PSYC 178: Midterm #2

Criterion Data

Data providing a basis for employee development, motivation/satisfaction, rewards, transfer, promotion, or layoff decisions.

What are the 3 types of performance data?

1. Objective Performance Data: Performance data based on sales volume or output.

2. Personnel Performance Data: Performance data based on absenteeism.

3. Judgemental: Performance data based on supervisor ratings

What is the first kind of performance measurement?

Hands-on performance measures; Employee engages in work-related tasks, including simulations and walk-through testing (flight-simulators)

What is a kind of performance measurement that is used to monitor employee performance?

Electronic Performance Monitoring (EPM): Observing, recording, and analyzing information using technology to monitor employee job performance.

What is Performance Management, and its 3 components of it?

Emphasizes the connection between individual behavior and organizational strategies and goals.

1. definition of performance

2. actual measurement process

3. communication between supervisor & subordinate abt individual behavior and expectations

What is Performance Appraisal (PA)?

A method by which an employee's job performance is documented and evaluated, often occurring once a year, making is systematic and periodic

What are the 3 justices to perception of fairness?

Distributive Justice: Fairness of outcomes related to performance-based decisions.

Procedural Justice: Fairness of processes by which performance ratings are assigned and decisions are made.

Interpersonal Justice: Respectfulness and personal tone of communications surrounding evaluations.

What are the 3 theories to performance rating?

Process Model of Performance Rating: Addresses various factors comprising the rating process.

Content Model: Addresses the content input to supervisory ratings.

Rating Context: Includes both announced purpose and other, non-announced agendas surrounding ratings.

What are the 3 factors that influence overall performance ratings?

Task Performance: Proficiency with which job incumbents perform activities that are formally recognized as part of their job.

Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB): Behavior that goes beyond what is expected. (discretionary/not obvi)

Counterproductive Work Behavior (CWB): Voluntary behavior that violates significant organizational norms and threatens the well-being of the organization. (obvi)

What are 2 kinds of performance ratings?

Trait Ratings: Rating based on traits such as persistence and concentration.

Task-based ratings: Rating based on the effectiveness of an employee in accomplishing duties. (easily defensible, i.e for an office it would be apprehension, traffic control, testifying, first aid etc)

Critical Incidents Method

Examples of critical behaviors that influence performance

What are the performance rating formats (6) ?

Graphic Rating Scales: Graphically display performance scores running from high to low. (Yelp, 5 pt scales, etc)

Checklist Rating Format: List of behaviors presented to a rater who places a check next to items describing the ratee.

Weighted checklist: Checklists where included items have assigned values or weights. (1 means bad, 5 means great etc)

Forced-Choice Format: Requires rater to choose two statements out of four that could describe the ratee (Myers-Briggs)

Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales (BARS): Rating format that includes behavioral anchors describing what a worker has done, or might be expected to do, in a particular duty area. ( on a scale of 1-5, how would u..)

Behavioral Observation Scale: Format that asks the rater to consider how frequently an employee has been seen to act in a particular way

What involves direct comparison of 1 person w/ another? Def and give 2 examples.

Employee Comparison Methods: Involve direct comparison of one person with another.

1. Simple Ranking: Employees are ranked from top to bottom according to assessed proficiency

2. Paired Comparison: Each employee in a group is compared with each other individual in the group.

What are 3 examples of rating distortions?

Central Tendency Error: Raters choose the mid-point on the scale when a more extreme point is appropriate.

Leniency-Severity Error: Raters are unusually easy or harsh in their ratings.

Halo Error: Raters assign the same rating to an individual on a series of dimensions.

What can be done about distortions made?

Some can be fixed with:

Administrative Training: Training important for uncommon rating systems or if structural characteristics are deficient.

Psychometric Training: Makes raters aware of common rating errors in hopes of reducing them.

Frame of Ref. training: Rater needs context for providing rating; involves providing information about multidimensional nature of performance, ensures raters understand meaning of scale anchors, and provide feedback on practice exercise.

Def. reliability vs validity in performance ratings

Reliability:

-Inter-rater reliability considered poor but this isn’t necessarily bad considering each rater relies on a different perspective

Validity: Depends on manner by which rating scales were conceived & developed

Destructive Criticism

Feedback that is cruel, sarcastic, & offensive. General, leads to anger & resentment. Apologies work best to repair damage.

What are some impacts of staffing practices on firm performance?

High Performance Work Practices: Include use of formal job analyses, selection from within for key positions, & use of formal assessment devices for selection

Staffing practices have pos associations with firm performance

What is validity, in terms of staffing outcomes, and what are some validity designs?

Validity: Accurateness of inferences made based on test or performance data

• Criterion-related Validity: Correlating test score with performance measure.

• content-related

• construct-related

Selection Ratio (SR)

Index ranging from 0 to 1 that reflects the ratio of available jobs to applicants.

What are some selection decision outcomes?

False Positive (FP): Applicant accepted but performed poorly.

False Negative (FN): Applicant rejected but would have performed well.

True positive (TP): Applicant accepted & performed well.

True Negative (TN): Applicant rejected & would have performed poorly.

What is a cutoff score and what are the 2 different kinds?

Cut score/ cutoff score: specified point in distribution of scores below which candidates are rejected.

• raising cut score will result in fewer fp’s but more fn’s

Criterion-Referenced Cut Score: Consider desired level of performance & find test score corresponding to that level.

Norm-Referenced Cut Score: Based on some index of test-takers’ scores rather than any notion of job performance.

Utility Analysis

Assesses economic return on investment of HR interventions like staffing or training

• includes consideration of Base Rate (BR) = Percentage of the current workforce performing successfully. If performance is already high, then new staffing system will likely add little to productivity.

What are the 2 models in practical staffing?

Comprehensiveness Model: Enough high quality information about candidates to predict likelihood of their success.

Compensatory Model: Candidates can compensate for relative weakness in one attribute through strength in another one, providing both are required by job.

What is a form of combining information?

Compensatory Model: Candidates can compensate for relative weakness in one attribute through strength in another one, providing both are required by job.

• multiple regression analysis

• non-compensatory —> individual has no opportunity to compensate at later stage for low score in earlier stage

What is a second form of combining information?

Clinical Decision Making: Uses judgment to combine information & make decision about relative value of different candidates.

Statistical Decision Making

Combines information according to a mathematical formula.

Hurdle System of Combining Scores

Constructed from multiple hurdles so candidates who don’t exceed each of the minimum dimension scores are excluded.

• set up sequentially

• used to narrow a large applicant pool

• Non-compensatory strategy: individual has no opportunity to compensate at later stage for low score in earlier stage.

Layoff (deselection)

Job loss due to employer downsizing or reductions in force.

• loss due to employer downsizing or reductions in force

Termination for Cause (deselection)

Individual is fired for a particular reason.

What are some legal issues in staffing decisions?

• Charges of Employment Discrimination —> Violations of Title VII of 1964 CRA, ADA, or ADEA.

• IO serve as expert witness → consequences can be substantial

• most often brought by individual charming

Adverse Treatment

Intentional discrimination where the employer treated the plaintiff differently from majority applicants or employees.

Adverse Impact (AI) Discrimination

Employer may not have intended to discriminate, but a practice did have an adverse impact on the protected group.

80% or 4/5ths Rule

Guideline for assessing whether there is evidence of Adverse Impact (AI)

• plaintiffs must show that protected group received only 80% of desirable outcomes received by majority in order to meet burden of demonstrating AI

• AI ratio

• can be affected by sample size

• burden of proof shifts to employer once AI is demonstrated

Motivation

Motivation concerns conditions responsible for variations in intensity, quality, & direction of ongoing behavior.

Person as Machine

People’s behaviors & actions are reflexive & involuntary, performed without conscious awareness.

Push by internal needs and pulled by environmental stimuli

Person as Judge

Individual seeks information about the extent a person & others perceived as responsible for positive & negative events.

Bounded Rationality/limited rationality

The inability of humans to reason and make decisions in perfectly rational ways

Attitudes

Relatively stable feelings or beliefs directed toward specific persons, groups, ideas, or jobs (job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job involvement etc)

Locus of Control (LOC)

To the extent individual views events as resulting from their actions (internal…e.g., takes responsibility for miscues) or from outside causes (external…e.g., when at fault, blames others)

Maslow's Need Theory in terms of motivational theories

Internal mechanical theory: all humans have basic set of needs that express themselves over life span of individual as internal pushes or drives.

Reinforcement theory (external mechanical)

Depends on 3 elements: stimulus, réponse, & reward

• Contingent reward = reward depends on response

• intermittent & continuous rewards —> produce higher performance levels

Person-as-scientist models (4 theories)

Path Goal Theory = People weighted options before choosing among them. If worker saw high productivity as a path to the goal of desired rewards or personal goals (e.g., pay increase) that worker would likely be a high producer

Vroom's VIE Theory: Individuals rationally estimate the relative attractiveness and unattractiveness of different rewards or outcomes (Valence), the probability that performance will lead to particular outcomes or rewards (Instrumentality) and the probability that effort will lead to performance (Expectancy)

Dissonance theory = tension exists when individuals hold incompatible thoughts, humans seek “balance”

Equity Theory = individuals look at world in terms of comparative inputs & outcomes

Valence

Strength of person’s preference for particular outcome

Instrumentality

Perceived relationship between performance & attainment of a certain outcome

Expectancy

Perceived relationship between effort and performance

Self-Efficacy

A belief (confidence) in one’s capacity to perform a specific task or reach a specific goal

Motivational Trait Questionnaire (MTQ)

Measures 6 aspects of “general” motivation

1. desire to learn

2. mastery

3. competitiveness

4. worry

5. emotionality

6. other referenced goals

Productivity Measurement & Enhancement System (ProMES)

Utilizes goal setting, rewards, & feedback to increase motivation & performance

What are the rater vs rates goals:

rater: task performance measurements, interpersonal improvements, strategic decisions, internalized rates

ratee: info gathering. info dissemination (gives info to rater on constraints on improvement)

What are 2 things that might effect performance evaluation & culture?

1. Hofstede’s 5 dimensions of culture: individualism vs collectivism, masculine vs feminine cultures, high power distance vs low power distance

2. modesty bias: raters give themselves lower ratings than warranted (in cultures with high power distance)

5 signs of age discrimination

1. older worker being fired or offered buyouts but young ones are being hired

2. reassignment to unpleasant duties

3. tacky comments abt age

4. you stop getting raises

5. your performance reviews tanks

What is the historical order of motivation theories in IO psychology?

Instinct…inborn tendency that it thought to first behavior (Freud)

“Instinct,” replaced with “internal motivation, motive & drive,” (Maslow)

Emphasis on behavior rather than needs/instincts (Skinner)

Group dynamics (Lewin)

Person as scientist

reflective rather than reflexive…voluntary response by individual

Person as intentional

develops goals & plans

Equation for motivation & performance in tihe workplace

(Motivation x Ability) - Situational Constraints = Performance

What are the levels in Maslow’s Need Theory

Self-actualization —> desire to develop capabilities to the fullest

esteem needs —> being respected for accomplishments/capabilities

love/belongingness —> desire to be accepted by others

Security —> need to produce a secure, safe environment

physic need —> basic needs like food & water

Person-as-intentional approach

Goal-setting theory: Notion of goal as a motivational force (individuals set specific goals that perform better than individuals who simply adopt a “do your best” goal)

Control Theory: based on principle feedback loop, assumes individuals compare a standard to an actual outcome & adjust their behavior to bring outcome into agreement with a standard