To Excuse or Not to Excuse: Effect of Explanation Type and Provision on Reactions to a Workplace Behavioral Transgression

People often offer an excuse or an apology after they do something wrong. In this paper, we examine how giving an excuse, an apology, or no explanation after arriving late to a meeting influences the attitudes and behavioral intentions others form toward the late arrival. Additionally, we examined how a group-related factor (complaining) and the late arrival’s history with coming late affected participant judgments. Across two studies using complementary experimental and survey methods, we found that an excuse is better than no explanation, but that the difference between apology and no explanation and apology and excuse is not always clear. Furthermore, we found that common distinctions between explanation types used in the literature may not fully exist in non-laboratory social interactions. Implications of these findings and future directions are discussed

An experimental investigation of the interpersonal ramifications of lateness to workplace meetings

Individuals often attend meetings at work to which at least one person arrives late. Building from attributional theories of interpersonal behaviour, we conducted an experiment to determine the cognitive, affective, and behavioural components of people\u27s reactions to meeting lateness. Participants read one of eight experimental vignettes that described someone arriving 5 or 15 min late to an important or unimportant meeting, after which the person who arrived late offered either a controllable or an uncontrollable reason for being late. Participants reported greater anger and a willingness to punish the late arrival who gave a controllable excuse, whereas sympathy and prosocial intentions followed the late arrival who gave an uncontrollable excuse. To establish generalizability, we replicated the results using a survey of workers who reported on their thoughts and experiences in their last meeting to which someone arrived late. Overall, our findings also indicated that accounting for the severity of the transgression uniquely contributed to emotional and behaviour reactions, which is an improvement on existing attributional models

It’s All in How You Use It: Managers’ Use of Meetings to Reduce Employee Intentions to Quit

Meetings are often viewed as unnecessary, wastes of time, and overall negative experiences at work. In this study, we examined the positive side of meetings, specifically, how the relationship a manager fosters with subordinates in meetings affects those employees’ intentions to quit (ITQ). Using an online survey of working adults who regularly attended meetings, we found that the relation between perceived organizational support (POS) and leader–member exchange (LMX) quality in meetings on ITQ depended on an employee’s level of negative affectivity (NA). When POS or LMX in meetings was low or average, high-NA employees held significantly higher ITQ than low-NA employees. However, when POS or LMX in meetings was high, high-NA employees were no more likely to quit than low-NA employees. We provide a series of practical recommendations based on our findings that consulting psychologists can implement in their clients’ meetings to address employee withdrawal cognitions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved

An experimental investigation of the interpersonal ramifications of lateness to workplace meetings

Individuals often attend meetings at work to which at least one person arrives late. Building from attributional theories of interpersonal behaviour, we conducted an experiment to determine the cognitive, affective, and behavioural components of people\u27s reactions to meeting lateness. Participants read one of eight experimental vignettes that described someone arriving 5 or 15 min late to an important or unimportant meeting, after which the person who arrived late offered either a controllable or an uncontrollable reason for being late. Participants reported greater anger and a willingness to punish the late arrival who gave a controllable excuse, whereas sympathy and prosocial intentions followed the late arrival who gave an uncontrollable excuse. To establish generalizability, we replicated the results using a survey of workers who reported on their thoughts and experiences in their last meeting to which someone arrived late. Overall, our findings also indicated that accounting for the severity of the transgression uniquely contributed to emotional and behaviour reactions, which is an improvement on existing attributional models

Leadership in Workplace Meetings: The Intersection of Leadership Styles and Follower Gender

Meetings are ubiquitous across organizations, yet researchers have paid scant attention to the role of meeting leaders in affecting meeting outcomes. Because meetings are important discursive sites, the style of a meeting leader may influence subordinate views of the meeting and leader. Using a sample of working adults, we first demonstrated that meeting attendees who perceived their leader as participative viewed the leader as more warm and competent than meeting attendees who had a directive leader. We explain this finding through the framework of social exchange theory. In Study 2, we conducted an experiment to further probe the relation between meeting leader style and subordinate perceptions of the leader. Again, participants viewed participative leaders as more warm and competent than directive leaders. Interestingly, working adults preferred participative leaders over directive leaders across every type of work meeting. We further found that participant gender interacted with leader style, such that men rated directive leaders are warmer than did women, but men and women did not differ in their assessments of participative leaders

Do We Really Need Another Meeting? The Science of Workplace Meetings

Meetings are routine in organizations, but their value is often questioned by the employees who must sit through them daily. The science of meetings that has emerged as of late provides necessary direction toward improving meetings, but an evaluation of the current state of the science is much needed. In this review, we examine current directions for the psychological science of workplace meetings, with a focus on applying scientific findings about the activities that occur before, during, and after meetings that facilitate success. We conclude with concrete recommendations and a checklist for promoting good meetings, as well as some thoughts on the future of the science of workplace meetings

A Web-Based Intervention is Feasible for Supporting Weight Loss and Increased Activity in Rural Women with Arthritis

Rural women have well documented health disparities, with higher prevalence of obesity and chronic conditions, including arthritis. Change in weight and actigraph-recorded data were examined in a subset of 63 of 82 women with physician-diagnosed arthritis who completed a 30-month web-based clinical trial. Repeated measures analyses showed women lost weight from baseline to six months, slowly regained at 18 and 30 months, ending with a lower weight than baseline F(1,62)=40.89, p\u3c0.001, η2p =0.40. Of 53 women with complete data, activity increased at six months, decreased at 18 months, and increased at 30 months F(1,52)=4.14, p =.04, η2p=0.07. Women showed improved change in weight and activity from baseline at six, 18 and 30 months. This study adds support that web-based programs may promote weight loss and activity in a hard-to-reach, underserved population of midlife and older rural women with arthriti

User Engagement Associated with Web-Intervention Features to Attain Clinically Meaningful Weight Loss and Weight Maintenance in Rural Women

Objective: Purely web-based weight loss and weight-loss maintenance interventions show promise to influence behavior change. Yet, little is known about user engagement with features of web-based interventions that predict clinically meaningful weight loss (≥5% bodyweight loss). This study examines level of website feature engagement with the likelihood of attaining ≥5% bodyweight loss after 6 and 18 months participation in a web-based intervention, among rural women at high risk of obesity-related diseases and disability. Methods: In this secondary analysis of clinical trial data of 201 rural women, we examined weight change and user engagement, measured as clicks on specific web-based intervention features (messaging and self-tracking), as associated with clinically meaningful weight loss (baseline to 6 months) and weight-loss maintenance (6 to 18 months). Results: Generalized estimating equations, adjusted for age, intervention group, and intervention phase, revealed high engagement with messaging predicted whether women achieved ≥5% weight loss at 6 months and at 18 months. There was no effect of self-tracking. Conclusions: Being engaged with messages was associated with attaining clinically meaningful short-term and longer-term weight loss. This trial is registered with NCT01307644

Organizational Meeting Orientation: Setting the Stage for Team Success or Failure Over Time

Teams are an integral tool for collaboration and they are often embedded in a larger organization that has its own mission, values, and orientations. Specifically, organizations can be oriented toward a variety of values: learning, customer service, and even meetings. This paper explores a new and novel construct, organizational meeting orientation (the set of policies and procedures that promote or lead to meetings), and its relationship to perceived team meeting outcomes and work attitudes. An organization’s policies, procedures, and overall orientation toward the use of team meetings—along with the quality and perceived effectiveness of those meetings—set the stage for how teams develop and collaborate. Across two exploratory studies, we demonstrate that perceptions of an organization’s orientation toward meetings is associated with the perceived quality and satisfaction of team meetings, along with work engagement and intentions to quit. Employees who feel meetings lack purpose or are overused tend to be less engaged with their work and more likely to consider leaving the organization. Based on the findings, we conclude with a robust discussion of how meeting orientation may set the stage for team interactions, influencing how their team operates over time on a given project or series of projects. An organization’s orientation toward meetings is a new construct that may exert an influence on team dynamics at the organizational level, representing a factor of the organization that affects how and when teams meet and collaborate

ADT Final Report: Alternatives to Detention, Douglas County

About the Report The authors of this report are Madison Schoenbeck, Joseph Mroz, Dr. Joseph Allen, Dr. Roni Reiter-Palmon, and Dr. Ryan Spohn. This report includes a variety of new data sources, including interviews with service providers, a focus group with Douglas County intake officers, and a stakeholder survey distributed across Douglas County. Data for this report was collected between May 9, 2016 and November 15, 2017 unless otherwise specified. Funding for this evaluation was generously provided by Douglas County, NE and The Sherwood Foundation, in contract with UNO’s Nebraska Center for Justice Research