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Mounting complexity in the world, coupled with new discoveries and more journal space to publish the findings, have spurred research on a host of topics in just about every discipline of social science. Research forays have also generated unprecedented disagreements. For many topics, empirical findings exist but results are mixed: some show positive relationships, some show negative relationships, and some show no statistically significant relationship. How, then, do researchers go about discovering systematic variation across studies to understand and predict forces that impinge on human functioning? Historically, qualitative literature reviews were performed in conjunction with the counting of statistically significant effects. This approach fails to consider effect magnitudes and sample sizes, and thus its conclusions can be misleading. A more precise way to reach conclusions from research literature is via meta-analysis, defined as a set of statistical procedures that enable researchers to derive quantitative estimates of average and moderator effects across available studies. Since its introduction in 1976, meta-analysis has developed into an authoritative source of information for ascertaining the generalizability of research findings. Thus, it is perhaps not surprising that meta-analyses in the field of management garner, on average, three times as many citations as single studies. A framework for conducting meta-analysis explains why it should be used, outlines what it has yielded to society, and introduces the reader to a fundamental conception and a misconception. More specifics follow about data collection and study selection criteria and implications of publication bias. How to convert estimates from individual studies to a common scale to be able to average them, what to consider in choosing a meta-analytic method, how to compare the procedures, and what information to include when reporting results are presented next. The article concludes with a discussion of nuances and limitations, and suggestions for future research and practice. Science builds knowledge cumulatively from numerous studies, which, more often than not, differ in their characteristics (e.g., research design, participants, setting, sample size). Some findings are in concert and some are not. Through its quantitative foundations, conjoint with theory-guiding hypotheses, meta-analysis offers statistical means of analyzing disparate research designs and conflicting results and discovering consistencies in a seemingly inconsistent literature. Research conclusions reached by a theory-driven, well-conducted meta-analysis are almost certainly more accurate and reliable than those from any single study.

Work motivation research is at a crossroads with the discovery of the causal effects of primed subconscious goals in addition to those of consciously set goals on performance. Although social psychologists continue to demonstrate positive effects of primed goals on a multitude of dependent variables, priming research has been criticized for its lack of generalizability beyond tightly controlled laboratory experiments. Addressing this skepticism, a field experiment was conducted in a for-profit organization, where the CEO used goal priming to motivate job performance. A performance goal for achievement was primed with achievement-related words embedded in an email from the CEO to employees. The goal priming by the CEO necessitated little to no costs yet it increased objectively measured performance effectiveness by 15% and efficiency by 35% over a 5-day work-week. This field experiment illustrates a new alternative for increasing employee performance. In a second experiment, we conducted a conceptual replication of the field experiment in the laboratory with a larger sample size, and we extended theory by testing a measure of motivation level as a mediator of the primed goal-performance effect. The results affirmed the hypothesized motivational influence. These two experiments increase understanding of subconscious motivation processes.

The Big Five personality traits and self-efficacy independently relate to a multitude of outcomes across domains of functioning. Yet, only a small number of studies examined these variables together as part of the same conceptual model, and findings are mixed. We revisit their joint relationships, and test three conceptual models of influence on academic performance of college students over a semester. Because of the key role college graduates will play in society, many have a stake in better understanding their performance. The trait model specifies that the Big Five traits influence performance directly and indirectly through partial mediation of self-efficacy. In the independent model, the Big Five traits influence self-efficacy and performance independently, without mediation of self-efficacy. In the intrapersonal model, the effects of the Big Five traits on performance are fully mediated by self-efficacy. We collected data in five samples, three Universities, and two countries, N = 875, and conducted a meta-analytic path-analysis. Self-efficacy positively related to academic performance across the models, conscientiousness and emotional stability were predictive of self-efficacy and performance in some analyses, and the significance of the other three traits was fleeting.

Perceptions of who makes an effective leader are altered in crises. One perspective from which leadership effectiveness can be evaluated is gender differences. In this panel symposium, we will disc...

Although support for the positive effect of group efficacy on group performance is copious, our understanding of how group efficacy forms is scant. Much remains unanswered about how the four efficacy antecedents, defined by social cognitive theory as enacted mastery, vicarious learning, social persuasion, and affect, concurrently influence group efficacy. Complementing the homology assumption of social cognitive theory, the authors propose and test a differential moderation model of group trust, in which group trust interacts synergistically or compensatorily with the four antecedents of group efficacy depending on the information content they provide. The results, based on 100 work groups in a manufacturing plant in China, showed that past group performance and group social persuasion were positively related to group efficacy, but that group vicarious learning and group positive affect were not. A significant interaction with group trust was found for group vicarious learning and for group positive affect. Finally, group efficacy was positively related to subsequent group performance, even after controlling for the four efficacy antecedents and group trust. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. Practitioner points Group efficacy is a significant predictor of group performance., Building trust in work groups is a credible and critical managerial action for group efficacy formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-regulation theories explain how psychological processes translate into action. We conceptualize the role of the trait core confidence higher-order construct in self-regulation processes and hypothesize its positive relationships with performance, satisfaction with life, and job satisfaction. On the basis of meta-analytic data (studies = 141, k = 226, N = 82,692), one student sample from the United States (n = 339), another student sample from Republic of Korea (n = 181), and field data from an auto group (20 car dealerships in 16 cities, n = 142 car sales associates), complementary analyses were conducted to examine convergent and predictive validities of the trait core confidence higher-order construct. Meta-analyses of the relationships among its four trait manifest variables (hope, general-efficacy, optimism, resilience) revealed that they are highly correlated. Confirmatory factor analyses in three studies indicated convergent validity. Predictive validity of the trait core confidence higher-order construct was supported in two studies.

In this field study (n = 514), we examined the relationships among interpersonal trust, interpersonal emotion, cooperation, and the characteristics of both the trustor and trustee at work. We found that interpersonal trust and interpersonal emotion were positively related to willingness to cooperate among members working in teams. We also found that interpersonal emotion was positively related to interpersonal trust. Interpersonal trust and interpersonal emotion, in turn, were predicted by 3 trustee characteristics: ability, benevolence, and integrity. Together, interpersonal trust, interpersonal emotion, and trustee characteristics accounted for 70% of the variance in willingness to cooperate among the team members. jasp_776 1603..1631

Goals regulate workplace behavior day after day, but employees still occasionally veer off course. Goal pursuit can be sidetracked perceptibly and undetectably. If conscious goals are discernably c...

This article examines the relevance and viability of pursuing empirical research on subconscious goals and applying the findings in the workplace. Five topics are addressed: First, reasons why management scholars have eschewed the study of the subconscious are given. Second, a brief overview of social psychology experiments on subconscious goals is provided. Critical issues that have yet to be addressed in these experiments are identified and discussed. Third, organizational psychology experiments on subconscious goals that have attempted to overcome several of these shortcomings and provide new findings are described. Fourth, research avenues that have yet to be explored are suggested. Finally, the implications of this stream for management practice are discussed.

The authors examined relationships among collective efficacy, group potency, and group performance. Meta-analytic results (based on 6,128 groups, 31,019 individuals, 118 correlations adjusted for dependence, and 96 studies) reveal that collective efficacy was significantly related to group performance (.35). In the proposed nested 2-level model, collective efficacy assessment (aggregation and group discussion) was tested as the 1st-level moderator. It showed significantly different average correlations with group performance (.32 vs. .45), but the group discussion assessment was homogeneous, whereas the aggregation assessment was heterogeneous. Consequently, there was no 2nd-level moderation for the group discussion, and heterogeneity in the aggregation group was accounted for by the 2nd-level moderator, task interdependence (high, moderate, and low levels were significant; the higher the level, the stronger the relationship). The 2nd and 3rd meta-analyses indicated that group potency was related to group performance (.29) and to collective efficacy (.65). When tested in a structural equation modeling analysis based on meta-analytic findings, collective efficacy fully mediated the relationship between group potency and group performance. The authors suggest future research and convert their findings to a probability of success index to help facilitate practice.

The effect of positive reinforcement, contingently applied, on performance improvement may be one of the most agreed upon principles in the fi eld of organizational behavior, and arguably psychology in general. In his pioneering work in organizational behavior, Vroom ( 1964 ) noted that “ without a doubt the law of effect or principle of reinforcement must be included among the most substantiated fi ndings of experimental psychology and is at the same time among the most useful fi ndings for an applied psychology concerned with control of human behavior ” (p. 13). Years later, in his classic work in psychology on social foundations of thought and action, Bandura ( 1986 ) concludes that “ human behavior cannot be fully understood without considering the regulatory infl uence of response consequences ” (p. 228). Recent work, synthesizing different subsets of this vast literature over the years, has meta analytically shown the positive effect that contingent reinforcers have on performance outcomes (Stajkovic and Luthans, 1997 , 2003 ). We use the term “ reinforces ” rather than “ rewards ” throughout this chapter to recognize that the more common term reward is used in the behavioral management literature to refer to what managers think will have a positive impact, whereas a reinforcer is defi ned as a consequence that, indeed, increases the frequency of the behavior that preceded it (see Luthans and Kreitner, 1975 ; Luthans and Stajkovic, 1999 ). The three types of positive reinforcers (treatment interventions) that have shown to increase the frequency of employee behaviors, and that are most often used to improve performance in the behavioral management literature/research, are money, feedback, and recognition. Money (Chapter 12 ) and feedback (e.g. see Chapters 9 and 10 ) are given attention in other places in this volume. As refl ected in the title, the principle described in this chapter is that providing contingent (if then) recognition for desired behaviors leads to improved performance. In this chapter, beside using the term reinforcer rather than reward, we also make a distinction between formal and informal (sometimes referred to in the literature as “ social ” , e.g. see Luthans and Stajkovic, 1999 ; Stajkovic and Luthans, 2001 , 2003 ) recognition. Formal

We develop a theoretical framework that links charismatic leadership to the extensiveness of one's social network and then predicts that such network extensiveness can subsequently be related to an...

In this study, we provide the conceptual background, meta-analyze available behavioral management studies (N= 72) in organizational settings, and examine whether combined reinforcement effects on task performance are additive (sum of individual effects), redundant (combined effects are less than the additive effects), or synergistic (combined effects are greater than the sum of the individual effects). We found a significant overall average effect size of (d.) = .47 (16% improvement in performance; 63% probability of success), and a significant within-group heterogeneity of effect sizes. To account for this variation, we conducted a theory-driven moderator analysis, which indicated that money, feedback, and social recognition each had a significant impact on task performance. However, when these 3 reinforcers were used in combination, they produced the strongest (synergistic) effect on task performance. Based on our findings, we offer directions for future research, and suggestions for effective application of behavioral management at work.

In this field experiment, we first compared the performance effects of money systematically administered through the organizational behavior modification (O.B. Mod.) model and routine pay for perfo...

This study examines Bandura's (1986, 1997a) propositions that self-efficacy provides information from which causal attributions are made and that causal attributions, in turn, influence formation of subsequent self-efficacy expectations. We developed a conceptual rationale for and empirically tested 2 sets of hypotheses pertaining to direct and reciprocal links between self-efficacy and causal attributions. Effects of causal attributions and subsequently formed self-efficacy on subsequent task performance were also investigated. Results support the existence of direct and reciprocal links between self-efficacy and causal attributions. We found interactive effects between self-efficacy and performance feedback on causal attributions, and a mediating effect of causal attributions on the formation of subsequent self-efficacy beliefs. Causal attributions and subsequent self-efficacy also significantly predicted subsequent performance.

In the former planned economies, a major result of the economic reform programs has been the resurgence of private entrepreneurship. As these countries have struggled to make the transition to a market-based economy over the past decade, the environment has played an important structural role in entrepreneurial development. However, from a psychological perspective, the environmental structural context affects human action through cognitive processes such as self-regulation. Thus, we first identify and analyze the effect of the political, economic, legal, and cultural environment on the development of entrepreneurship in transitional economies, mainly using the former Soviet Union and particularly the Republic of Kazakhstan as an example. We then examine the role that social cognitive variables such as self-efficacy may play in the relationship between this external environment and entrepreneurial development.

Hedges and Olkin’s meta-analytic procedures for fitting parametric fixed effect categorical models to effect sizes have been widely used in research in experimental, social, and educational psychology. However, to date, this meta-analytic approach has been largely absent from the management literature in general and organizational behavior literature in particular. This article summarizes Hedges and Olkin’s meta-analytic method by (a) outlining the specific step-by-step analytical procedures, (b) using a simplified notational system, and (c) providing methodological and conceptual rationale for each analysis. The use of this approach can add considerable methodological power and provide a relevant meta-analytic alternative to the study of organizational behavior and management.

This meta-analysis (114 studies, k = 157, N = 21,616) examined the relationship between self-efficacy and work-related performance. Results of the primary meta-analysis indicated a significant weighted average correlation between self-efficacy and work-related performance, G (r+) = .38, and a signif

As posed in the title, the authors make a case for the use of behavioral management as a pragmatic and effective way to help East European managers improve employee performance. After providing the cultural and theoretical grounding for the use of a behavioral approach, the five-step O.B. Mod. model is presented. The successful use of O.B. Mod. in a Russian factory is given detailed attention and then the case is made for using this approach in all Eastern European organizations. Particular attention is given to the nature and power of contingently administered social reinforcers to increase employee performance at no cost. The authors conclude that this approach can help meet the competitive challenges Eastern European management faces now and in the future.

This article presents a social cognitive model that identifies, defines and relates key comprehensive factors that impact on business ethical standards and conduct across cultures. In particular, national cultures serve as the social foundation for generating and shaping in a triadically interacting manner institutional, organizational, and personal factors. The model predicts that these three antecedent factors combine to influence the perceptions of business ethical standards uniquely in each culture. The model also predicts that the consequences of the resulting ethical or unethical behaviors feed back to modify the subsequent ethical standards and conduct. Examples and implications of this social cognitive model are provided throughout.

This symposium includes research that builds theory on the interaction of conscious and primed subconscious behavior and examines the effectiveness and applicability of various priming techniques i...

The author develops core confidence as a higher order construct and suggests that a core confidence-higher order construct--not addressed by extant work motivation theories--is helpful in better understanding employee motivation in today's rapidly changing organizations. Drawing from psychology (social, clinical, and developmental) and social anthropology, the author develops propositions regarding the relationships between core confidence and performance, attitudes, and subjective well-being. The core confidence-higher order construct is proposed to be manifested by hope, self-efficacy, optimism, and resilience. The author reasons that these four variables share a common confidence core (a higher order construct) and may be considered as its manifestations. Suggestions for future research and implications of the work are discussed.

The authors conducted 2 studies of subconscious goal motivation. First, the authors ran a pilot study to establish the effects of priming of subconscious goals on a performance task frequently used in goal setting research. Second, the authors conducted the main study in which the authors examined the effects of both priming of subconscious goals and assigned conscious goals on the same performance task. The authors found significant main effects of both manipulations and a significant interaction between subconscious and conscious goals. The effects of conscious difficult and do-best goals were enhanced by subconscious goals, although conscious easy goals were not affected. All effects from the main study still held after 1 day.