Stumbling Toward a Social Psychology of Organizations: An Autobiographical Look at the Direction of Organizational Research

I recount some of my early experiences in the field and how they shaped my views about conducting research. As I describe it, my entry into organizational behavior was not at all seamless, requiring a series of adjustments along the way. Like many of my colleagues who had moved into the field of organizational behavior, I had to find a source of valued added a new perspective or set of alternative ideas to contribute to the field. This process of adjustment, I fear, is no longer so prevalent in the field today. Although many social psychologists have migrated to business schools, they are still by and large doing social psychological rather than organizational research. They often extend social psychological theories to the business context, but they rarely seek to reframe and reformulate core organizational issues and problems. For this to change, I argue that future research needs to become more contextual and phenomenon-driven. My hope is that, with the recent upsurge in talent entering the field, we can find a way to harvest more of its creativity, moving from the application of social psychology to a genuine social psychology of organizations

Individualism-Collectivism and Group Creativity

Current research in organizational behavior suggests that organizations should adopt collectivistic values because they promote cooperation and productivity, while individualistic values should be avoided because they incite destructive conflict and opportunism. In this paper, we highlight one possible benefit of individualistic values that has not previously been considered. Because individualistic values can encourage uniqueness, such values might be useful when creativity is a desired outcome. Although we hypothesize that individualistic groups should be more creative than collectivistic groups, we also consider an important competing hypothesis: Given that collectivistic groups are more responsive to norms, they might be more creative than individualistic groups when given explicit instructions to be creative. The results did not support this competing hypothesis and instead show that individualistic groups instructed to be creative are more creative than collectivistic groups given the same instructions. These results suggest that individualistic values may be beneficial, especially when creativity is a salient goal

Reseña de Libros: Ética y malestar

Ethics and discomfort. Essays on ethics and psychoanalysis. Eduardo Laso Red editions, Buenos Aires, 2016 193 pages  Ética y malestar.Ensayos sobre ética y psicoanálisis.Eduardo LasoEdiciones Rojo, Buenos Aires, 2016193 página

Public schools' characteristics and teacher turnover in Oman.

Teachers are the backbone of the educational systems and their turnover may threaten the whole educational system in any country. In Oman, teacher turnover is a neglected area of study and this article may help in shedding some light on teacher turnover phenomenon in Oman. The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of school characteristics (e.g., school size, gender, time-shift, education type, and school location) on the turnover intentions of teachers in public schools in Oman. Survey questionnaires were used to collect data from 214 public schools in Oman. 142 schools from all educational regions in Oman were participated in this study. Data analyses tools for this study were descriptive statistics such as mean and standard deviation, in addition to independents t-test and analysis of variance. The study revealed that teacher intentions to transfer to other schools are influenced by almost all the studied school characteristics. Policy makers and human resource recruiters in Ministry of Education should be aware of teachers’ preferences for certain schools to avoid teachers’ shortage in non-preferred schools. Further studies about the influence of school time-shift and teachers’ intentions to quit or transfer are needed to affirm the results in this study. This is the first study about the influence of school characteristics on teacher turnover in public schools in Oman. Thus, the value of this study stems from the uniqueness of this study which may serve as an eye opening indicator about teacher turnover in Oman

Organizational-level study of the impact of past turnover on future turnover in the Sultanate of Oman.

Turnover phenomena attracted researchers from all over the world for generations. Most of this research was directed towards turnover antecedents with a few scattered conceptual and empirical studies related to turnover consequences. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of past turnover on future turnover in public organizations, in addition to test the mediation role of organizational climate in this relationship. Public schools as separate identities were the best choice as the study sample. Data were collected through questionnaires from 142 public schools in all educational regions in Oman. Two-step structural equation modeling approach, and nested model comparison were used for data analysis. The results revealed that: (1) past turnover predicts future turnover, significantly; (2) organizational climate fails to mediate this relationship. The study added to the body of knowledge by confirming Staw’s hypothesis relating past turnover to future turnover in the Omani context. Human resource professionals and educational administration practitioners may play an important role in decreasing future turnover by tackling and decreasing past turnover, in addition to improving the relationship climate in schools. The study is limited to public schools in Oman and further studies about turnover consequences in the Arabic context are needed to affirm the results

Targeted Employee Retention: Performance-Based and Job-Related Differences in Reported Reasons for Staying

A content model of 12 retention factors is developed in the context of previous theory and research. Coding of open-ended responses from 24,829 employees in the leisure and hospitality industry lends support to the identified framework and reveals that job satisfaction, extrinsic rewards, constituent attachments, organizational commitment, and organizational prestige were the most frequently mentioned reasons for staying. Advancement opportunities and organizational prestige were more common reasons for staying among high performers and non-hourly workers, and extrinsic rewards was more common among low performers and hourly employees, providing support for ease/desirability of movement and psychological contract rationales. The findings highlight the importance of differentiating human resource management practices when the goal is to retain those employees valued most by the organization

The interaction of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation : some methodological notes

Includes bibliographical references (leaf 11)