Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior - Volume 3, 2016

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.

This integrative review focuses on leadership in the context of work groups and teams: team-centric leadership. Although the process of leadership is largely viewed as one of social influence, most theories of leadership are agnostic about the social units and context within which it occurs. The review examines recent research on mainstream leadership theories—transformational leadership and leader-member exchange—that have contextualized leadership in work teams and also on team-centric leadership theories—shared and functional leadership—that are explicitly team centric. For each theory, we examine its conceptualization and evolution, how well it maps to the input-process-output heuristic of team effectiveness (including moderators indicative of the context, process dynamics, and feedback loops), and the quality of research methods that are employed. The discussion concludes with 14 recommendations designed to advance each type of team-centric leadership and to promote more integration and synergy across the approaches in future research.

In recent years, research on mindfulness has grown rapidly in organizational psychology and organizational behavior. Specifically, two bodies of research have emerged: One focuses on the intrapsychic processes of individual mindfulness and the other on the social processes of collective mindfulness. In this review we provide a pioneering, cross-level review of mindfulness in organizations and find that mindfulness is neither mysterious nor mystical, but rather can be reliably and validly measured, linked to an array of individual and organizational outcomes, and induced through meditative and nonmeditative practices and processes at the individual and collective levels. Our analysis of the combined literatures further reveals that although each literature is impressive, there is a significant need for multilevel mindfulness research that simultaneously examines individual and collective mindfulness and broadens its conception of context. This research agenda provides a more robust understanding of the antecedents, processes, and consequences of individual and collective mindfulness as well as more definitive evidence maximizing mindfulness and its benefits in practice.

Since the 1970s, international work assignments have been, and continue to be, a growing trend in multinational corporations. Organizations most commonly do this through an expatriate assignment where the employee expatriates to a foreign country to live and work for at least one year in order to complete a specific assignment, and then typically repatriates back to the home country. Scholars of organizational psychology and behavior have thus investigated various aspects of expatriation and repatriation over the past 40 years. We review the 100 most influential articles published in this area during these decades. We identify important themes, discuss how and why the themes have evolved, and make note of unanswered research questions. On the basis of what we have learned, we make suggestions with regard to how individuals and organizations can better manage expatriate assignments. We close by providing future research directions on expatriation and repatriation.

Individuals need a situated identity, or a clear sense of “who they are” in their local context, to function. Drawing largely on interpretivist research, we describe the process of identity construction in organizations. Organizations set the stage for members to construct their identities through sensebreaking, rendering individuals more receptive to organizational cues conveyed via sensegiving. Individuals utilize sensemaking to construe their situated identity as they progress toward a desired self. Affect (feeling “this is me”), behavior (acting as “me”), and cognition (thinking “this is me”) are each viable and intertwined gateways to a situated identity that resonates with one's desired self and a given context. Individuals formulate identity narratives that link their past and present to a desired future, providing direction. If their identity enactments and narratives receive social validation, individuals feel more assured, fortifying their emergent identities. The result of these dynamics is a visceral understanding of self in the local context, facilitating adjustment.

We provide a review of research on dyadic relationships in work settings. The development, maintenance, and termination of relationships are discussed. Considerable attention is placed on the context in which dyadic relationships take place. Most recent developments in the study of dyadic relationships have involved multilevel research designs that incorporate direct and moderating influences of contextual variables on relationships. A wide range of contextual variables are included, from immediate work group characteristics to overarching aspects of the context, such as national culture.

Articles on the genetics of complex human behaviors and psychological traits provided in past volumes of journals published by Annual Reviews tended to adopt a pathological perspective and focused heavily on the disorders of human affect and behaviors. In our review, we expand our focus to the more general, nonclinical population, and in particular on the advances in the understanding of the genetics of attitudes and behaviors in work settings. We review the recent and emerging literature using a behavioral genetics approach to examine the influence of genetics on a wide array of important constructs in organizational behavior (OB) research and provide unique theoretical insights offered by this approach. We discuss practical implications and future research directions from a broad person-environment interactionist perspective by taking a genetics approach.

Safety climate is a collective construct derived from individuals' shared perceptions of the various ways that safety is valued in the workplace. Research over the past 35 years shows that safety climate is an important predictor of safety behavior and safety outcomes such as accidents and injury. We first review the conceptual foundations of safety climate and explore how the construct can be applied to different levels of analysis. We then review ways that safety climate influences individual processes of sense making, motivation, and work behavior. Next, we explore the impact of safety climate on organization-level outcomes related to both safety and productivity. We conclude with suggestions for future research and practice to support the overall safety of people and organizations.

In 1983, our understanding of feedback in organizations shifted from a focus on feedback from supervisors through the annual performance review to consider also the feedback information proactively sought by individuals as part of their everyday interactions within organizations (Ashford & Cummings 1983). This article updates our understanding of the field of feedback-seeking behavior (FSB) since this literature was last reviewed in 2003, analyzes its current state, and suggests future research ideas. We begin by positioning feedback seeking within a broader theoretical context by relating it to proactivity, impression management, and individual adjustment. We then review what we currently know about who is more likely to seek feedback, as well as the contexts that stimulate such seeking. We then review the benefits and potential costs that might accompany feedback seeking, with regard to the person who is seeking it as well as the group. We conclude this review by identifying potentially fruitful avenues for further research and some key practical implications.

Recent effort in organizational psychology and organizational behavior (OPOB) research has placed increasing emphasis on understanding dynamic phenomena and processes. This calls for more and better use of dynamic modeling in OPOB research than before. The goals of this review are to provide an overview of the general forms of dynamic modeling in OPOB research, discuss three longitudinal data analytic techniques for conducting dynamic modeling with empirical data [i.e., time-series-based modeling, latent-change-scores-based modeling, and functional data analysis (FDA)], and introduce various dynamic modeling approaches for building theories about dynamic phenomena and processes (i.e., agent-based modeling, system dynamics modeling, and hybrid modeling). This review also highlights several OPOB research areas to which dynamic modeling has been applied and discusses future research directions for better utilizing dynamic modeling in those areas.

Research has historically adopted one of two views toward learner discretion in training: Learner discretion is controlled by training characteristics (i.e., the instruction-centric view), or learner discretion is a substantive learning process, the understanding of which is essential to developing more effective training (i.e., the learner-centric view). More recently, training scholars have followed the general trend in scientific psychology toward increasingly nuanced and interactionist views of individual behavior. That is, the effectiveness of providing learner discretion is a joint and interactive function of both instruction-centric and learner-centric processes. Taken together, learner-centric, instruction-centric, and interactionist-centric processes propose a constellation of constructs necessary to understand learner control. Here we review the diverse literatures examining learner-control-related constructs and derive specific practical recommendations for designing e-learning. These recommendations follow from the interactionist perspective of learning in modern work environments.

We take historical stock of charisma, tracing its origins and how it has been conceptualized in the sociological and organizational sciences literatures. Although charisma has been intensely studied, the concept is still not well understood and much of the research undertaken cannot inform policy. We show that the major obstacles to advancing our understanding of charisma have included issues with its definition, its confusion with transformational leadership, the use of questionnaire measures, and that it has not been studied using correctly specified causal models. To help spawn a new genre of research on charisma, we use signaling theory to provide a general definition of charisma, and make suggestions about how charisma should be conceptualized, operationalized, and modeled. We also describe trends and patterns in articles we reviewed, using cocitation as well as bibliometric analyses, and discuss the practical implications of our findings.

Despite longstanding interest in organizational psychology and organizational behavior (OP/OB), research that incorporates nonconscious (e.g., unconscious, subconscious) processes into their core arguments remains relatively scant. We argue that this is unfortunate (a) given the large role that nonconscious processes have been found to play in individual behavior; and (b) given its proposed importance to topics that are central to our field (e.g., motivation, judgment and decision making, leadership, ethical behavior). Our review maps a wide terrain across two foundational perspectives of nonconscious theorizing: psychodynamics and automaticity. In particular, we review those areas where these perspectives are beginning to influence research in OP/OB research. We then discuss some of the challenges scholars face in incorporating nonconscious-related theories and methods in our field, highlight specific domains where the influence of the nonconscious may be widened and deepened, and note some practical implications of understanding and managing nonconscious processes.

Given the rapid advances and the increased reliance on technology, the question of how it is changing work and employment is highly salient for scholars of organizational psychology and organizational behavior (OP/OB). This article attempts to interpret the progress, direction, and purpose of current research on the effects of technology on work and organizations. After a review of key breakthroughs in the evolution of technology, we consider the disruptive effects of emerging information and communication technologies. We then examine numbers and types of jobs affected by developments in technology, and how this will lead to significant worker dislocation. To illustrate technology's impact on work, work systems, and organizations, we present four popular technologies: electronic monitoring systems, robots, teleconferencing, and wearable computing devices. To provide insights regarding what we know about the effects of technology for OP/OB scholars, we consider the results of research conducted from four different perspectives on the role of technology in management. We also examine how that role is changing in the emerging world of technology. We conclude by considering approaches to six human resources (HR) areas supported by traditional and emerging technologies, identifying related research questions that should have profound implications both for research and for practice, and providing guidance for future research.

Over the past 30 years, researchers have devoted significant attention to understanding impression management in organizations. In this article, we review key questions that have been addressed in this area regarding definitions of impression management; types of impression management; impression management motivation; the effectiveness of ingratiation, self-promotion, and other tactics of impression management; personal factors associated with successful impression management; gender and impression management; cross-cultural implications of impression management; and the measurement of impression management. In doing so, we identify major themes and findings and highlight critical issues and unanswered questions. After reviewing these topics, we also discuss some practical implications for individuals and organizations. Finally, we conclude by outlining some broader avenues for inquiry that would help move this literature forward.

In this article, we review theory and research on employer image and employer branding published since 2001. The review is wide ranging. First, we define employer image and distinguish it from similar constructs such as reputation and identity. We find that the literature has used two conceptualizations of images: an elementalistic perspective (e.g., distinction between symbolic and instrumental organizational attributes) and a holistic perspective (i.e., overall ratings of organizational attractiveness). Second, we discuss the effects of favorable organizational images, including better recruitment outcomes, more differentiation, stronger emotional bonds, and financial returns. Third, we review the antecedents and formation of image with a focus on organizational (e.g., recruiters) and nonorganizational sources [e.g., word of mouth (WOM)]. Fourth, we discuss the theoretical mediating mechanisms responsible for image effects and the moderators of image-outcome relationships. Finally, we address practical implications in the form of employer brand management and provide future research suggestions.

The past 40 years of psychological research on decision making has identified a number of important cognitive biases. However, the psychological study of decision making tends to focus on individuals making decisions in isolation. This article explores the social context of individual decision making by considering three lenses: individual contributions in social decision processes, individuals as social products, and individuals as sources of social preferences. The social context of decision making both improves decision making by allowing diverse knowledge to be pooled and creates shared perspectives—including shared blind spots. The article offers conjectures on managerial insight about social settings that can inform future research.

Adaptive approaches to measurement and assessment have been useful in organizational science for more than 100 years. Advances in psychometric theory and inexpensive computing power have propelled the field into a renaissance for every type of construct and level of analysis imaginable. Exciting innovations include the use of mobile computer-adaptive testing (CAT); expert systems (e.g., automatic item generation); and unobtrusive adaptive measurement in social media, intelligent tutoring systems, and virtual worlds. Adaptive approaches are setting the stage to better embed measurement and intervention into naturalistic organizational settings and portend substantial improvements in cross-level and longitudinal tests of organizational psychology and organizational behavior (OP/OB) hypotheses.