Good Science - Good Practice
Jamie Madigan
Ameren
Tom Giberson
Oakland University
The tough economy has us (presumably along with everyone else) thinking about and experiencing the personal and professional impacts that layoffs have on those “let go,” as well as the “survivors.” With the national unemployment rate hovering around 10%, most everyone is—or will be—impacted in some way. With minor and mass layoffs occurring almost daily, we decided to focus some of this Good Science–Good Practice column on recent scholarship that deals with making the best—or minimizing the negative impact—of difficult circumstances.
Wood & Karau (2009) recently studied the impact of various methods of conducting termination interviews with employees. The authors note that there is applicable scholarship on various aspects of the termination interview, focused primarily on legal aspects, subsequent workplace violence, and the effects of layoffs on victims and survivors. They also suggest that the popular press literature is replete with suggestions on how to conduct the termination interview, but little exists on the efficacy of these practices. Prior work suggests that how terminations are handled is more important than the fact of the termination itself for terminees (Schwieger & Ivancevich, 1987), as well as survivors (Greenberg, 1990). This work appears in the Journal of Business Ethics; thus Wood & Karau begin from a philosophical framework by invoking Kant’s (1785/1997) concept of “respect for persons.” Kant suggested that we should always treat others as an end, not as a means, and, further, that an act of disrespect toward one person is an act of disrespect to all. If appeals to humanistic values are not enough, Bayer (2000) reminds us that a termination affects not only the individual but also the “dozens of others who can influence the company’s image and ability to hire” in the future as well as the organization’s reputation in the market.
Wood & Karau (2009) argue that most organizations approach termination interviews from a defensive, legalistic framework rather than one focused on preserving the dignity of the employee—thus violating Kantian ethical imperatives. This legalistic orientation might result in procedures that communicate a lack of respect for the terminee, which, they argue, could make it more likely that the terminee will engage in the very types of behaviors that the employer seeks to minimize. Karl and Hancock (1999) found that manager termination training was positively related to increased victim hostility. Why? The authors suggest that the defensive-legalistic approach becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: The methods taught likely communicate a lack of respect for the victim, leading to anger and other negative outcomes.
Wood & Karau (2o09) investigated five hypotheses through a scenario-based method using a few hundred experienced undergraduate business students. The scenarios manipulated factors typically included in termination interviews, such as including a third party witness (or not), whether or not the manager mentions the employee’s positive contribution to the organization, and whether or not the employee was escorted off the premises—publicly or privately. Combinations of these practices are typical in termination interviews and reflect efforts to defend the employer from lawsuits. The practices seem somewhat reasonable on the surface; however, the authors raise interesting questions regarding the message sent to the victims and survivors. For example, some managers are encouraged to mention significant contributions to the organization during the termination interview. Might this raise the question of the reason for the layoff in the first place? The intent might be to soften the blow and put an empathetic spin on the message; however, might the organization be better off with future significant contributions than without? Similarly, victims are often hastily escorted out of the building by a security guard. The victim and survivors might wonder why the organization trusted the employee during their tenure with customers, assets, secrets, and so on, and now through an act by the organization they are treated like a potential criminal?
Participants read one-page scenarios that included various combinations of the termination interview features. The scenarios were written to place the participant in the role of terminee. The dependent variables included a variety of participant perceptions, including being treated with respect, treated with empathy, anger, likelihood to complain to others about the employer, and likelihood of pursuing legal action. Their results suggest that participation of any third party decreases feelings of respect but does not increase the likelihood of complaining or taking legal action. Interestingly, the effect of mentioning positive aspects of employee performance during the termination interview depended upon the exit mode. Victims who hear of positive contributions to the organization and are allowed to leave on their own reported significantly more favorable feelings of respect and empathy; however, this effect is diminished by the presence of a security guard and reversed if the security guard publicly escorts the victim out of the building.
This particular study utilizes undergraduates rather than actual “victims,” potentially impacting the generalizability of the findings. The participant pool is understandable given the likelihood of employers’ or victims’ willingness to participate in such a study at such a vulnerable time. The results appeal to notions of procedural justice and respect for others, and although in practice legal departments often win the day in terms of termination procedures, there are some implications to consider. First, if the manager has some genuine positive feedback to give, she should probably share it. Second, as psychologists, we should challenge policies—specifically the use of public security-guard escorts—as part of the termination process. Public escorts likely impact negatively the dignity of the victim, the perception of fairness among survivors, and potentially, the reputation of the firm beyond the organization.
An interesting and helpful study was recently picked up by Applied Psychology: An International Review, which connects aspects of charismatic leadership with objective measures of performance. Rowold and Laukamp (2009) address what they argue is an overrepresentation of the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) in the transformational and charismatic leadership literature, as well as underrepresentation of Conger and Kanungo’s (1998) model of charismatic leadership. Conger and Kanungo’s model is unique in that it focuses on the observable behaviors in which, they argue, charismatic leaders engage; thus, charismatic leadership is framed as one role that leaders fulfill. Further, much of the literature on charismatic leadership focuses on subjective outcome measures rather than objective measures of organizational performance. Given the utility of Conger and Kanungo’s model, we’ll provide a quick reminder of the basics of their model.
Conger and Kanungo’s (1998) model of charismatic leadership comprises three stages and five factors. Within Stage 1, leaders engage in an assessment of the organization’s current state, including its resources and constraints (Factor 1), as well as the organization’s employees to understand their needs (Factor 2). Stage 2 consists of formulating a vision of the future (Factor 3) that accounts for organizational resources and constraints, and employee needs. During Stage 3, charismatic leaders move toward implementing the vision and motivating employees. Charismatic leaders will often engage in “unconventional” behavior (Factor 4) that demonstrates the importance of the vision, as well as paths to achieving the vision. Finally, charismatic leaders role model personal risk taking (Factor 5) to motivate followers and further clarify “how” to achieve the vision. These three stages and five factors are captured in a measure entitled the Conger and Kanungo Scales of Charismatic Leadership (CKS).
Rowold and Laukamp (2009) investigated three hypotheses linking charismatic leadership behaviors to organizational outcomes, including employee absenteeism, employee participation in training and development activities, and firm profitability. This study was conducted in a German public services company and utilized the German version of the CKS (Rowold, 2004, as cited in Rowold and Laukamp [2009]). “Leaders” were supervisors at several levels of this company whose respective charismatic leadership behaviors were rated by their direct reports (approximately 40 supervisors were rated by 5 direct reports). Objective measures of absenteeism, training and development activities, and profit were pulled from archival data. The authors hypothesized that various CKS factors would predict the three objective measures. The results suggest that leader “sensitivity to the environment” (Factor 1) was negatively related to employee absenteeism, which the authors suggest may be due to charismatic leaders being more likely to ensure a positive work environment for employees. “Sensitivity to employees” (Factor 2) was positively related to training and development activity, which is an intuitively appealing result; the more leaders displayed behaviors related to understanding employee needs, the more likely those employees were to engage in training and development activities. Finally, leader “unconventional behavior” was positively related to profit. Here, the authors suggest that unconventional leader behavior communicates to employees the importance of committing to—and how to pursue—the vision, thus motivating and gaining commitment from employees.
The economic downturn and human crisis associated with it are setting the stage for charismatic leadership at multiple levels of society. This study provides fairly compelling reasons for practitioners to support the development and display of charismatic leadership behaviors by leaders in organizations. Given the results of this study and behavioral focus of this model of charismatic leadership, there are several implications for practice. For example, organizations might utilize behavioral interviews and other behaviorally based methods to hire charismatic leaders into their organizations. The CKS provides clear behavioral examples that could be used to evaluate candidate responses to interview questions by targeting the five factors outlined by Conger and Kanungo (1998). The behavioral orientation of this model also lends itself to training and development interventions. Practitioners could use the model and CKS as guides to the types of behaviors that leaders can engage in to display charismatic leadership. Given the extent of unemployment, there are likely many talented and available leaders who display several of the factors, and “surviving” employees would likely be highly motivated to participate in training and engage in the types of behaviors consistent with this model of charismatic leadership.
Another article that caught our eye this time around dealt with the question of when layoff survivors decide to engage in organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) or not. James Levelle et al. (2009) expanded the research on OCBs in some ways that were both interesting from a purely theoretical standpoint but which also has some practical implications for managers trying to coax good organizational citizenship behaviors of different types out of employees.
One of the two major things that this research examined was the “multifoci perspective” angle on OCBs, which folded in research on how people target their citizenship behaviors based on whether the beneficiary is similar to them or not. Essentially, the researchers found that different targets of commitment (e.g., the organization as a whole vs. one’s own coworkers or supervisor) affected whether OCBs were aimed at either the whole organization (OCBOs) or at specific individuals (OCBIs). Specifically, a sense of commitment to an organization as a whole mediated the relationship between procedural fairness and OCBOs, but a sense of commitment to an individual workgroup did not. But, commitment to one’s own workgroup does mediate the same relationship between procedural fairness and OCBIs. In this way, the researchers managed to expand the nomological network of the commitment and OCB constructs, showing that not only can there can be different targets for both fairness perceptions and commitment, but examining those perceptions at their own level can greatly help predict outcomes like citizenship behaviors.
Of course, any sentence that contains the words “nomological network” is really only of interest to academics, or at least the academically oriented parts of practitioners’ brains. What we liked about this article was that it gives managers cues as to how to approach the always daunting task of fostering organizational citizenship behaviors by identifying different types of behaviors within that domain (those directed towards the organization at large and those directed at smaller groups like coworkers) and showing that there are specific levers (commitment at either the group or organizational level) that can be used to influence the relationship between fairness perceptions and OCBs. So if you’re trying to manage a particular group of overworked employees in the wake of layoffs and want them to help each other out, pay particular attention to drivers of fairness that are closer to home as well as how committed they are to the group. Finally, we liked how this study looked not at the supervisor when examining OCBIs (like most previous research in this area) but rather coworkers. This keeps pace nicely with workplace trends like self-managing teams and empowerment.
And finally we look at one article that didn’t specifically have anything to do with downsizing or layoffs, but rather new employees—just for contrast. One of the kinds of things we look out for in this column is research that takes concepts played out in the lab or even typical field settings and examines how well they work in different business situations. Take active learning and an article in the Journal of Applied Psychology by Tal Katz-Navon, Eitan Naveh, and Zvi Stern (2009) for example. It’s fine to say to a new employee “go crazy, try new things, and learn from your mistakes” if it’s in relation to developing new merchandise displays or processing work orders, but it’s not exactly the kind of thing you want to overhear a doctor tell a resident physician if you’re a patient at a teaching hospital. In a high-stakes job like this (or piloting an aircraft or even heavy construction), the axiom of active learning is at odds with the need for safety and operating within narrow boundaries. This creates a dilemma for those trying to teach others who are new to the job because many of these kinds of occupations require on-the-job training in situations where errors could be catastrophic. You don’t want someone to pilot (pardon the pun) a new paradigm for landing an airplane while on the job. So there is also often an emphasis on safety that it as odds with the emphasis on active learning.
The study in question looked at the example of resident physicians at teaching hospitals. Among other findings, the authors discovered that when there was a high active learning climate present (i.e., people were encouraged to experiment and learn from direct experiences) there was a U-shaped relationship between the number of errors made and the emphasis on safety. In other words, errors were relatively high when there was either a low or high emphasis on safety but lower when there was only a moderate emphasis on safety. (Errors were low in climates that discourage active learning, presumably because residents were given few chances to make them.) Apparently, low emphasis on safety and encouraging active learning leads to errors as you’d expect, but when residents are faced with the competing expectations of both active learning and safety, they err on the side of erring, which is probably an error.
References
Bayer, R. (2000). Termination with dignity. Business Horizons, September-October.
Conger, J. A. & Kanungo, R. N. (1998). Charismatic leadership in organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Greenberg, J. (1990). Organizational justice: Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Journal of Management, 16(2), 399–432.
Kant, I. (1997). Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals. In M. Gregor, trans., Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1785)
Karl, K. & Hancock, B. (1999). Expert advice on employment termination practices: How expert is it? Public Personnel Management, 28(1), 51–62.
Katz-Navon, T., Naveh, E., & Stern, Z. (2009). Active learning: When is more better? The case of resident physicians’ medical errors. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94, 1200–1209.
Lavelle, J., Brockner, J., Konovsky, M., Price, K., Henley, A., Taneja, A., et al. (2009). Commitment, procedural fairness, and organizational citizenship behavior: A multifoci analysis. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 30, 337–357.
Rowold, J. & Laukamp, L. (2009). Charismatic leadership and objective performance indicators. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 58(4), 602–621.
Schwieger, D. & Ivancevich, J. (1987). Executive actions for managing human resources before and after acquisitions. Academy of Management Executive, 1, 127–137.
Wood, M. S. & Karau, S. J. (2009). Preserving employee dignity during the termination interview: An empirical examination. Journal of Business Ethics, 86, 519–534.