Cross Cultural Examination of Applicant Reactions to Social Media Screening

With the popularity of social media on the rise, it is no surprise that organizations are beginning to use social networking sites SNS to screen applicants in the hiring process. However, the use of SNS screening may lead to negative outcomes in terms of applicant reactions to selection practices (Stoughton, Thompson, & Meade, 2015). With many companies becoming more and more internationalized, and the possibility of negative reactions to SNS screening potentially not being exclusive to applicants based in the U.S., studies examining applicant reactions in different cultural settings is needed. Accordingly, a cross-cultural study was developed to compare applicant reactions to social media screening in the hiring process in which reactions of applicants from two countries, the United States and Turkey, are examined and compared. These two countries are examined because of their differences in important cultural variables such as individualism/collectivism and power distance, which have been proposed to influence applicant reactions to SNS screening (Black, Stone, & Johnson, 2015). In examining applicant reactions, applicants’ perceived invasion of privacy, organizational attraction, and litigation intentions will be used as outcome variables

Illegitimate tasks are not created equal: Examining the effects of attributions on unreasonable and unnecessary tasks

Illegitimate tasks are tasks that violate norms for what the employee should do as part of the job, and have been found to harm employees' well-being. The current research uses a mixed methods design to examine the role of attributions on the two types of illegitimate tasks: unreasonable and unnecessary tasks. A sample of 432 engineers described a specific illegitimate task that was assigned to them, the attributions they made and their response. They also completed a quantitative questionnaire. Results from both the qualitative (event level) and quantitative (person level) portions of our study portray differences in the attributions made to unreasonable and unnecessary tasks, as well as differential negative effects on employees' emotions. In addition, hostile attribution bias was found to moderate the relationship between illegitimate tasks and negative emotions, particularly for unreasonable tasks. This supports the theoretical basis for illegitimate tasks because unreasonable tasks pose a potentially greater risk to the employee's self-worth than unnecessary tasks that are more often assigned at random