What I Learned Along the Way
Frank Landy
Landy Litigation Support Group
The April column includes recollections from two luminaries, Herman Aguinis and
Kevin Murphy. Herman describes the long path from childhood to elite statusand more importantly from Argentina to America. Kevin describes the equally daunting trip from faculty status to department head status. Each, in his own way, highlights the importance of tolerance as a personality characteristic and the role of I-O in his personal and professional life. Sometimes it is not clear whether an individual chooses a path or the path chooses the individual. Most of the time, it doesnt matter.
From Ro Cuarto to Denver
Herman Aguinis
University of Colorado at Denver
I was born in 1966 in the town of Ro Cuarto in the Province of Crdoba (Argentina). In Spanish, Ro Cuarto means Fourth River. I recall how my parents used to tell me that the Spanish Conquistadors had lacked creativity and therefore had been unable to come up with more interesting names for the rivers in the Province. Instead, they used first, second, third, fourth, and fifth as labels as they progressed Southward in their conquest. The town where I was born happened to be on the banks of the fourth river, and hence its name.
During most of the 1960s and 1970s, Argentina was ruled by dictators who enjoyed imposing arbitrary regulations on businesses, education, and many other organizations and areas of life. For example, there was a list of names parents had to use to choose their childrens names. Parents were not allowed to use a name that was not included in the list. This resulted in my parents choosing Herman for me, a name included on the list, which was the closest to the intended name Hershl. Hershl was the name of my great-grandfather, a Jew who was killed together with his wife, two daughters, and entire extended family by the Nazis during the Holocaust. Hershls son, my grandfather Jos, was the only Aguinis who survived the Holocaust by fleeing Europe for Argentina.
In addition to the list of names, another such arbitrary policy in some provinces was that children were required to learn how to read and write using block letters and not cursive handwriting. When I was 10, my family moved to the city of Buenos Aires. Much to my surprise, I showed up at my new school and realized that cursive was used, I was unable to write, and I was able to read only with great difficulty! Not a good surprise when you are 10 to find out you can barely read and write. As a consequence of this, my handwriting still suffers and my students, and even myself, have a hard time reading what I write.
When I was 12, I took a 2-day exam including Spanish, Geography, History, and Mathematics. Results of this exam determined whether I would be able to attend a school including grades 8 to 13 that were part of the University of Buenos Aires system. The top 30% of scorers were accepted and, fortunately, I was one of them. Attending this prestigious high school, founded in 1772, was the most meaningful educational experience I had in Argentina.
It was also during my high school days that the military dictatorship kidnapped and murdered thousands of people, including some students in my school, for being subversive. I was part of an underground student movement that created a student association and a newsletter. A student from my school, who was about 17 years old, was kidnapped as he was picking up an issue of the newsletter from the printer and was never seen again. He became one of the notorious desaparecidos (missing people). The dictatorship lasted from 1976 to 1983, and my father, who is a physician and writer and was a vocal voice of opposition against the dictatorship and in favor of democracy and individual rights, risked becoming a desaparecido himself. One night, he and my mother returned from the movie theater to see a police car parked at the door of our apartment building. My three siblings and I were sleeping in the apartment and my parents did not dare to enter the building until several hours later when the police car left. They never knew whether the car was waiting to take them away as soon as they showed up. But, the head of the writers association of Ro Cuarto was told by the local Chief of Police that they had been unable to arrest my father there because he had fled to Buenos Aires.
I came to the United States for the first time when I was 13. I spent 3 months living with my aunt, uncle, and three cousins in Staten Island (New York City). I played football on the street, played basketball at the local Jewish Community Center, ate cereal for breakfast, saw the
Rocky Horror Picture Show, listened to The Grateful Dead, and watched Happy Days on TV. Most importantly, I developed a great admiration for the democratic system in the U.S. and the respect for human liberty. I knew the political and economic systems were not perfect, but I was convinced they were vastly superior to those of the majority of countries in the world. It was then that I decided I would eventually live in the U.S.
Back in high school in Argentina, at the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires, I was exposed to the usual courses, with the advantage that they were taught by University of Buenos Aires faculty using university textbooks, plus advanced Latin, Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, History, and Calculus. When I graduated at age 18, I decided I would pursue a career in the social sciences and was ready to go to college in the U.S. However, I was unable to do so because it was too expensive. Thus, I decided to attend college in Argentina as quickly as possible so I could go to the U.S. for a graduate degree. I attended the University of Buenos Aires and graduated in 1988 with a BA and masters in clinical psychology, the only psychology specialty available at that time. By then, Argentina had regained a democratic system and, in addition to attending college, I was working full time for a federal organization in charge of helping democratize organizations ranging from labor unions to student clubs at universities. It was a monumental organizational change effort in the entire country.
Half way through my college years in Argentina, I contacted over 100 universities in the U.S. via mail and found out about I-O psychology. I remember being elated each time I received a new catalog in the mail. I spent a whole summer reading catalogs and program descriptions from back to back. I was surprised about how prompt and professional most universities were compared to universities in Argentina regarding their dealing with potential doctoral students. I-O psychology was very appealing to me because it seemed such a broad field. I could foresee studying many different and interesting topics ranging from leadership to job design.
I applied to universities near New York City (to be close to my aunt, uncle, and cousins) and decided to attend SUNY-Albany. This school was only a 3-hour drive from my relatives and it offered a tuition waiver and stipend. Coming from Argentina, the $8,000/year stipend seemed like a fortune! I had never taken a course in I-O psychology until arriving in Albany because I-O psychology courses were not available in Argentina. But, I was up to speed very quickly thanks to the faculty members there at the time,
Eugene F. Stone-Romero, Kevin J. Williams, and George M. Alliger. It was only after being in Albany for about 2 years that I realized that the presence of knowledgeable, experienced, and well-connected faculty is probably the most important factor in having a good graduate school experience.
I also had weekly research meetings with James T. Tedeschi, a renowned social psychologist interested in power and influence. I was interested in power because I had had so little of it growing up in a dictatorial political system. Jim, who passed away a couple of years ago, was an outstanding teacher and had an open door policy that made working with him a delightful experience. He also taught me to treat students with respect simply because this is the right thing to do. At SUNY-Albany, I had a great time talking about research with classmates such as
Chuck Pierce over countless beers and playing flag football on weekends in the bitter Albany winter weather and tennis in the hot and sticky summer weather. I still count many of those classmates as close friends.
At SUNY-Albany, I became very interested in research methodology and, since taking my first-semester statistics course, I decided to learn as much methodology as possible because I concluded I would not become a good scientist without this knowledge. I still believe in the centrality of research methodology and try to learn as much about methods as possible, for example, by attending workshops and serving as a reviewer for the SIOP conference.
I completed my masters and PhD degrees in 4 years and went on the job market in the spring of 1993. I sent out over 70 applications but received interview offers from only three or four universities. I decided to accept an offer from the Psychology Department at the University of Colorado at Denver, primarily because
Kurt Kraiger was there at the time. The fact that he had been there for about a decade, and built his career there, gave me hope that I would be able to do the same despite the lack of a doctoral program. I spent 4 excellent years there but was about to leave for a psychology department in a university on the East Coast when I received a call from
Wayne Cascio in the Business School at the University of Colorado at Denver telling me they had an opening and asking if I was interested. I love Colorado because of its weather, skiing, and mountain biking. So, I went through the interview process, received an offer, and decided to switch over to the Business School within the same university instead of returning to the East Coast. Wayne had been at the university since the early 1980s and spent the majority of his career there. His impressive career trajectory provided some reassurances vis--vis the advice of some colleagues that I should not move to a business school because of the supposed lack of research orientation and the warnings that moving to a business school would be a career killer.
The move from psychology to business was not smooth because the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences was not happy about the dean from the Business School stealing his faculty. Those were very stressful and sleepless nights. Although I knew the fight was not about me in particular, I was caught in the middle of a political battle. I knew the deans would have fought over a piece of furniture or any other thing perceived to be an asset (tangible or intangible). In the end things calmed down and the Arts and Sciences dean understood there was nothing he could do after the university chancellor spoke personally with him. Otherwise, the move was very easy and did not disrupt my work at all. I did not even have to change my phone number or e-mail address.
Topics traditionally researched by I-O psychologists have been part of my life since an early age. I experienced lack of justice due to the Argentine military dictatorship. I experienced discrimination and minority status in Argentina for being Jewish. I experienced the need to retrain myself when I was 10 and was unable to read and write well. I experienced selection issues when I took a rigorous entrance exam at age 12 that would dictate my next 10 years of schooling. I experienced organizational change by working on a massive organizational and country-wide change project. I am personally familiar with cross-cultural issues because I was not born in the U.S. and had to learn another language, and I have also experienced subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) discrimination in the U.S. for being Hispanic. I-O psychology is so broad that it gives me great choice in terms of research topics. In fact, I define myself more as a social scientist than as an I-O psychologist. I have conducted research in such diverse topics as conflict resolution tactics, perceptions of adopted children, personnel selection, nonverbal behaviors and power, meta-analysis, interaction effects, advancement of female executives, validity generalization, cross-cultural organizational behavior, virtual reality, ethics in research, workplace romance, and sexual harassment, among others. I-O psychology gives me the freedom to explore many topics from many different perspectives. Most importantly, as my former advisor Gene Stone-Romero used to say frequently, In how many jobs do people get paid to learn?
Its been a long road from Ro Cuarto to Denver. There were numerous unexpected turns such as receiving a doctoral degree in Albany and ending up in a business school. Whats next? Its hard to tell. What I try to do is maximize the opportunities that open up after each career decision. This has worked well for me and has given me the flexibility and autonomy to do what I like to do and, amazingly, get paid for it!
It Does Work, After All
Kevin R. Murphy
The Pennsylvania State University
In 1976, I was finishing my MS at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and looking for a good place to complete my PhD. I ended up with three choices, Iowa State (I still remember getting a call from
Paul Muchinskyit was the first time I had talked with a famous I-O psychologist), Maryland and Penn State. It was a true toss-up between Maryland and PSU. For years, I avoided
Irv Goldstein because his reaction when I called to turn down an offer to work with him as an RA was Are you crazy?, but Penn State seemed like a good fit for me, and it worked out that way. I graduated in 1979 and left for a job at Rice. After stints at NYU (198184) and Colorado State (19842000) I ended up back at Penn State, this time as a senior faculty member.
My job interview at Penn State was an unusual experience, for many reasons. First, several of the faculty members I had gotten to know in the 1970s were still there, notably
Jim Farr, who was my PhD advisor, and it was interesting to meet with them in a very different role. Second, several of my meetings were in the same room where all of our PhD students took (and still take) their oral comp exams and their dissertation defenses. My oral exams and defense were not particularly disasterous, but still, I cant say that the room was a source of fond memories. I was glad to get out of that room.
I joined the faculty in 2000, and in 2003 became department head (how I ended up there is a story for another day). As the starting date for my job was approaching, I spent a lot of time wondering how I should approach different facets of the job. One day, it dawned on me that we teach this stuff and that I could probably get some useful insights from an I-O psychology text. After 3 years on the job, I have come to the conclusion that much of what we teach actually works! I have applied several things straight out of Muchinsky, Landy and Conte, and other leading texts, including:
1. Charismatic leadership does not require charismaMost I-O textbooks tell you that if a leader articulates a coherent vision and projects energy and confidence in that vision, people will follow. I think this turns out to be true. If you act like you know what you are doing and you are very confident it will work, people may think you are a jerk, but they will probably follow your lead. This is not a bad thing to know.
2. A little voice goes a long wayIn my annual performance evaluations, I send everybody a draft of the evaluation letter and invite comments or clarification before I finalize the evaluation. I usually get feedback from a few faculty members (about half of it is valuable and accurate), but it is rare for major changes to occur. I do think, however, that the chance to have input makes the appraisal process work better than it otherwise might.
3. Performance appraisal is a complex, paperwork-intensive process for making people
angryVoice helps, but performance appraisal is like a root canal. It can be made relatively painless, but it is never really fun. Virtually everything I have read about attribution biases and inflated self-evaluations plays out in front of me each spring when I do performance appraisals. The performance appraisal literature has encouraged me to resist fooling around with things like scale formats and to accept that ratee dissatisfaction is part of the process and is not necessarily an indication that the process should be changed.
4. Temperament mattersActually, this one does not come from an I-O text, but I wish it did. Temperament is usually defined in terms of a variety of dimensions of behavioral style (e.g., activity, adaptability, distractibility, initial reaction, intensity, mood, persistence and attention span, regularity, and sensitivity), and temperaments can be reliably assessed in infants. They are fairly stable, and several aspects of temperament relate strongly to things like affectivity. Some people are negative, demanding, inflexible, and so on, and the likelihood that this will change if you make their circumstances better in the workplace is relatively low. Having some concepts and tools to help sort out why some colleagues will drive you crazy helps lower the likelihood that they actually do drive you crazy.
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