entire workforce.
• Remember that, while it may sound like a good idea to weed out the low and average performers and only retain the high performers, this can lead to an ongoing cycle of high turnover and its associated costs. Mentoring, training, and other forms of coaching should be utilized to try to raise the performance level of the lower performers.
• Ensure that, regardless of pay system, a high level of pay system communication is present to reduce the likelihood of employee discontent and associated union organization.

Interpretation by:

David Daly

DeGarmo Group

The following is a summary of the research and practice implications from: Mesmer-Magnus, J.R., & DeChurch, L.A. (2009). Information Sharing and Team Performance: A Meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(2), 535-546.

Organizations increasingly utilize teams as a basis for structuring work and decision-making. A central reason for utilizing a multi-person format for making decisions is for reaching decisions of higher quality than possible by a single individual.

A key ingredient to successful team-based decision-making is the sharing of information among members. How, and what, information is shared between members greatly impacts the team’s decision-making ability.

Information shared among members of a team can be classified on two dimensions:  uniqueness and openness.

Information uniqueness

The extent to which team members make use of each other’s distinct sets of knowledge can greatly benefit the team.

The more unique the information and knowledge possessed by each team member, the greater amount of information shared among the team, resulting in greater team decision-making performance.

Open sharing of information

The more open members are in sharing information with each other, the greater the opportunity for stronger trust and cohesion between members, leading to increased opportunities for members to interact. The more interaction between members, the more familiar they become with each other, thus more open information sharing.

Effectively utilizing uniqueness and openness

Some important elements for effective team-based decision-making include:

• Create a structure for team discussion.

Initiating a structure for team discussion leads to more unique information sharing, as keeping the discussion focused ensures each individual will be able to share their unique information.

• Compose teams appropriately.

Member diversity is important for increasing the potential for sharing unique information. However, member similarity – not diversity – leads to open sharing of information. Teams must be composed with an appropriate balance of similar (for open sharing) and dissimilar (for information uniqueness) individuals.

• Create a cooperative environment

The more team members cooperate with each other, the more cohesive a group they become, leading to easier sharing of information with one another.

In order for organizations to make the most of team-based formats, they need to ensure members have access to as much relevant information as possible. By focusing on how teams are composed and operate, the greatest amount of unique information is shared openly, leading to more effective decisions.

Interpretation by:

Kathleen Melcher

DeGarmo Group

The following is a summary of the research and practice implications from: Hausknecht, J. P., Hiller, N. J., & Vance, R. J. (2008). Work-unit absenteeism: Effects of satisfaction, commitment, labor market conditions, and time. Academy of Management Journal, 51, 1223-1245.

Employee absenteeism can be very costly to the organization. With the average daily cost for an absent employee estimated at $500, it becomes obvious that an annual decrease of one absence per employee can add up to substantial gains for an organization.

Looking at Absenteeism

Researchers and organizations alike have often considered absenteeism to be an individual problem. The standard solution has been to take action to minimize the absences of those individuals who have higher absenteeism rates. While this is not to be discounted as a strategy, looking at work-units as a whole is emerging as a less resource intensive, but equally effective, method of decreasing absenteeism.

Why Work-Units?

Work-units, a collective group of employees with similar jobs, supervisors, and hierarchical positions in the organization, tend to share similar attitudes about the organization and job. Theoretically, as new members join the group, the collective attitudes of the group influence the new members, leading to more cohesion throughout the group. The two most important attitudes, as they relate to absenteeism, are job satisfaction and organizational commitment.

Job Satisfaction

The collective sense of satisfaction with important aspects of the job, like supervision, coworkers, and job activities, is known as unit-level job satisfaction. It has been found that higher levels of job satisfaction for the collective work group are related to decreased absenteeism. Some of the potential reasons for this relationship include:

• A greater sense of community and involvement among work-unit members
• Greater levels of support from coworkers within the unit for emotional (e.g., coping with personal issues) and logistic (e.g., transportation problems) causes of absenteeism
• The emergence of a culture with an emphasis on coming to work to support the other members of the work-unit

Organizational Commitment

An overall sense of attachment to the organization is described as unit-level organizational commitment. Similar to job satisfaction, more organizational commitment for the work-unit tends to lead to decreased absenteeism. Greater amounts of organizational commitment may lead to a more intense desire to do what is right for the organization, such as attending work whenever possible.

Joint Effects of Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment

While job satisfaction and organizational commitment have been independently related to absenteeism, the combined effect of these two can be exponential. In other words, when a work-unit has high levels of both job satisfaction and organizational commitment absenteeism rates are much lower than when only one of the attitudes is high or when neither is high. Interestingly, it appears that organizational commitment is more important to absenteeism than is job satisfaction, because the beneficial effects of high levels of job satisfaction are minimized when organizational commitment is low, while the inverse is not necessarily true.

Practical Implications

A new picture is being painted regarding absenteeism at the unit-level, suggesting that undertaking process changes designed to increase organizational commitment and job satisfaction of a unit may be fruitful endeavors.

Since the concept of examining unit-level absenteeism is a fairly new one, interventions designed to increase organizational commitment, job satisfaction, or both at the unit-level have not been tested. One suggestion is to implement unit-level absenteeism goals and absenteeism competitions across units, each with substantive rewards, as this may lead to more cohesive groups and greater levels of organizational commitment and job satisfaction.

Final Thoughts

The relationships between organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and absenteeism suggest that work units create their own unique cultures, separate from those of the organization. For the organization as a whole to realize decreased levels of absenteeism, each of these unique cultures needs to be developed such that absenteeism within the work-unit is not an acceptable practice.

Interpretation by:

David Daly

DeGarmo Group

The following is a summary of the research and practice implications from: Reinhard, M., & Dickhäuser, O. (2009). Need for cognition, task difficulty, and the formation of performance expectancies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96, 1062-1076.

As work tasks become more difficult, many people think that a person will generally set lower or more realistic expectations for performance progress, which should subsequently influence the level of performance success. While research has demonstrated relationships among task difficulty, performance expectancies, and performance outcomes, recent evidence is also pointing out that several cognitive factors complicate this relationship.  These factors are:

• Need for Cognition
• Task Difficulty
• Cognitive Strain
• Self-Concept

Need for Cognition

Need for cognition (NFC) involves the extent to which a person desires effortful, challenging thinking that involves such activities as information gathering and problem solving. NFC is not the same as intelligence, but rather is a motivation-related trait.

People with a greater NFC develop more realistic performance expectancies in alignment with task realities, whereas people low in NFC do not adapt their performance expectancies to the perceived difficulty of the task at hand. Specifically, people high in NFC demonstrate greater performance when their expectations are high, but low NFC people do not see their performance improved by having higher expectations.

Thus, people low in NFC appear to not put as much in-depth thought as people high in NFC into how the difficulty of a task can affect the progress made on it. As a consequence, the relationship between expectations and performance only appears to exist for individuals with a high need for cognition.

Task Difficulty

The relationship between expectations, NFC, and performance also depends on the actual difficulty of the task: the relationship exists for difficult tasks but not for easy tasks. This seems to be the case because easy tasks do not require as much effort and ability as difficult tasks. Thus, while high NFC people appear particularly well-suited to gauge how much effort and ability will be required to successfully perform, they only have this advantage over those with low NFC in forming expectations about harder assignments that require deeper thinking.

Cognitive Strain

When people have to divide their cognition (i.e., attention, memory) between tasks, it becomes harder for them to use information about task difficulty to form expectations about how well they will do on the task. Thus, when there is greater strain on a person’s cognition, such as having divided attention, the relationship between task difficulty and performance expectations is reduced or even eliminated. This even occurred for individuals high in NFC. Need for cognition appears to influence the task difficulty-expectancies relationship only when cognitive strain is relatively low.

Self-Concept

The self-concept of ability, or how one thinks of one’s self with regards to a particular ability, also seems to affect performance expectancies. General self-concept is a broader, abstract view of one’s self, while specific or task-focused self-concept involves views of one’s self that are related to specific behaviors. Research indicates that for people low in NFC (but not those high in NFC), general self-concept predicts performance expectancies. The reverse occurs with individuals high in NFC (but not those low in NFC), in that they demonstrate a relationship between specific self-concept (which requires more focused thinking) and their performance expectancies.

Implications for Practice

As revealed in the above summary, several different factors have shown to affect the relationship between the expectations people form about how well they will do and their subsequent actual performance. Some of these factors influence the relationship by conditionally affecting each other in potentially complicated ways.

Drawing from these findings, the DeGarmo Group offers several recommendations for professional practice:

• Research has indicated that expectations affect persistence, which affects performance. Strive to create more accurate expectations of work performance so that people will put in the level of effort needed to do well.
• Need for cognition is a dispositional trait, which means it is a relatively stable personal characteristic. Thus, it can be assessed for selection purposes with jobs that require a great deal of challenging thinking and problem solving. Also, this trait could be assessed to identify low NFC employees who may need additional coaching with regard to developmental activities like training or goal setting.
• Concerns about expectation effects should be focused on difficult work tasks.
• Reduce factors that increase cognitive load, such as strains on attention or memory, when trying to develop performance or goal expectations. For example, take care when working on goal expectations during a developmental performance appraisal with an employee who is at that time distracted by multiple projects or tasks.
• If a person’s self-concept is evoked when trying to develop performance expectancies for him or her, it may be important to consider whether the person is high or low in NFC; their standing on NFC could determine whether their general self-concept or task-specific self-concept influences the expectations they form.

Managing performance expectations so they more closely align with reality may be difficult, but doing so can have a substantial effect on the desired results. When crafting expectations through such processes as performance appraisals and goal-setting, keep in mind such factors as NFC, cognitive strain, self-concept, and task difficulty for producing optimal outcomes.

Interpretation by:

Donnie Johnson

DeGarmo Group

The following is a summary of the research and practice implications from: Kluemper, D. H., Little, L. M., & DeGroot, T. (2009). State or trait: Effects of state optimism on job-related outcomes. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 30, 209-231.

Surviving the various burdens of one’s work and personal lives can be difficult for anyone, not even counting the “Great Recession” of the last two years which has been so stressful for so many people. Morale of employees ranging from CEOs to interns has dropped precipitously in line with the fall in consumer confidence and rising unemployment. However, seeing the “bright side of things” and having hope for the future can relate to meaningful positive outcomes at a personal and an organizational level. These outcomes include:

• Reduced distress
• Reduced burnout
• Greater affective commitment
• Greater job satisfaction

Optimism even seems to play a role in increasing performance. The good news is that these positive effects are not limited just to those individuals who have optimistic personalities. Rather, the effects appear to be greatest when people experience more situational, day-to-day type optimism.

Optimistic Thinking

Optimistic people tend to demonstrate a thinking process that attributes their successes and achievements to their own personal, consistent behavior. They also attribute set-backs or failures to transient causes that can be changed in the future. Pessimists, on the other hand, tend to think that good outcomes in their life are random events that are out of their control, while bad outcomes are the result of an inherent personal defect.

How people attribute cause to successes and failures is important for a variety of mental and emotional reasons, but it is also significant for how people approach challenges: those who believe they have the power to “make good things happen” are more likely to put in greater effort to accomplish their goals.

Optimism exists at both a trait level and a state level. Traits are personality-related, as they are generally stable over time and influence thoughts, feelings, and behavior across a variety of situations. States are generally short-term and often influenced by context.

Thus trait optimists tend to frequently look for the positives in things and do so in many different domains of their lives. People who experience state optimism look on the bright side in more specific and short-term situations, for instance with personal relationships or with their jobs. Thus, people who are generally optimists can at times be pessimistic, and vice-versa.

Optimism and Work Outcomes

Optimism, state and trait, has been linked to experiencing less negative outcomes, such as symptoms of psychological distress and burnout. Burnout includes feelings of emotional exhaustion, emotional/personal detachment, and loss of confidence in one’s abilities.

Beyond an association with a reduction in troublesome outcomes, optimism has been demonstrated to predict greater affective commitment to one’s organization. Thus, more optimistic people may want to remain with their organizations more than less optimistic people do. Further, more optimistic people tend to enjoy greater job satisfaction. Finally, some evidence indicates that higher optimism is related to increased task performance.

A key finding is that state optimism emerges as a consistently significant predictor of these outcomes, while trait optimism does not consistently predict them. These results have been found using techniques designed to isolate the specific contribution of state versus trait optimism. Also, the results for state optimism were found regardless of a person’s predisposition to positive and negative affectivity.

Implications for Practice

Based on these results, we at the DeGarmo Group offer the following advice.

• Because the evidence indicates state optimism is more of a driver of important work outcomes than trait optimism, it may be more important to focus on developing work and organizational contexts that promote optimistic thinking rather than trying to select generally optimistic individuals as employees.
• Strive to incorporate positive thinking and personal efficacy into the work climate and culture.
• Emphasize that employees and managers can achieve success through persistence and that set-backs are temporary and can be overcome. Work to remove barriers to success that result in set-backs, such as poor communication, deficient knowledge and skills, or unproductive organizational strategies.
• Finally, promote hope in the organization by encouraging forward-looking thinking that focuses on building belief in a better, more desirable future.

Interpretation by:

Donnie Johnson

DeGarmo Group