SIOP Members in the News
Clif Boutelle
SIOP members have a wealth of expertise to offer reporters, and by working with the media, they are providing numerous opportunities to greatly increase the visibility of industrial and organizational psychology.
Media Resources, found on the SIOP Web site (www.siop.org), has proven to be a valuable tool for reporters looking for experts to contribute to their stories about the workplace. Members who are willing to talk with the media are encouraged to list themselves and their area(s) of specialization in Media Resources. It can easily be done online.
And members should update their listings as needed. It is particularly important that members describe their specific expertise in the space provided. Those descriptions are an immense help to reporters who are looking for sources.
In addition, Media Resources is used extensively to match SIOP members’ expertise with reporters who contact the SIOP office looking for experts. Following are some of the news stories that have been printed, using SIOP members as resources, since the last issue of TIP.
Steven Torkel of Torkel Research and Consulting in Marlboro, NJ was the subject of a wonderfully revealing profile about his profession of I-O psychology in the May 7 Asbury Park Press. The profile included a description of I-O psychology and the kinds of work I-O psychologists perform. It also included suggestions on how people can become involved with I-O psychology as well as a reference to the SIOP Web site.
An April 29 Austin American Statesman story reflecting on the Hewlett-Packard-Compaq Computer Corporation merger 5 years ago included some comments from Michael Beer of the Center for Organizational Fitness in Massachusetts. Though controversial at the time, the deal, after 5 years, now seems like a winner, with healthy stock prices and new management that seems to have righted HP. However, not everyone, including Beer, agrees that the merger was worth all the pain. “It (the merger) clearly destroyed the culture at HP…and from that perspective it was a bad idea,” he said.
The April issue of New York magazine carried a lengthy article about the psychology of business leaders and cited the work of several I-O psychologists, including Seymour Adler of Aon Consulting in New York City, Robert Hogan of Hogan Assessment Systems in Tulsa, OK, Timothy Judge of the University of Florida, and Robert Kaiser of Kaplan Devries in Greensboro, NC. Adler described his research as “identifying traits required to be an effective leader.” Companies look for different personalities, and even narcissists and neurotics have their place. However, not many want a thoroughgoing narcissist and “we’re likely to spot and red-flag them,” says Adler, “and the odds are they won’t make it to the top spot.” Judge added “the question isn’t necessarily, ‘Is narcissism bad?,’ but rather, ‘In what ways is narcissism bad and in what ways is it good?’” Still, perhaps the most prominent characteristic of the emergent leader is charisma, according to Kaiser. Yet, he added, “scholarly studies have examined charisma and not a single one finds charisma and performance linked. The only thing charisma correlates to is high salary.” In describing what personalities work best in a team, Hogan said it was a matter of balance and that three basic types are required. “You need an ambitious person, someone who will step up. You need someone inquisitive and with ideas. Then you need one smoother-outer, a person who’ll keep on task.”
Ben Dattner of Dattner Consulting in New York City is a workplace consultant on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition program and is heard on Wednesdays twice a month discussing a workplace issue sent in by listeners. Topics he has addressed include team building, prying bosses, and team-building retreats. He also contributed to an April 3 Wall Street Journal story on management’s increased use of coaches as an extra screening step in making top hires. He noted that coaches offer “an objective perspective on the candidate as well as on the potential candidate’s fit.”
Nancy Stone of Creighton University and Jennifer Veitch of the National Research Council of Canada added their thoughts to an April 23 Washington Post story about office desks as a statement of the personalities and work styles of those who work at those desks. Stone noted that desks sometimes serve as a divider between coworkers and can affect office dynamics. Veitch is an advocate of organizations allowing workers to personalize their desks ,which “results in more satisfied employees because it gives them a higher sense of well-being.”
An April 23 story in the New Jersey Daily Record about how bad attitudes in the office can infect others cited research by Terence Mitchell of the University of Washington and colleagues. Today attitude is more important than ever and success of organizations or teams is contingent upon positive attitudes. Among his recommendations: screen new employees more carefully, hold all employees accountable for negative behavior, and set goals that require positive attitudes to be successful, like providing opportunities to be a team leader on a project.
Allen Huffcutt of Bradley University was featured in the April issue of Reliable Plant magazine that highlighted research he and colleagues have done to measure the characteristics job interviews reveal about a candidate. Their study showed that only about a third of the characteristics measured in situational and behavior description interviews reflect basic mental ability, personality, and job knowledge.
Radio host Don Imus created a national controversy with his remarks about the Rutgers women’s basketball team, and Alice Eagly of Northwestern University was asked in the April 12 issue of USA Today whether the remarks would shatter the self-esteem of Black kids. Saying that was an unlikely outcome, she added, “It’s not true that Black children have lower self-esteem than White children. If anything, it goes the other way, which suggests Black parents and teachers are doing a lot to ward off this threat.”
A study on e-mail names by Kevin Tamanini, a doctoral candidate at Ohio University, was cited in several media outlets around the country, including the April 10 Kansas City Star, Toronto Globe and Mail, AP and UPI wire services, and newscasts on MSNBC and Fox News as well as several online news sources. The study found that electronic resumés linked to job candidates with quirky and “unprofessional” e-mail names were rated lower by potential employers than those with professional names.
In an April 8 story in The Oklahoman (Oklahoma City) about the value of employees’ perceptions resulting from attitude surveys, Amy Nicole Salvaggio of the University of Tulsa said that I-O psychologists know all too well that employees’ perceptions reflect reality and should be heeded by senior managers. I-O psychologists, she noted, are “in the business of people mechanics, or psychology applied to the workplace. We design real interventions, not based upon what someone heard at a management meeting, but true cause and effect.”
An April 2 Washington Post story applied the decoy effect to the current presidential campaign, suggesting that front runners ought to talk up the candidates in third place. When people cannot decide between two front-runners, they will use the third candidate as a measuring stick. That is, front runners stand to gain by drawing attention to the qualities of the third candidate that makes each front runner look better than the other. Scott Highhouse of Bowling Green State University noted “research on the decoy effect suggests that (Ralph) Nader’s presence (in the 2000 election), rather than taking votes away, probably increased the share of votes for the candidate he resembled most.” In other words, clever front runners can turn third candidates into their wingmen.
An April posting on the U.S. Department of Labor’s Working Partners for an Alcohol-and Drug-Free Workplace Web site includes an extensive summary of Michael Frone’s study on the national prevalence of illicit drug use in the workforce and workplace. Frone of the State University of New York at Buffalo first published his findings in a 2006 issue of Journal of Applied Psychology.
Jeff Daum of Las Vegas-based Competency Management Inc. was a major contributor to an article about the importance of benchmarking human capital in the March 28 Great Lakes HR Now. He was also quoted on CBS News Radio The Daily Dash program. He noted that companies spend a lot of money on their human capital but many HR departments fail to benchmark or track data about human capital effectively. “It’s still a really weak link in most organizations,” he said.
In a March 26 Wall Street Journal story on the pros and cons of online training, Winfred Arthur Jr. of Texas A&M University and Traci Sitzmann of the U.S. Defense Department’s Advanced Learning Distance Co-Laboratory were quoted. Arthur cited a 2003 study in which he found that the biggest knowledge jumps for new employees occurred with face-to-face training. Sitzmann’s meta-analysis of training studies found that Web-based training was more effective than classroom instruction for teaching facts, but she did not find significant differences between the two for teaching overall job mastery.
Dory Hollander of WiseWorkplaces in Arlington, VA was contacted for a March 5 New York Post story on how employees can plot strategies for advancement in their jobs. When talking to a supervisor about a promotion she advised employees to be specific. “Knowing what you want is the key. Make sure you have the core competencies and skills required for the job you’re seeking and articulate these to your boss.”
The Orlando Sentinel, in a February 25 story about hospitals making a concerted effort to improve patient safety, quoted Eduardo Salas, University of Central Florida and a consultant to the Seminole County Patient Safety Council working to improve communication between area medical organizations. “Solutions to patient safety are not in medicine; they are in psychology, the people,” he said.
A February 22 Wall Street Journal story about how workers who seemingly have little in common with their coworkers, like being the only parent in a office of singles, can combat the feeling of being out of place, included comments from Jared Lock of Hogan Assessments in Tulsa, OK. He suggested that workers whose personal tastes differ from colleagues look for shared professional interests. “What people will typically find is that they have similarities between them and their co-workers through their passion for their work.”
Charles A. Pierce of the University of Memphis and Amy Nicole Salvaggio of Oklahoma State University were quoted in a Valentine’s Day story about office romances that appeared in several news outlets, including newspapers and journals. Pierce noted that although workplace romances may seem harmless, they can lead to serious problems, including sexual harassment claims. Preliminary findings of a study Salvaggio is currently conducting indicate that employees do not mind seeing a romance between two unmarried workers but, on the whole, they say workplace relationships produce more risk than benefits.
When Michael Dell returned to head a floundering Dell Inc., the February 5 Wall Street Journal did a story about founding leaders returning to their companies. Bill Byham of Development Dimensions International in Bridgeville, PA contributed to the story noting that returning founders can pursue radical change because they can marshal the troops a lot better than someone coming in from the outside. However, prospective successors may be wary because if they make a slip, the founder is always ready to jump back in and take over, he added.
In the December 29 issue of Talent Management Magazine, Lise Saari, IBM’s director of global workforce research, described her company’s upward feedback program. Calling the 2-year-old program “very effective,” she said it provides managers feedback from their employees on a set of key and valid people management-related questions. “Then, most importantly, we’re not just dropping that feedback on them but, rather, having very well-developed, easy-to-use tools where they can do diagnostics on their largest gaps.”
Please let us know if you, or a SIOP colleague, have contributed to a news story. We would like to include that mention in SIOP Members in the News.
Send copies of the article to SIOP at siop@siop.org or fax to 419-352-2645 or mail to SIOP at PO Box 87, Bowling Green, OH 43402.