Organizational Psychology

B-3 What is the role of organizational psychologists?

The appraisal of work and the matching of interests and strengths to work matter, but so does overall motivation. Organizational psychologists assist with efforts to motivate and engage employees.

Satisfaction and Engagement

“The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.”

Former Green Bay Packers football coach Vince Lombardi

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An engaged employee Mohamed Mamow, left, was joined by his employer in saying the Pledge of Allegiance as he became a U.S. citizen. Mamow and his wife met in a Somali refugee camp and now are parents of five children, whom he supports by working as a machine operator. Mindful of his responsibility—“I don’t like to lose my job. I have a responsibility for my children and my family”—he arrives for work a half hour early and tends to every detail on his shift. “He is an extremely hard-working employee,” noted his employer, and “a reminder to all of us that we are really blessed” (Roelofs, 2010).
Darren Breen/The Grand Rapids Press//Landov

Partly because work is such a big part of life, I/O psychologists study employee satisfaction. Satisfaction with work and with the balance between one’s work and nonwork life feeds overall satisfaction with life (Bowling et al., 2010). Moreover, as health psychologists tell us, decreased job stress feeds improved health.

Satisfied employees also contribute to successful organizations. Positive moods at work enhance creativity, persistence, and helpfulness (Ford et al., 2011; Jeffrey et al., 2014; Shockley et al., 2012). Are engaged, happy workers also less often absent? Less likely to quit? Less prone to theft? More punctual? More productive? Statistical digests of prior research have found only a modest positive correlation between individual job satisfaction and performance (Judge et al., 2001; Ng et al., 2009; Parker et al., 2003). In one analysis of 4500 employees at 42 British manufacturing companies, the most productive workers tended to be those in satisfying work environments (Patterson et al., 2004). Happy workers are usually good workers. But does satisfaction produce better job performance? The debate continues.

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Doing well while doing good—“The Great Experiment” At the end of the 1700s, the New Lanark, Scotland, cotton mill had more than 1000 workers. Many were children drawn from Glasgow’s poorhouses. They worked 13-hour days and lived in grim conditions.
On a visit to Glasgow, Welsh-born Robert Owen—an idealistic young cotton-mill manager—chanced to meet and marry the mill owner’s daughter. Owen and some partners purchased the mill and on the first day of the 1800s began what he said was “the most important experiment for the happiness of the human race that had yet been instituted at any time in any part of the world” (Owen, 1814). The exploitation of child and adult labor was, he observed, producing unhappy and inefficient workers. So he undertook numerous innovations: a nursery for preschool children, education for older children (with encouragement rather than corporal punishment), Sundays off, health care, paid sick days, unemployment pay for days when the mill could not operate, and a company store selling goods at reduced prices.
He also innovated a goals- and worker-assessment program that included detailed records of daily productivity and costs but with “no beating, no abusive language.”
The ensuing commercial success fueled a humanitarian reform movement. By 1816, with decades of profitability still ahead, Owen believed he had demonstrated “that society may be formed so as to exist without crime, without poverty, with health greatly improved, with little if any misery, and with intelligence and happiness increased a hundredfold.” Although his Utopian vision has not been fulfilled, Owen’s great experiment laid the groundwork for employment practices that have today become accepted in much of the world.
Courtesy of New Lanark Trust

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Nevertheless, some organizations do have a knack for cultivating more engaged and productive employees. In the United States, the Fortune “100 Best Companies to Work For” have also produced markedly higher-than-average returns for their investors (Fulmer et al., 2003). Other positive data come from the biggest-ever I/O study, an analysis of Gallup data from more than 198,000 employees (TABLE B.2) in nearly 8000 business units of 36 large companies (including some 1100 bank branches, 1200 stores, and 4200 teams or departments). James Harter, Frank Schmidt, and Theodore Hayes (2002) explored correlations between various measures of organizational success and employee engagement—the extent of workers’ involvement, enthusiasm, and identification with their organizations (TABLE B.3). They found that engaged workers (compared with disengaged workers who were just putting in time) knew what was expected of them, had what they needed to do their work, felt fulfilled in their work, had regular opportunities to do what they do best, perceived that they were part of something significant, and had opportunities to learn and develop. They also found that business units with engaged employees had more loyal customers, lower turnover rates, higher productivity, and greater profits.

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But what causal arrows explain this correlation between business success and employee morale and engagement? Does success boost morale, or does high morale boost success? In a follow-up longitudinal study of 142,000 workers, researchers found that, over time, employee attitudes predicted future business success (more than the other way around) (Harter et al., 2010). Another analysis compared companies with top-quartile versus below-average employee engagement levels. Over a three-year period, earnings grew 2.6 times faster for the companies with highly engaged workers (Ott, 2007).

Managing Well

B-4 What are some effective leadership techniques?

Every leader dreams of managing in ways that enhance people’s satisfaction, eng-agement, and productivity and their organization’s success. Effective leaders harness job-relevant strengths, set goals, and choose an appropriate leadership style.

Harnessing Job-Relevant Strengths

“The major challenge for CEOs [is] the effective deployment of human assets,” observed Marcus Buckingham (2001). That challenge is “about psychology. It’s about getting [individuals] to be more productive, more focused, more fulfilled than [they were] yesterday.” The first step, he and others have maintained, is selecting the right people, followed by discerning employees’ natural interests, adjusting work roles to suit those interests, and developing interests into great strengths (FIGURE B.3). Consider the faculty at a given college or university. Should everyone be expected to teach the same course load, advise the same number of students, serve on the same number of committees, and engage in the same amount of research? Or should each job description be tailored to harness a specific person’s unique strengths?

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Figure 17.3: FIGURE B.3 On the right path The Gallup Organization offers this path to organizational success. (Information from Fleming, 2001.)

Given that our temperament and our traits tend to follow us through our lives, managers would be wise to spend less time trying to instill strengths that are not there and more time developing and drawing out those that are there (Tucker, 2002). Managers who excel

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In Gallup surveys, 77 percent of engaged workers, and only 23 percent of not-engaged workers, strongly agreed that “my supervisor focuses on my strengths or positive characteristics” (Krueger & Killham, 2005).

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The power of positive coaching Football coach Pete Carroll, who led the University of Southern California to two national championships and the Seattle Seahawks to a Super Bowl championship, combines positive enthusiasm and fun workouts with “a commitment to a nurturing environment that allows people to be themselves while still being accountable to the team” (Trotter, 2014). “It shows you can win with positivity,” notes Seahawks star defensive player Richard Sherman.
Scott Eklund/AP Photo

Celebrating engaged and productive employees in every organizational role builds upon a basic principle of operant conditioning: To teach a behavior, catch a person doing something right and reinforce it. It sounds simple, but many managers are like parents who, when a child brings home near-perfect grades, focus on the one low grade in a troublesome biology class and ignore the rest. “Sixty-five percent of Americans received NO praise or recognition in the workplace last year,” reported the Gallup Organization (2004).

The bottom line: In the workplace, great managers support employees’ well-being. By caring about their employees and engaging and affirming their strengths, they support happier, more creative, more productive workers with less absenteeism and turnover (Amabile & Kramer, 2011; De Neve et al., 2013). People tolerate bad companies more than bad managers (Busteed, 2012). Moreover, the same principles affect college students’ satisfaction, retention, and future success (Larkin et al., 2013; Ray & Kafka, 2014). Students who feel supported by caring friends and mentors, and engaged in their campus life, tend to persist and ultimately succeed during and after college.

Setting Specific, Challenging Goals

Specific, challenging goals motivate achievement, especially when combined with progress reports (Johnson et al., 2006; Latham & Locke, 2007). Specific, measurable objectives, such as “finish gathering the history paper information by Friday,” serve to direct attention, promote effort, motivate persistence, and stimulate creative strategies.

When people state goals together with subgoals and implementation intentions—action plans that specify when, where, and how they will march toward achieving those goals—they become more focused in their work, and on-time completion becomes more likely (Burgess et al., 2004; Fishbach et al., 2006; Koestner et al., 2002). Through a task’s ups and downs, people best sustain their mood and motivation when they focus on immediate goals (such as daily study) rather than distant goals (such as a course grade). Better to have one’s nose to the grindstone than one’s eye on the ultimate prize (Houser-Marko & Sheldon, 2008).

Thus, before beginning each new edition of this book, our author-editor team manages by objectives—we agree on target dates for the completion and editing of each chapter draft. If we focus on achieving each of these short-term goals, the prize—an on-time book—takes care of itself. So, to motivate high productivity, effective leaders work with people to define explicit goals, subgoals, and implementation plans, and then provide feedback on progress.

Choosing an Appropriate Leadership Style

task leadership goal-oriented leader-ship that sets standards, organizes work, and focuses attention on goals.

Leadership varies from a boss-focused directive style to an empowered-worker democratic style in which people cooperate in setting goals and developing strategies. Which works best depends on the situation and the leader. The best leadership style for leading a discussion may not be the best style for leading troops on a charge (Fiedler, 1981). Moreover, different leaders are suited to different styles. Some excel at task leadership—setting standards, organizing work, and focusing attention on goals. Being goal-oriented, task leaders are good at keeping a group centered on its mission. Typically, they have a directive style, which can work well if the leader is bright enough to give good orders (Fiedler, 1987).

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The New Yorker Collection, 1988, Anthony Taber from cartoonbank.com. All Rights Reserved.

social leadership group-oriented leadership that builds teamwork, mediates conflict, and offers support.

Other managers, many of whom are women, excel at social leadership—explaining decisions, mediating conflicts, and building high-achieving teams (Evans & Dion, 1991; Pfaff et al., 2013). Social leaders often have a democratic style: They delegate authority and welcome team members’ participation. Many experiments show that social leadership and team-building increase morale and productivity (Shuffler et al., 2011, 2013). Subordinates usually felt more satisfied and motivated, and performed better, when they participated in decision making (Cawley et al., 1998; Pereira & Osburn, 2007). Moreover, when members are sensitive to one another and participate equally, groups solve problems with greater “collective intelligence” (Woolley et al., 2010).

Effective leaders tend to be neither extremely assertive (impairing social relationships) nor unassertive (limiting task leadership) (Ames, 2008). Effective leaders of laboratory groups, work teams, corporations, and society have also been found to exude a charisma that blends a goal-based vision, clear communication, and optimism that inspires others to follow (Goethals & Allison, 2014; House & Singh, 1987; Shamir et al., 1993).

“Good leaders don’t ask more than their constituents can give, but they often ask—and get—more than their constituents intended to give or thought it was possible to give.”

John W. Gardner, Excellence, 1984

In one study of 50 Dutch companies, the firms with the highest morale had chief executives who most inspired their colleagues “to transcend their own self-interests for the sake of the collective” (de Hoogh et al., 2004). Transformational leadership of this kind motivates others to identify with and commit themselves to the group’s mission. Transformational leaders, many of whom are natural extraverts, articulate high standards, inspire people to share their vision, and offer personal attention (Bono & Judge, 2004). The frequent result is more engaged, trusting, and effective workers (Turner et al., 2002). As leaders, women more than men tend to exhibit transformational leadership qualities. Alice Eagly (2007, 2013) believes this helps explain why companies with female top managers have tended to enjoy superior financial results, even after controlling for such variables as company size.

Data compiled from studies in India, Taiwan, and Iran indicate that effective managers—whether in coal mines, banks, or government offices—often exhibit a high degree of both task and social leadership (Smith & Tayeb, 1989). As achievement-minded people, effective managers certainly care about how well work is done, yet at the same time they are sensitive to their subordinates’ needs. Workers in family-friendly organizations that offer flexible-time hours report feeling greater job satisfaction and loyalty to their employers (Butts et al., 2013; Roehling et al., 2001).

A work environment that satisfies one’s need to belong also energizes employees. Employees who enjoy high-quality colleague relationships also engage in their work with more vigor (Carmeli et al., 2009). Gallup researchers have asked more than 15 million employees worldwide if they have a “best friend at work.” The 30 percent who do “are seven times as likely to be engaged in their jobs” as those who don’t, they report (Rath & Harter, 2010). And, as we noted earlier, positive, engaged employees are a mark of thriving organizations.

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Increased employee participation in decision making is part of a management style that has spread from Sweden and Japan to many other locations (Naylor, 1990; Sundstrom et al., 1990). Although managers often think better of work they have directly supervised, studies reveal a voice effect: Given a chance to voice their opinion and be part of a decision-making process, people have responded more positively to the decision (van den Bos & Spruijt, 2002). They also feel more empowered and are likely, therefore, to be more creative (Hennessey & Amabile, 2010; Seibert et al., 2011).

The ultimate in employee participation is the employee-owned company. One such company in my [DM’s] town, the Fleetwood Group, is a thriving 165-employee manufacturer of educational furniture and wireless electronic clickers. Every employee owns part of the company, and as a group they own 100 percent. Like every corporate president, Doug Ruch works for his stockholders—who also just happen to be his employees. As a company that endorses faith-inspired “servant leadership” and “respect and care for each team member-owner,” Fleetwood is free to place people above profits. Thus, when orders lagged during a recession, the employee-owners decided that job security meant more to them than profits. So the company paid otherwise idle workers to do community service, such as answering phones at nonprofit agencies and building Habitat for Humanity houses. Fleetwood employees “act like they own the place,” notes Ruch. Employee ownership attracts and retains talented people, “drives dedication,” and gives Fleetwood “a sustainable competitive advantage,” he contends.

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We have considered personnel psychology (the I/O subfield that focuses on employee’s job seeking, selection, placement, appraisal, and development). And we have considered organizational psychology (the I/O subfield that focuses on worker satisfaction and productivity, and on organizational change). Finally, we turn to human factors psychology, which explores the human-machine interface.

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Question

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ANSWER: Transformational leaders are able to inspire others to share a vision and commit themselves to a group's mission. They tend to be naturally extraverted and set high standards.