Knowledge that Transforms

Two aspects of many real-world hiring situations affect hiring success in ways that are not well understood. One is that many applicant pools are relatively small, with perhaps fewer than 20 and sometimes fewer than 10 applicants. The other is that job seekers are likely to apply for more than one job at a time. Despite calls for more research that would be relevant to the small-scale hiring situation, scholars have given little attention to expected new-hire quality in small-pool hiring in general and even less to more specific questions of how that expected quality is affected if applicants apply for multiple jobs simultaneously. Most currently accepted methods linking expected new-hire quality to the selection ratio (or hiring rate) are based on the properties of large pools. The authors argue that those methods are based on the inherent, but dubious, assumption that all job seekers in a given applicant pool are pursuing that particular job and no other jobs. In the small-pool context, these factors have significant, and previously unrealized, negative effects on the expected quality of new hires when job seekers apply for multiple jobs at once. The authors present a conceptual development of a method, based on averages of order statistics, for estimating correct values of expected new-hire quality when pools are small and job seekers tend to apply for multiple jobs simultaneously. A series of simulations support the conclusion that the method yields accurate estimates.

The authors draw on prospect theory and demonstrate that the perceived justice of an outcome is affected by the way numerical information is presented. Three experimental studies were conducted using five different samples, representing teachers, general employees, and future employees. People generally tend to see a bigger difference in the performance between the self versus another person when their performance components are presented in frames associated with small numbers (e.g., absence rate of 3% vs. 9%) than when they are presented in frames associated with large numbers (e.g., attendance rate of 97% vs. 91%). Despite the same objective performance difference (e.g., 6% in the above example), people expected different fair shares of rewards and evaluated justice of a given outcome differently across the two frames.

This study investigates the effects of group member nonresponse in research that examines relationships between group-level constructs aggregated from the responses of individual group members. Simulation data show that the effects of nonresponse vary greatly depending on levels of between-group variability and within-group variability expressed jointly as intraclass correlation, or ICC(1), values. Even high response rates, for example, can produce significantly attenuated correlations between group-level variables with ICC(1) levels commonly reported in group studies. Conversely, even low response rates can yield accurate group-level correlations when ICC(1) levels are high. These effects of nonresponse are equivalent whether nonresponse derives from a random or biased process. Group size appears to play no important role in moderating the effects of response rate. Suggestions for research design and post hoc diagnosis of findings are discussed.

A congruence model of organizational design suggests that the consistency among strategy, structure, and culture enhances organizational performance. In this study, the author attempts to understand which strategy-structure and strategy-culture contingencies facilitate superior postacquisition performance. From the perspective of task interdependence, the author argues that different acquisition strategies (i.e., unrelated, vertical, related) require different levels of headquarters centralization and interdivisional integration in the organizational structure, as well as different degrees of acculturation in the organizational culture. Based on input/output (I/O) analysis, the author develops theoretical measures for different acquisition strategies to test these arguments. The results from a two-stage model capture the author’s arguments by using a sample of 154 acquisitions in the Taiwanese electronics and information sector.

Recently, outside blockholders, external owners that hold 5% or more of their firms’ outstanding common stockholdings, have been pressuring their firms to engage in divestiture activities. This study considers whether the influence of those owners also extends to how the divestiture is implemented, whether through spin-off or sell-off. Tests of an agency theory model using data from 205 divestitures show that the adoption of spin-offs or sell-offs is associated with the amount of outstanding common stockholdings held by outside blockholders and the size of the unit divested. Spin-offs are used more frequently when outside blockholders own more of the divesting firm’s stockholdings and the divested unit is larger, while sell-offs tend to be selected when outside blockholders own less stock and the divested business is smaller. Consistent with agency theory expectations, spin-offs would allow the blockholders to decide whether to hold or sell their interests in the divested firm, a decision they could make in accordance with their individual portfolio risks. Sell-offs of small units could be used to preserve organizational diversity and produce proceeds that would help the divesting firm’s managers pursue their self-interests. Overall, outside blockholders appear to shape how divestitures are done, even if they cannot directly intervene in their firms’ operations.

This article attempts to move beyond the contradictions regarding the motivational effects of self-efficacy. Self-efficacy beliefs are viewed as the conscious reflection of an implicit process of self-motivation that occurs as a response to the perception of increased demands. A positive rate of change in self-efficacy beliefs, rather than a steady state of self-efficacy, indicates self-motivation and is associated with positive motivational consequences. It is argued that the oscillating interplay of demand-perception and self-motivation is linked to the dynamics of positive and negative affect. The theoretical model can account for the conflicting findings that exist with regard to the motivational consequences of self-efficacy and opens an agenda for future research.

Many lists that purport to gauge the quality of journals in management and organization studies (MOS) are based on the judgments of experts in the field. This article develops an identity concerns model (ICM) that suggests that such judgments are likely to be shaped by the personal and social identities of evaluators. The model was tested in a study in which 168 editorial board members rated 44 MOS journals. In line with the ICM, respondents rated journal quality more highly to the extent that a given journal reflected their personal concerns (associated with having published more articles in that journal) and the concerns of a relevant ingroup (associated with membership of the journal’s editorial board or a particular disciplinary or geographical background). However, judges’ ratings of journals in which they had published were more favorable when those journals had a low-quality reputation, and their ratings of journals that reflected their geographical and disciplinary affiliations were more favorable when those journals had a high-quality reputation. The findings are thus consistent with the view that identity concerns come to the fore in journal ratings when there is either a need to protect against personal identity threat or a meaningful opportunity to promote social identity.

Downsizing is a common business management practice. Prior research has examined the financial consequences of downsizing or the impact on individuals remaining in a downsizing organization. Taking a resource-based perspective, this study integrates and extends prior research on downsizing by examining how downsizing influences the relative likelihood that a firm will experience one of three states in the three years following downsizing. Multinomial logistic regression is employed to test hypotheses using a sample of 445 firms that downsized during the period 1995 to 2000. The authors find significant differences in the relative likelihood of Chapter 11 bankruptcy, acquisition, or remaining a nonbankrupt going concern based on the size of the downsizing, firm-level intangible resources, the tangible asset intensity of the firm, and industry-level knowledge intensity. Implications for managers and future research are discussed.

The delivery of bad news is at the center of many organizational processes. Despite the variety of organizational processes involving the delivery of bad news, there is no integrative framework that guides its study. Based on a literature review of professionals who deliver bad news as part of their occupations, this article presents a framework that conceptualizes the delivery of bad news as a process involving a variety of activities in three different, but interrelated, phases—preparation, delivery, and transition. This three-phase model is the guiding framework for the literature review. The article identifies the strategic functions served by different bad news management activities and highlights many dilemmas facing managers in the delivery of bad news. The article concludes with identifying new directions for research on the delivery of bad news in organizations.

Enacting social support and job control can enable effective problem solving and protect well-being. The authors operationalized social support used for problem solving as “discussing problems with others to solve problems” (DIS-SP) and job control used to solve problems as “changing aspects of work activities to solve problems” (CHA-SP). Analyses of experience sampling data (N = 191) revealed that DIS-SP was inversely associated with subsequent negative affect and that there were curvilinear relationships between CHA-SP and subsequent levels of negative affect, fatigue, and cognitive failure, such that only high levels of CHA-SP were associated with lower levels of negative affect, fatigue, and cognitive failure. Fatigue was inversely associated with subsequent levels of DIS-SP and CHA-SP. Contrary to expectations, there was a positive association between cognitive failure and subsequent CHA-SP.