Organizational psychology past exam questions

2014

Are the theories and findings of organizational psychology anything more than
common sense?

What selection techniques have proven most valid?

Do personality traits only account for a trivial amount of the variance of job
performance?

Are job-satisfied people more productive at work?

Why are psychologists interested in the Protestant Work Ethic?

Does unemployment impair mental health?

Under what circumstances is ‘biodata’ useful in selection?

Provide a critique of the concept “culture-shock”

Should organizational psychologists listen to work futurologists?

2015

What is “evidence-based management” and why is it important?

What selection techniques have least proven validity and why are they still used?

“Self-report measures like personality tests and interviews are too open to
various biases to be of any use in selection”. Discuss.

Does money motivate people at work?

Evaluate the psychological research on the Protestant Work Ethic?

How does the study of unemployment inform us about the world of work?

Offer a critique of the personality disorders account of leadership derailment at

work.

What sort of psychological problems are met by people who go to work abroad?

Why are some people more entrepreneurial than others?

2016
Is work psychology sufficiently evidence-based?

What are the major difficulties in validating any of the well-established people
selection methods at work?

Which personality traits predict behaviour at work and why?

Compare and contrast any two theories of work motivation.

How has the Protestant Work Ethic informed the psychological research on
people at work?

What is the relationship between unemployment and mental and physical

health?

Why do so many business leaders derail?

What sort of problems to people who choose to work abroad run into?

Compare and contrast the optimistic and pessimistic work futurologists.

2017

“Theories in work psychology are little more than common sense”. Discuss.

What are the major objections to using personality tests for selection?

Write a critical essay on the use of biodata in organizations.

Is money a good motivator at work?

Discuss the concept of the entrepreneurial personality.

“Unemployment impairs mental health”. Discuss.

How does an understanding of the personality disorders help us understand

leadership derailment?

Why are business psychologists interested in culture shock?

Why do work psychologists study the Protestant Work Ethic?

2018

What are the biases that organizational psychologists may face when utilising
personality tests and interviews in selection procedures?
Is there a link between unemployment and mental health? Discuss.
What are the factors that drive some leaders to derail?

In what ways has the Protestant Work Ethic informed our understanding of
organizational behaviour?

Is there a link between remuneration and motivation at work? Discuss.

What is the relationship between personality traits and behaviour at work?

Can we predict the success of entrepreneurial employees within their

workplace?

What are the perils of working abroad?

What are the key challenges in validating the field of work psychology?

Topics

The psychology of behaviour at work

Selection and assessment
Personality at work
Motivation
Leadership
Leadership derailment
Work ethic
Unemployment
Stress at work
Working abroad

Selection and assessment

What selection techniques have proven most valid?
What selection techniques have least proven validity and why are they still used?
 Can talk about in contrast to other techniques
What are the major difficulties in validating any of the well-established people
selection methods at work?
What are the biases that organizational psychologists may face when utilising
personality tests and interviews in selection procedures?

 The validity, strengths and weaknesses of different selection methods

 Why are certain methods difficult to validate?

Personality at work
Do personality traits only account for a trivial amount of the variance of job
performance?
“Self-report measures like personality tests and interviews are too open to
various biases to be of any use in selection”. Discuss.
Which personality traits predict behaviour at work and why?
What are the major objections to using personality tests for selection?
What are the biases that organizational psychologists may face when utilising
personality tests and interviews in selection procedures?
 The extent to which personality traits account for variance in job
performance
 Whether personality tests actually explain anything
 The biases that may result from personality tests

Motivation
Are job-satisfied people more productive at work?
Does money motivate people at work?
Compare and contrast any two theories of work motivation.
Is money a good motivator at work?
Is there a link between remuneration and motivation at work? Discuss.
 The best motivators
 Whether or not money is a good motivator
 The different theories of motivation

Work ethic
Evaluate the psychological research on the Protestant Work Ethic?
In what ways has the Protestant Work Ethic informed our understanding of
organizational behaviour? Take critical viewpoint
 What the Protestant Work Ethic is, and how it has informed our
understanding of organizational behaviour

Unemployment
Does unemployment impair mental health?
How does the study of unemployment inform us about the world of work?
What is the relationship between unemployment and mental and physical
health?
“Unemployment impairs mental health”. Discuss.
Is there a link between unemployment and mental health? Discuss.
 Consequences of unemployment

Working abroad
Provide a critique of the concept “culture-shock” (look at individual differences)
What sort of psychological problems are met by people who go to work abroad?
What sort of problems do people who choose to work abroad run into?
Why are business psychologists interested in culture shock?
What are the perils of working abroad?
 Culture shock
 Problems of working abroad
Selection Techniques
A good technique should:

Interview
Overview
 Judge, Higgins, and Cable (2000) argued that job offers are recommended
when interviewers perceive that the candidate’s profile is congruent with
the interviewer’s perception of organizational values and goals.
 Huffcut, Conway, Roth, and Stone (2001) reported that most interviewers
assess interviewee’s personality traits, followed closely by social skills,
and not that closely by intelligence and knowledge. However, it is
noteworthy that all these variables can be assessed by psychometric tests
and other methods.

Advantages
 Individuals expect an interview and approve of them
 Two types of validity: from organizational perspective and from candidate
perspective. So both parties are able to make judgements of each other
 Social validity of interview: refers to four things:
o How informative they are to the candidate in terms of the total
information they get about the job
o The quality, quantity, and control they have over participation of
the interview process and the type of feedback provided.
 Structured interviews can be quite reliable and predict performance to an
extent, and can work well in conjunction with other methods
 Can assess sociability well. Also a good interviewer could pick up cues to
determine truthfulness of an answer.
Disadvantages
 Reliability: Conway, Jako, and Goodman (1995) – meta-analysis of 160
empirical studies investigating the reliability of interviews. Found
reliabilities of 0.77 when observers watched the same interview. But this
dropped to 0.53 if they watched different interviews of the same
candidate. Some would argue that this is surprisingly good, given that
candidates can respond very differently to different interviewers. (might
seem like an advantage or a disadvantage, depending on how you
interpret).
 Validity: Cook (2004) did a review of a number of meta-analyses and
found that the validity of interviews as predictors of job performance was
r=.15 for unstructured interviews and r=.28 for structured interviews.
 Some might consider this impressive, considering that interviews are
attempting to assess very different issues such as creativity, motivation,
and conscientiousness. But the pessimist may point out that r = .28 shows
that the interview is only accounting for 7-8% of the variance.
 However, a major aspect concerns the skills of the interviewer.
 Cultural differences – culture dictates what meant be asked and the sort
of answers that are given. Legal, anti-discriminatory legislation: in some
 Western countries, people are not required to answer questions about
age, marital status, previous job history etc.
 Interviews are systematically biased against ethnic minority groups,
women, and older people (Cook, 2004). Gender-congruent applicants
more likely to get a role. Women give higher ratings as interviewers. Even
extraneous factors such as perfume can influence ratings.
 Cost intensive in terms of time
 Often overrated in terms of usefulness
How to improve:
 To improve, Cook offered evidence-based recommendations for
improving interview reliability and validity.
o Select interviewers with talent
o Train interviewers in the relevant skills e.g. asking open-ended
questions
o Be consistent in using the same interviewers for all interviews to
help avoid unwanted variance.
o Dyad, board, or panel interviewers are more reliable.
o Have a planned, structured interview

Letters of recommendation

Overview
 Widely used
 Price Waterhouse Cranfield (Dany & Torchy, 1994) review of assessment
methods found that the vast majority of employers in Europe use
references to inform their hiring decisions (especially in Scandinavia and
the UK).
 However, there has been a surprising lack of research on the reliability
and validity of the reference letter
 Assessment of the existing evidence suggests that the reference is a poor
indicator of candidates’ potential
 Judge and Higgins (1998): “Despite widespread use, reference reports
also appear to rank among the least valid selection measures” (p. 207)
 Can be both structured (e.g. ticking checklists) or unstructured.

Advantages
  References are expected and common
Disadvantages
 Highly subjective
 Inter-rater agreements are low at r=0.60 (Murphy & Cleveland, 1996) –
only 36% of the variance in candidates’ attributes is accounted for,
leaving a substantial percentage of variance unexplained
 Judge and Higgins (1998) – the referee’s mood may affect ratings
 Unstructured references can be hard to quantify.
 Low validity: studies on the ERQ (Employment Recommendation
Questionnaire, one of the most well-known structured references)
showed that reference checks correlated .0-.30 with subsequent
performance.
 Meta-analysis: Reilly and Chao (1982) reported a mean correlation of .18
with supervisory ratings. Note: Jones and Harrison (1982) found that
teachers and professors tend to be more accurate because they are more
motivated to maintain credibility as they are likely to write more
references in the future.
 References tend to be very lenient, which produces highly skewed data
(Pollyanna effect) – this is not surprising considering referees are
nominated by the candidate themselves and referees’ primary interests
lie with the applicant and not with the organization (Colarelli et al., 2002).
o Since harsh comments are so rare and weighted more heavily than
positive ones, referees are even more sensitive about making them
o Referees likely abstain from providing a reference if they cannot
be too positive about the applicant, which would explain poor
response rates (Schneider & Schmitt, 1986)
o Referees tend to write similar references for all candidates –
unstructured references provide more information about the
referee than about the candidate (Baxter et al., 1981)
o Hidden agendas: referees might abstain from writing a good
reference for someone they want to keep, or write a really good
one for someone they want to leave
 More positive references for women than for men in an analysis of 532
letters referring to 169 candidates (Colarelli, 2002)
 Questionable whether they can provide any additional information to
psychometric tests, interviews, and biodata.
How to improve:
 Use forced choice – e.g. “likes working in a tem” or “likes working alone”
reduces the effects of leniency and can increase accuracy
 Count key words – e.g. reliable, creative, able etc. Imposes some sort of
order to structured references
 Ask referees to give relative percentiles (still skewed, with the most
common being 80th percentile) – but at least forces referee to distinguish
between candidates.
 May be beneficial to have references after the job has been offered (as a
simple standard legal procedure)

Biodata
Overview
 Biographical data
 Includes information about a person’s background and life history (e.g.
civil status, previous education, employment), objectively determined
dates (e.g. number of years in education, date of first job, time in first job,
years of higher education)
 No common definition for biodata – because very diverse range of things
that may be assessed. But essentially, is using the individual’s past to
determine their future – “the best predictor of future performance is past
performance”
 Typically obtained through application forms – however, not typically
treated or scored as biodata – instead, represent the collection method for
obtaining biographical information and employers often assess this in
non-structured, informal, intuitive ways. However, biodata has several
advantages.
 Proper scoring of data is crucial. 3 ways of doing this. Empirical keying
method (Devlin et al., 1992) – codes each item into yes=0 or no=1 and
weights them according to their correlations with the criterion (derived
from previous samples). Factorial keying, where items are grouped
statistically in order to reduce the data to fewer general factors, and
rational keying, which is where meaningful items are included according
to specific features of the job.
 Biodata is different to standard personality inventories (which are scored
in terms of reliability or internal consistencies, but not on their
association with the criteria they are used to predict). In this sense,
personality measures are internally constructed and biodata items are
externally constructed
 Factorial keying

Advantages
 Empirical keying: It collects biographical data that has previously been
demonstrated to correlate with desirable work criteria (job performance)
  It incorporates “weighted scoring” by which questions are coded and
treated as individual predictors of relevant work criteria.
 Statistically sound
 Objective: Same questions is asked of everybody and assessment of
responses is consistent
 Item selection can reduce discrimination against certain groups
 Cost: research and development costs may be high but once these
criterion are developed, it’s cheap. Can be done by a computer
 Checkability: it’s possible to check responses to detect faking
 Validity: Schmidt and Hunter (1999) meta-analysis of 85 years of validity
studies estimated a validity of .35 for biodata.
 Bliesner (1966) showed that validity was higher for women than for men
(.51 vs .27).
 Self-presentation: Applicants are more comfortable discussing
biographical information than discussing personality traits
 Provides incremental validity over established personality and cognitive
ability measures. These studies are important because of the known
overlap between these measures and data – showing that even if
personality and intelligence are measured and taken into account, biodata
scales provide additional useful information about the predicted outcome.
 Dean and Russell (2005) 142 biodata items and 6,000 newly hired air
traffic controllers. Combined rationally designed items with traditional
empirical keying. Biodata correlated with cognitive performance almost
as highly as did cognitive ability. Their study also demonstrates the
validity of biodata as a measure of personality. Some postulate that they
might be even better than traditional self-reports of personality, since
they place greater emphasis on verifiable and objective measures, and are
less likely to be affected by faking.
 Traditionally, inclusion of biodata items has been guided by a purely
empirical approach (empirical keying) based on any variable that has
been found to correlate significantly with the desired outcome. Yet this
approach is lacking in theoretical grounding, uninformative, hard to
justify, and quite job-specific. Thus, rational keying has been proposed in
order to build biodata scales that target relevant constructs in a
conceptually valid way. As for the scoring of biodata items, the best
approach seems to be to identify higher-order factors (measured by a
group of single variables) in the manner of personal inventories.
Disadvantages
 Biodata criteria has to be developed for each job – can be cost intensive
 Does not generalize well to other samples
 Does not advance our theoretical understanding of the reasons for which
items predict success (Mount et al., 2000)
 Homogeneity vs heterogeneity
 Validity often diminishes over time
 Validity tends to vary depending on job type – consistently more valid for
clerical jobs, followed by managerial jobs. Sales jobs have yielded
heterogeneous results, and military jobs have produced consistently
lower validities.
Improvements
 Schmitt and Kunz (2002) Suggested that in order to improve, candidates
should elaborate on their answers – also helps avoid faking – e.g. “Can you
show three examples of were you worked well under pressure?”
 Respondents tended to score lower and more modestly in questions that
asked for elaboration – scores on elaborative items were .6 of a SD lower,
which tends to be the difference between individuals in a laboratory
study asked to answer honestly and those asked to “fake good” (Ellingson,
Sacket and Hough, 1999)
 Include warnings or fake items to prevent lying
Overall:
 No doubt represents a valid approach to predicting occupational success
 Meta-analytic estimates provide validities around .25, and this is probably
conservative
 As reliable as the best personality scales, although the fact that biodata
overlaps with both cognitive ability and personality measures limits the
appeal of biodata.
 That said, incremental validity studies show that even when established
personality and intelligence measures are take into account, biodata still
predict performance.
Look up incremental validity of biodata

Situational judgement tests

Overview
 Defined as a “pencil and paper test designed to measure judgement in
work settings” (this definition is too broad, since measures of cognitive
ability could fall under this, but it is a useful start)
 They are a measurement method that can be used to examine various
constructs.
 Most include hypothetical scenarios that occur at work, requiring
knowledge or judgement
 Correlations between SJTs and cognitive ability measures have been
variable.
 A variety of scoring methods are available
 How valid? McDaniel et al (2001) – conducted a meta-analysis of 102
coefficients and over 10,600 participants. Corrected overall validity was
almost .35, which is quite high!
o SJTs that took into account the specific requirements of the job
were more valid than those that did not
o SJT that used general questions were more valid than those that
used detailed questions
o SJTs that were “g-loaded” were more valid than those with low “g-
loadings” (g-loaded = correlated with intelligence)
o Concurrent studies (studies that assessed SJT and criterion at the
same time) were better than predictive studies (which assessed
SJT at one time, and then relevant work outcomes at time 2, e.g. 3
years later).
 Do SJTs measure a construct different to intelligence?
 o Corrected correlation between intelligence and SJT is .50 according
to McDaniel’s meta-analysis. But have argued that SJTs have
incremental validity over and above cognitive tests when it comes
to explaining work-related outcomes.
o Estimated that a composite of cognitive tests + SJTs would explain
an additional 5-6% of variance compared to taking either test
alone
 What do they actually measure?
o Are a method rather than a construct. Measure individual
differences and therefore latent psychological constructs.
o Important to identify the psychological attributes that underlie
performance differences in SJTs
o Early measures believed to measure “keen judgement and deep
appreciation of human motives” – “social intelligence”
o In most cases designed to assess common sense, general
knowledge, experience, rather than logical reasoning
Advantages
 High validity - .35 in predicting performance, and estimated to predict 5-
6% more variance than just having a cogntivie ability test
 High reliability
Disadvantages
 Requires employers or recruiters to design, choose, administer, score, and
interpret scores. – Interpretation may not be the best
General mental ability
Overview
 Most employers do not actually test for aptitude when selecting their
workforce.
 GMA tends to go up with prestige of the job
Advantages
 The predictive power of GMA is rivalled by no other psychological trait
Disadvantages
 Should not be used as a single predictor of job performance as some traits
(such as conscientiousness and integrity) have incremental validity over
and above GMA, explaining additional variance in occupational outcome.
 Use maximum performance to predict typical performance
 Rarely account for more than 30% of variance (Schmidt and Hunter,
1998)

Most valid:
 Biodata
Least valid:
 Reference letters

Personality
Overview
 Personality traits: widely defined as stable, inner, personal dispositions
that determine relatively consistent patterns of behaviour (including
feelings and thoughts) across different situations (Chamorro-Premuzic,
2007)
 Whilst GMA is traditionally measured using objective performance tests,
personality traits are assessed via subjective measures (self or other
reports)
 Not just measured via self-report inventories – observational tests can also
measure personality.
 Most common forms of observation in personnel selection are interviews
and biodata.
 Longwithstanding evidence that personality of the candidate/interview
affects employers’ decisions, even though most interviewees fake
(Levashima & Campion, 2007).
 Which personality traits should be assessed?
Models of personality
Costa and McCrae’s Big 5
 Have shown that a lot of personality traits can be lined up along these five
dimensions
 Eysenck’s Psychoticism is represented in terms of low agreeableness, high
openness, and low conscientiousness
Conscientiousness is by far the best predictor of work performance
 Assesses individual differences in responsibility, dutifulness,
achievement-striving, organized planning and self-control
 More likely to set themselves ambitious goals and work hard to
accomplish them (Gellatly, 1996)
 Measures vary differently, with some more focused on the “ambitious”
aspect and some more focused on the “tidy” component
 Is correlated with integrity inventory, suggesting another important
aspect is dutifulness or moral integrity
 Individuals who are dependable, persistent, goal directed tend to be good
at virtually any job – Mount and Barrick, 1996
 GMA tells you “can do”, conscientiousness tells you “will do”.
 Effect of conscientiousness probable already underestimated, since,
conscientious people are more likely to go for the good jobs anyway
 Negatively correlated with pretty much every unhealthy behaviour, such
as drinking/using drugs, violence, risky sex, suicide (Bogg & Roberts,
2004)
 Also associated with academic performance outcomes
Neuroticism is negatively associated with job performance
 Emotional stability
 Main meta-analysis reveals different outcomes:
 Hough et al (1990) found significant associations between neuroticism
and different measures of military performance (ie effort and leadership,
personal discipline)
  Salgado’s meta-analysis (1997) yielded only a modest correlation
between neuroticism and training success in civil corporations
 May not be negatively correlated at all
 Some postulate that there might be a benefit to being neurotic
 Matthews (1999) – reported that air traffic controllers performed better if
they scored high in neuroticism
 Few have looked at the curvilinear relationship
 Do not differ in cognitive ability, but tend to underperform under
pressure
Extraversion
 Associated with warmth, gregariousness
 Coupled with agreeableness, forms the “happy personality” – stable
extraverts are better adapted and happier than their introverted
counterparts
 Judge and Erez (2007) found that stable and extraverted individuals
performed better than those who were just stable or extraverted alone
Agreeableness
 Seems to be advantageous in jobs where interpersonal interactions or
getting along is paramount
 Predicts performance in customer service jobs (Hurtz & Donovan, 2000)
quite well
 Moderates the effects of conscientiousness
 But cooperation is not always a driver of productivity and can hinder
success
 In situations where collaboration and competition are mutually exclusive,
Agreeableness may be negatively linked to job performance
 SO: most empirical evidence actually suggests that Agreeableness is
negatively correlated with work success (operationalized in terms of
income). Bourdreau, Boswell, and Judge (2001) -.24 for US and -.11 for
Europe.
 Consistent with the idea that high achievers, and especially leaders, may
be characterized by higher levels of Machiavellianism, which assess an
individual’s willingness to take advantage of others in order to
accomplish their own goals (Austin, Farrelly, Black, and Moore, 2007)
Openness
 Correlated with crystallized intelligence
 Artistic professions require high levels of openness
 Inconsistently related to work performance, seems only relevant in
artistic jobs, though it does affect training success (Chamorro-Premuzic %
Furnham, 2006)
Eysenck
Cattell’s 16 personality factors
Hexaco

Advantages
 A common objection is that these reports are subjective. But in actuality,
there might be some advantages to having subjective reports – they can
take into account how people have been performing most of the time
 (aggregate data). Objective tests may not be accurate – other factors (e.g.
test anxiety or fatigue) may interfere.
 Less likely to discriminate against any ethnic or national group, and thus
may offer more equitable bases for selection
 Provides motivational information that GMA tests do not
 Individuals are unlikely to fake bad, so good for filtering out the people you
don’t want
 Studies in which faking was detected showed that personality still
predicted job outcomes (Hough et al., 1990)
 Being able to fake is an adjustment in itself – if you can fake socially
desirable responses on a test, then you can probably fake socially desirable
responses in the workplace too
Disadvantages
 Individuals behave differently depending on the situation – some traits
more advantageous in certain situations
 Weaker predictors of job performance than other cognitive ability tests
 FAKING – Donovan, Dwight, and Schneider (2014) utilized within subjects
study whereby participants completed a psychometric measure whilst
applying for a pharmaceuticals job. Found more socially desirable scores
in the applicant test compared to the incumbent (where there is less
motivation to fake) – 50% of participants were identified as having faked
(by moving significantly towards the socially desirable dimension in the
applicant process)
o Even if the structure and overall validity of personality inventories
might not be affected by faking, faking produces change in the rank
order of candidates, meaning faking will influence hiring decisions,
because some may fake more than others (Mueller-Hanson,
Heggestad, and Thornton 2006)
o
Reliability
Validity – how much variance?
 Validity varies with the type of job – according to one of the first
quantitative interviews, highest with sales jobs, and lowest with
supervisory jobs
 Meta-analysis by Hough (1991) – All personality constructs (including
extraversion, agreeableness, locus of control) predicted job proficiency to
be only .08
 In a meta-analysis by Judge, Heller, and Mount (2002) – Neuroticism: -.29,
Extraversion:.26, Agreeableness correlated positively in cross-sectional
design but negatively in longitudinal design, and conscientiousness: .27
 Extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness positively correlated
with job satisfaction, neuroticism negatively correlated, and openness
unrelated (Judge, Heller, and Mount, 2002).
Objections to personality tests
 Subjective
 Faking
 Weaker predictors of job performance than personality tests
Improvements
 Overcoming the problem of faking: Villanova, Bernardin, Johnson, &
Dahmus (1994) have argued that forced-choice scales may reduce the
likelihood of faking – but this may still not prevent “street-wise”
individuals from faking. In fact, might make it easier to fake
 Possible to shift from interrogational/inquisitive approach to personality
assessment to a more participative, interactive, collaborative process
where information is not withdrawn from candidates and where the
constructs being assessed are clearly specified to the candidates
o If they understand the importance of fitting in, they may be more
likely to respond honestly
Work ethic
What the Protestant Work Ethic is, and how it has informed our understanding
of organizational behaviour

What is an attitude?
 An attitude is an evaluation of subject matter, which can be a person, an
object, or an abstract idea
 Attitudes are relevant to many disciplines, including marketing,
advertising, political behaviour, and health
 Can be very specific, or can generalize across objects – attitudes generally
positive or negative
 Attitudes towards abstract ideas are considered values
 Usually studied independently of behaviour, largely because the
relationship between attitudes and behaviour has been found to be
tenuous
 This is also the case for job attitudes and work behaviour
 However, when examining more abstract aspects of work related
outcomes, rather than specific behaviours, attitudes have been found to
significantly predict outcome variables
Work related attitudes, values, and beliefs
 Job satisfaction – an emotional state resulting from the evaluation of an
individual’s experiences in their current job. Personality traits (e.g.
neuroticism) have been found to predict this variable
 Organizational commitment – an individual’s commitment to their
organization. A feeling of congruence between values and beliefs of
individual and organization
 Core self evaluations – evaluation of self, self-esteem, self efficacy, locus
of control, emotional stability
What is work ethic?
 Your attitudes and beliefs towards work? How you go about your work? A
commitment to the value and importance of hard work.
 Why look at work ethic? Because there is huge variance unaccounted for
in job performance
 Research into work ethic started with Max Weber’s work on Protestant
work ethic
o His idea was that differences in economic development in
countries is explained by religious values
Protestant work ethic
 Be prudent, be diligent, and ever about your lawful business. Do not be
idle, for time is money.
 Cultivated your credit-worthiness and put it to good use; credit is money
 Be punctual and just in the repayment of loans and debts for to become a
person of known credit-worthiness is to be a master of other people’s
purses. Be vigilant in keeping accounts.
 Be frugal in consumption and do not waste money on inessentials
 Do not let money lie idle – invest it because even the smallest sum might
be profitable
Measurement of work ethic now: several dimensions
 Centrality of work – belief in work for work’s sake and the importance of
work
 Self reliance – striving for independence in one’s daily work
 Hard work – belief in the virtues of hard work
 Leisure – pro-leisure attitudes and the beliefs in the importance of non-
work activities
 Morality and ethics – believing in a just and moral existence
 Delay of gratification – orientation towards the future, the postponement
of rewards
 Wasted time – attitudes and beliefs reflecting active and productive use of
time
The multi-dimensional work ethic profile (MWEP)
 A 65-item self-report measure assessing all 7 dimensions
 Reliable
Validity of MWEP
 Predicts supervisory ratings
 Related to but differentiable from conscientiousness, need for
achievement, job satisfaction, job involvement, and org. commitment
Generational differences in work ethic?
 Discussion about whether older generations (such as baby boomers) have
higher levels of work ethic than those in young generations, such as
millennials
 However, evidence is mixed
 Review of 105 studies found no effect of generational cohort on work
ethic endorsement (Zabel et al., 2016)
 So where are the differences between generations?
 Twenge (2010) – most studies show that GenX (1965-1981) and GenMe
(born after 1982) rate work as less central to their lives, values leisure
more, and express a weaker work ethic compared to Baby Boomers
(1946-1964) and Silents (1925-1945).
 But extrinsic work values (e.g. salary) are higher in GenMe and GenX
 No generational differences in altruistic values
 Conflicting results appeared in desire for job stability, intrinsic values (e.g.
meaning) and social/affiliative values (e.g. making friends).
 GenX and GenMe are consistently higher in indivualistic traits
What do generational differences mean for organizational psychologists?
 Different generations have different attitudes, therefore organizations
need to customize their culture/processes to changing attitudes
 GenMe for example need to have a good work-life balance and flexible
schedules.
 Different attitudes does not mean a lower work ethic
Relationship between work ethic and well-being
 Feeling you have control over your own outcomes – linked to increased
psychological wellbeing
 Having a high work ethic means individuals are more likely to give
themselves credit for positive work outcomes
 But what happens when an individual is unemployed…?
Unemployment
How does the study of unemployment inform us about the world of work? How
does it impair health?

History of research
 1900’s – Rowntree & Lasker (1911) – unemployment – a social study
 1980’s – Jahoda (1987) – employment and unemployment
 Been researched as both an independent and dependent variable
 During times of high unemployment, get more research on “ordinary”
individuals
 During times of low unemployment, get more research on “exceptional”
individuals

Jahoda’s work
 Marienthal – sociography of an unemployed community
 Finances – consistent reduction
 Physical wellbeing – increase in cases of TB
 Emotional state – apathy, despair, resignation
 Personal relationships – within family problematic
 Social interests and activities – reduction
 Political activities – became apolitical
Jahoda’s question
 If modern unemployment is less disturbing than previously (in the 1930s)
one could conclude that it was due to the standard of living in shaping the
experience
 But if modern unemployment is as disturbing psychologically under
unquestionable better living circumstances, economic desperation must
count less in explaining the experience
 What is it about being work deprived that is so unpleasant?
The latent function of work
 Work as a source of income
 Work is a source of activity
 Work structures time
 Work provides regularly shared experiences
 Work is a source of personal status and identity
 Work provides experience of creativity, mastery and a sense of purpose
Is all work equal?
 Warr (1987) – good jobs have more:
o Money
o Variety
o Goals/traction
o Decision latitude
o Skill use and development
o Security
o Interpersonal contact
o Values social postion
 o LESS psychological threat
Smith (1985)
 There is a reciprocal relationship between unemployment and health
How do we test these relationships?
 Archival studies
o Unemployment and suicide (positive correlation)
o Problems: reliability of statistics, intervening variables
 Macro-economic studies
o Model testing: how economic changes: inflation, costs of living,
average income effects, mental health admissions records
 Experimental/longitudinal studies
o Following people – usually school leavers – in and out of work to
see how their work status affects their morale
o Feather & O’Brien (1986) – there is a definite causal relationship
between employment/unemployment and mental health but we
are not sure of the psychological processes/mechanisms
o Many personal costs of unemployment are hidden
o Unemployment affects predominantly mental health which in turn
affects physical health
Paul and Moser (2009) meta-analysis
 Effect of unemployment on mental health was reviewed across 237 cross-
sectional and 87 longitudinal studies
 Average overall effect size was d = .54 with unemployed people showing
more distress than employed people
 Significant difference was found for several indicators of mental health
(mixed symptoms of distress, depression, anxiety, psychosomatic
symptoms, subjective wellbeing, and self esteem
 Average number of people with psychological problems amongst
unemployed was 34%, compared to 16% among employed individuals
 Moderator analysis: men and people with blue-collar jobs were more
distressed by unemployment than women and people with white collar
jobs
 Linear and curvilinear moderating effects of duration of unemployment
were also identified
 The negative effect of unemployment on mental health was stronger in
countries with a weak level of economic development, unequal income
distributions, or weak unemployment protection systems compared to
other countries
 Meta-analyses of longitudinal studies and natural experiments endorsed
the assumption that unemployment is not only correlated with distress
but also causes it
 Intervention programs for unemployed people found to be effective in
ameliorating unemployment related distress among continuously
unemployed persons (d=-.35)
Self-concept, identity, and unemployment
 The unemployed are defined by what they are not
 Feelings of being in a total institution
 Stigmatism, withdrawal, passing as “other”
  Norms of reciprocity unfulfillable
Stage-wise theories of reactions to unemployment
 Theories vary, but Briar (1977) proposes:
o 1. Shock
o 2. Optimism
o 3. Self-blame
o 4. Depression
o 5. Inertia
 Kü bler-Ross change curve – changes as a function of morale/competence
depending on emotion felt over time
o Shock
o Denial
o Frustration
o Depression
o Experiment
o Decision
o Integration

o
 Warr’s vitamin model
o Assumes that mental health is influenced by the environment in a
manner that is analogous to the effect of vitamins on physical
health
o Some vitamins (such as C and E) improve health up to a certain
standard but increased consumption does not have a further effect
(constant effect)
o Other vitamins (such as A and D) improve health up to a certain
point but increased consumption has a detrimental effect
(additional decrement)
o Job characteristics with a Vitamin CE effect: job salary, safety, task
significance
o Job characteristics with a Vitamin AD effect: job autonomy, job
demands, social support, skill utilization, skill variety, task
feedback
Problems with Warr’s Vitamin Model
 That his list of 9 vitamins may be enlarged (subdivided) or reduced
(reclassified)
  When looking at the relationship between these features at work and
mental health it becomes increasingly difficult to define mental health,
which itself has many components and conceptualizations and
classifications
 There is a paucity of empirical evidence in favour of certain features of the
model and by definition a plethora in others
 Criticism that the model is exclusively a situation or environment centred
model in that it looks at the effects of job characteristics on mental health
and not at individual differences
Attributions for unemployment
 Individualistic: People choose to be unemployed
 Societal/structural/sociological: when people become unemployable
 Fatalistic/geopolitical: world trade factors change economics which
influence individual and mass unemployment
 Employed and unemployed individuals offer different explanations for
unemployment

Individualistic
 Lack of effort/laziness
 Inability of unemployed people to adapt to new conditions (employed
more likely to say)
 Unemployed are more likely to agree that they don’t try hard enough to
get new jobs and that there is an unwillingness to move to places of work
 Employed people are more likely to attribute poor education and
qualifications
Societal
 Influx of immigrants have taken the jobs – employed people more likely to
say
 Incompetent industrial management with poor planning
 Weak trade unions that do not fight to keep jobs (employed more likely to
say)
 Trade unions have priced their members out of a job
Fatalistic
 Bad luck (Employed more likely to say)
 Physical illness or handicap (Employed more likely to say)
 World-wide recession and inflation (Unemployed more likely to say)
 Introduction of widespread automation (Employed more likely to say)
Conclusions
 Diverse studies point in the same direction
 Varied consequences of being unemployed
o Increased physical and mental illness
o Lowering of self esteem
o Attempts to make sense of and explain the causes of
unemployment
o Vicious and virtuous cycles
 Worst of all is the negative spiral that results from being unemployed
 Unemployment can lead to shock and apathy, which in turn can lead to
external locus of control, which can lead to ineffective job strategies. This
 leads to lack of chances of getting a job, which leads to increased and
prolonged unemployment.
 However, there are still many questions, such as ones of individual
differences and intervening variables.
Working abroad
What is culture?
 It is like an iceberg
 At the tip – social etiquette – do’s and don’ts
 Underlying this are values/beliefs, patterns of thinking and patterns of
communication
 Social, economic, historical, and ideological factors
 Vary across country, organizations, etc
o Not homogenous
o Cultures are dynamic, inconsistent, and multifaceted
o Corporate culture is defined as a system of informal rules that
spells out how people are meant to behave most of the time (Deal
& Kennedy, 1982)
Culture affects everyone differently
 Unclear, likely to be individual differences in the effect of culture on
behaviour
 Academic research has mostly focused on Western, English speaking
cultures
 Potentially naïve assumption that the influence and processes underlying
organizational performance are the same across cultures
Culture shock
 The early and profound experiences of an individual in a new culture
 Something unexpected about the new culture but may potentially lead to
a negative evaluation of your home culture or the new culture
 Derived from anthropology – Oberg (1960) mentioned 6 factors
o Strain
o A sense of loss and feelings of deprivation
o Rejection – rejected by or rejecting others
o Confusion – in role or expectations
o Surprise, anxiety, disgust, and indignation – once aware of cultural
differences
o Feelings of impotence – unable to deal with new situations
Adaptation strategies
 Cleveland, Mangone & Adams (1960) cited two extremes of adaptation
continuum
 Individuals who act as if they had never left home
 Individuals who immediately go native
 No understanding of why some individuals experience culture shock and
others don’t
What about the upside to culture shock?
 There is general agreement that exposure to a new culture is stressful
 But little research has examined the potential benefits to experiencing
culture shock
o Sensation seekers – individuals who are energized by different and
exciting environments
o For those whose initial discomfort leads to growth and learning
What determines culture shock?
 The quality and quantity of culture shock has been shown to be
influenced by the amount of difference between the home culture and the
culture they are visiting/working in
Theories that explain culture shock
1. Psychology of loss – akin to grieving for home culture
2. Locus of control – fatalistic vs instrumental
3. Social Darwinism – selective migration
4. Realistic expectations
5. Calculation based on negative life events
6. Social support network
7. Value differences between home and host culture
8. Social skills
Three theoretical groupings
 Cultural learning perspective – acquiring culturally relevant social
knowledge
 Stress, coping, and adjustment process – personality, social support
network, skills and abilities
 Social identity and inter-group relations – how individuals see themselves
and their groups affects how they deal with others from a different group.
Social and individual factors influence a person’s sense of themselves
The U-Curve hypothesis
 Honeymoon stage
 Crisis
 Recovery
 Adjustment
Hofstede’s dimensions for culture
1. Power distance
2. Individualism vs Collectivism
3. Masculinity vs Femininity – competitive vs consensus orientated
4. Uncertainty avoidance
5. Long-term orientation vs short-term normative orientation
6. Indulgence vs restraint
Why is this important for psychologists?
 An estimated 232 million people work outside of their countries of origin
worldwide (OECD, 2013)
 Two types of expatriate – corporate sponsored and self-initiated
 Expatriates typically represent high-skilled talent
 Working abroad has been linked to successful future leadership for the
individual but what is the ROI for the organization that sponsors working
abroad?
Expatriate failure
 Defined as expatriates who have to be recalled or dismissed because of
the inability to function effectively in a foreign assignment
 Failure rate is estimated between 10-40%
 Top 2 reasons for expatriate failure:
o Inability of manager’s spouse and inability of manager to adjust to
a different physical or cultural environment (Tung, 1981)
Key themes that have been examined by research (Kramer, Bolino, & Mead,
2016)
 Expatriate failure
 Expatriate selection and training
 International adjustment
 Spouse and family adjustment
 Repatriation issues
 The role of expatriate assignments
 Gender issues
 Reasons managers accept expatriate assignments
Is manager effectiveness universal?
 Black and Porter (1991) examined three samples of managers: US
managers in the US, US managers in HK, and HK managers in HK.
 Although the US managers reported similar behaviours in the US and HK,
behaviour was related to performance in the US but not in HK. These
behaviours did not predict job performance for HK managers in HK
either.
What leads to manager effectiveness? Expatriates reported the following (Arthur
and Bennett, 1995)
 Technical skills
 Host-country language fluency
 Intercultural competencies
 Relational skills
 Family support
 Flexibility and adaptability
Other factors that lead to manager effectiveness:
 Cultural flexibility and sensitivity
 Extraversion, Emotional stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and
open-mindedness.
 Cross-cultural training
Coming home is not that easy
 Repatriation issues
 International experience not valued at home
 Lack of interest from colleagues to learn about international experience
 Career growth stalled
 Lack of organizational support
 Gap between expatriates expectations about return and the reality of
return
 Repatriate dissatisfaction leads to employee turnover – employees that
the organization has just invested in by sending them overseas
Issues with research
 Mostly qualitative, cross-sectional and self-report data
 Heavily driven by practitioner needs
 Although factors related to expatriate success have been examined, little
appears to have changed
 Very focused on the individual – little examination of how
environment/supervisor/HR practices in host country influence
expatriate success
 Little research on ROI for the organization that sponsors expatriates
 Most leveraged theories are from US domestic research


What selection techniques have proven most valid?

Introduction
 Organizations often use cost-benefit analysis to determine selection
techniques
 Why is selection important – costs of getting it wrong, costs of getting it
right.
 There are many different techniques
 This essay will first explain the requirements for a good technique then
discuss the three techniques that have proven most valid and why.
P1 – What makes a good selection technique?
 Gather information about:
o Energy and drive (work ethic, motivation)
o Work style and values (efficiency, discipline)
o Decision-making and judgement (ability and quality of decision-
making)
o Flexibility and adaptability
o Emotional stability and maturity (ability to handle one’s emotions)
o Intellectual capacity and effectiveness
o Analytical ability, creativeness
o Relationships (sociability, comfort working in a team)
 Needs to be reliable – consistently getting the same results
 Needs to be valid – predict job performance
P2 – Interviews
 Judge, Higgins, and Cable (2000) argued that job offers are recommended
when interviewers perceive that the candidate’s profile is congruent with
the interviewer’s perception of organizational values and goals.
 Huffcut, Conway, Roth, and Stone (2001) reported that most interviewers
assess interviewee’s personality traits, followed closely by social skills,
and not that closely by intelligence and knowledge. However, it is
noteworthy that all these variables can be assessed by psychometric tests
and other methods.
 Reliability: Conway, Jako, and Goodman (1995) – meta-analysis of 160
empirical studies investigating the reliability of interviews. Found
reliabilities of 0.77 when observers watched the same interview. But this
dropped to 0.53 if they watched different interviews of the same
candidate. Some would argue that this is surprisingly good, given that
candidates can respond very differently to different interviewers.
 Validity: Cook (2004) did a review of a number of meta-analyses and
found that the validity of interviews as predictors of job performance was
r=.15 for unstructured interviews and r=.28 for structured interviews.
 Some might consider this impressive, considering that interviews are
attempting to assess very different issues such as creativity, motivation,
and conscientiousness. But the pessimist may point out that r=.28 shows
that the interview is only accounting for 7-8% of the variance.
 However, a major aspect concerns the skills of the interviewer.
 To improve, Cook offered evidence-based recommendations for
improving interview reliability and validity.
 o Select interviewers with talent
o Train interviewers in the relevant skills e.g. asking open-ended
questions
o Be consistent in using the same interviewers for all interviews to
help avoid unwanted variance.
o Dyad, board, or panel interviewers are more reliable.
o Have a planned, structured interview
o
P3 – Second technique – references
 Widely used


P4 – How can they be improved?

 Use forced-choice

Conclusion
Provide a critique of the concept “culture-shock”. (look at individual
differences) What sort of psychological problems are met by people who go
to work abroad?

Introduction
 The world is become more globalized all the time, with fewer and fewer
purely domestic organizations and more that operate on a global market
 Work groups’ ethnic diversity influences all aspects of group
performances, leadership style, and work ethic (Watson, Johnson, and
Zgourides, 2002)
 It is increasingly common for people from all backgrounds to work
abroad for a period – great increase in short business trips (Westman &
Etzion, 2002)
 People work abroad for many reasons: they may be young and out to see
the world, or they may be specialists and managers specially selected to
take their particular skills abroad. Or they might be relatively unskilled
people moving from regions of economic decline to those with more
booming economies.
 Not all migrant workers are welcomed by the native population,
particularly if they are from a different racial group.
 The demand for expatriates is increasing (Hilltop and Jansen, 1995)
 The failure rate of expatriate managers is high, and premature
repatriation is costly both to the manager and to the company (Hilltop
and Jansen, 1995)
Responses to new cultures – Bochner, 1982
 Healthy “mediating” response – synthesizing both cultures. Norms of both
cultures are salient and perceived as capable of being integrated. Results
in personal growth, intergroup harmony, pluralistic societies, and cultural
preservation
 “Passing” response – reject culture of origin, embrace new culture –
results in loss of ethnic identity, self denigration
 “Chauvinistic” response – reject second culture exaggerate first culture.
Results in racism, nationalism.
 “Marginal” response – vacillate between two cultures, perceiving them as
incompatible. Results in conflict and confusion.
There are many factors that can distinguish expatriate moves, and this may affect
whether or not they integrate the culture
 Distance – how far a person has travelled
 Job – whether the person is expected to do a similar job or something very
different
 Social support – whether the person moves alone or with family
 Time – how long the person has to stay there
 Returns – the benefits and costs of the move, including the possibility of
being dismissed or demoted if not agreeing to the transfer
 Volunteering – to afwhat extent the person believes they had a choice
Recent study by Zlobina et al., 2006 looking at the impact of 11 predictor
variables on self-reported socio-cultural adjaerustment
  Length of residence, age, gender, education, immigration status,
expectations, plan of residence, relationship with hosts, relationships with
co-nationals, perceived cultural distance, perceived discrimination
 Most powerful predictors: length of residence in new culture, immigration
status (having resident permits or being “illegal”, and perceived
discrimination.

Challenges of working abroad
 Reasons for sending people abroad (Torbiorn, 1982):
o The control function – to ensure that operations in other countries
are being carried out as planned and to secure staff loyalty
o The contact/coordination function – to evaluate and transmit
salient information between company operations
o the know-how function – to provide technological and
administrative services
 Therefore, business expats have a challenging role in that they must act in
accordance with the expectations of the parent company and also fulfil
local expectations
 Problems include unclear, ambiguous, or even incompatible expectations
on the part of the parent company, communication difficulties, a clash
between company and personal interests and values, uncertainty about
the future, or problems adjusting for the spouse and family
 Torbiorn (1982) questioned more than 1000 Swedish businessmen and
businesswomen, looking at motives for moving abroad, personal
circumstances, who initiated the move, previous experience, etc
o Results: men adapted better than women. Those who were
educated adapted better
o Motive for moving that most strongly was associated with
adjustment was “a special interest in the host country”
o Previous overseas experience had no effect on adaptation
o Expatriates who spent most of their free time with host country
nationals adapted better than those who spent time with their own
countrymen
o Satisfaction of spouse also major determinant
o However, the 30 variables he measured covered only 20-50% of
the variance – much of it unexplained
o Happiness of spouse by far the most importance factor, followed
by various features of the external environment (e.g. food and
climate)
o The more the barriers between the two cultures, the less the
satisfaction
 Business expats receive less difficulty than migrant workers – have more
support and incentive of benefit of return
Individual differences in coping
 Older, more experienced individuals tend to be better at coping with
geographical differences (Furnham & Bochner, 1986)

Culture shock
  Oberg (1960) – six aspects of culture shock
o Strain
o A sense of loss
o Feelings of deprivation about friends, status, profession and
possession
o Confusion in role, expectations, values, self-identity
o Surprise, anxiety, even disgust and indignation after becoming
aware of cultural differences
o Feelings of impotence of not being able to cope with new
environment
 Bock (1970) – described culture shock as primarily an emotional reaction
that follows from not being able to understand, control, and predict
another’s behaviour
o People’s behaviour becomes “unusual” when customary
experiences no longer seem applicable
 Furnham & Bochner (1986) proposed eight different explanations for
culture shock and evaluated the power of each “theory” to explain the
phenomenon
o Culture shock is the psychology of loss and akin to grief
o Locus of control-type beliefs in fatalism predict culture shock The
more fatalistic, the less adaptive people are
o Social Darwinism – the more carefully selected for their ability and
strength, the better they will be able to adapt
o Realistic expectations – the closer the sojourner’s expectations, the
better the adaptation
o Number of negative life events/differences– the more they have to
adapt to, the more likely they will experience culture shock
o Social support network – the better the network, the better the
adaptation
o Value differences
o Social skills of the person dealing with the new culture
 Latter four^ best predictors
Dealing with culture shock
 Ward, Bochner, & Furnham (2001) – three theoretical approaches
 Culture learning perspective – the importance of acquiring culturally
relevant knowledge to cope with and thrive in any new society
o Involves knowledge of social etiquette, conflict resolution, etc
o Need to become communicatively competent
 Stress, coping, and adjustment process – focuses on coping style of
individual sojourners as they attempt to adjust to the new culture
o Personality, social support network, knowledge and skills, and
personal demography will, in part, determine how quickly and
thoroughly they will adapt
 Social identity and inter-group relations
o How people see themselves and their group will affect how they
deal with those from a different group
Who is willing to move?
 Brett, Stroh, & Reilly (1993) – asked more than 800 American corporate
employees
 Single most important predictors was spouse’s willingness to move
