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When organisations make employees redundant, they increasingly offer outplacement counselling to them, either in-house or as a service of specialised companies. Despite outplacement counsellors' importance, their work-related stress has not been studied yet. In this paper we argue that internal (in-house) outplacement counsellors have a particularly demanding job (especially because being employed by firing organisations should increase role conflicts among internal outplacement counsellors) and they should thus be more emotionally exhausted than external outplacement counsellors. Data from 98 German outplacement counsellors supported this argumentation. Mediation analyses showed that these differences were mediated by increased role conflicts, consistent with role theory arguments. The same effect was found for counsellors' job satisfaction. These results help understanding the stress that outplacement counsellors experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although algorithm-based systems are increasingly used as a decision-support for managers, there is still a lack of research on the effects of algorithm use and more specifically on potential algorithmic bias on decision-makers. To investigate how potential social bias in a recommendation outcome influences trust, fairness perceptions, and moral judgement, we used a moral dilemma scenario. Participants (N = 215) imagined being human resource managers responsible for personnel selection and receiving decision-support from either human colleagues or an algorithm-based system. They received an applicant preselection that was either gender-balanced or predominantly male. Although participants perceived algorithm-based support as less biased, they also perceived it as generally less fair and had less trust in it. This could be related to the finding that participants perceived algorithm-based systems as more consistent but also as less likely to uphold moral standards. Moreover, participants tended to reject algorithm-based preselection more often than human-based and were more likely to use utilitarian judgements when accepting it, which may indicate different underlying moral judgement processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Work stressors have major consequences for employees' health and performance. Although organizations often ask employees to fill out work stress surveys regarding stressors and resources, the literature on survey responding offers only limited advice on how to formulate work stress surveys. Furthermore, self-, supervisor-, and co-worker-reports show only low convergence. To deepen our understanding of motivational and cognitive processes when individuals respond to work stress surveys, we used a qualitative, grounded theory approach. We interviewed employees after they responded to representative items, asking them about their thoughts, motivational processes, potential factors that might have biased their responses, and the contexts they considered when responding. Since organizations are often also interested in other-reports of stress at work, we also interviewed supervisors and co-workers. We reached theoretical saturation after 31 interviews. A multi-stage coding-process with three raters resulted in new theoretical findings regarding motivational processes, comparisons, and differences between self- and other-reports. For example, employees sometimes deliberately distort answers for fear of consequences. Furthermore, employees, supervisors, and co-workers undergo different comparison processes. The findings of this study suggest that more specific and context-rich wording of items may lead to a more reliable and comparable assessment of stressors and resources at work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we investigated job stressor ratings through Lazarus' transactional stress theory and the usefulness of supervisor ratings as an alternative to employee self-reports. Based on the finding that negative affectivity (NA) causes incumbents to over-report job stressors, we hypothesized that supervisors may also be affected by their NA when appraising an incumbent's job stressors. Building upon the literatures on judgement processes and social-cognitive information processing, we further hypothesized that stressor observability is an important boundary condition. Specifically, we hypothesized that the impact of NA on both self- and supervisor-reported job stressors should increase as stressor observability decreases. Moreover, we hypothesized that incumbent and supervisor ratings would converge less as stressor observability decreases. Data from 260 incumbent-supervisor dyads showed that stressor observability reduced the impact of supervisor NA on supervisor ratings (but not the impact of incumbent NA on incumbent stressor ratings). Further, as hypothesized, incumbent and supervisor ratings showed less convergence the less observable the stressor was. The results highlight the importance of personal and situational factors in the stressor appraisal process – an issue that advances both research and practice in the field of stressor ratings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The self-presentation tactics of candidates during job interviews and on personality inventories have been a focal topic in selection research. The current study investigated self-presentation across these two selection devices. Specifically, we examined whether candidates who use impression management (IM) tactics during an interview show more faking on a personality inventory and whether the relation to job performance is similar for both forms of self-presentation. Data were collected in a simulated selection process with an interview under applicant conditions and a personality inventory that was administered under applicant conditions and thereafter for research purposes. Because all participants were employed, we were also able to collect job performance ratings from their supervisors. Candidates who used IM in the interview also showed more faking in a personality inventory. Importantly, faking was positively related to supervisors’ job performance ratings, but IM was unrelated. Hence, this study gives rise to arguments for a more balanced view of self-presentation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A question that continues to worry practitioners and researchers is how much recruiters can trust self-reported measures of personality. Several models of faking assume that applicants differ in their motivation to fake, but field evidence regarding these differences is still rare. For the current field study, we exploited a unique setting: The examination for compulsory military service in Switzerland. We were able to show that differences in the military service motivation of Swiss conscripts (N= 918) were associated with faking good or faking bad, respectively. In particular, military service motivation was related to self-admitted faking, mean personality scores, and increased correlations between personality dimensions, which supports faking models that stress the importance of motivational differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines the effects of job insecurity on three outcomes: job attitudes (satisfaction), work behaviors (organizational citizenship behavior and deviant behavior), and negative emotions (anxiety, anger, and burnout). A total of 320 U.S. managers responded to a self-report electronic survey. Additionally, two independent referees have analyzed and rated a subset of the sample of managers' (N = 97) comments over an electronic discussion group about their job satisfaction, organizational citizenship behavior, and deviant behavior. Analyses of both sets of data show that job insecurity is negatively related to satisfaction and that job insecurity has both direct and indirect effects on work behaviors and emotions. We address these results in the context of growing pressures on business to improve efficiencies through human capital reductions bearing in mind the trade-offs that businesses must anticipate as employees respond to job insecurity in ways that are counterproductive to organizational purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lens of behavioral decision theory offers a new perspective for research on time management. The basic idea of this approach is that people discount future consequences of their time management decisions, meaning that they work on tasks with smaller but sooner outcomes rather than on tasks with larger but later outcomes. The authors performed 2 experimental studies to test whether people are sensitive to differences in the discounted utility of time management decisions. In Experiment 1, they used vignettes of typical time management situations; Experiment 2 was a laboratory simulation (an in-basket task that was part of a training assessment). Participants in both studies were German students. As expected, manipulating the discounted utility of options resulted in different time management decisions. In Experiment 1, reactions to time management situations were judged as less likely if the reactions had lower discounted utilities. In Experiment 2, people spent less time on an interruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Being able to work on several tasks at the same time (multitasking) is an important performance aspect of many jobs. Recent research findings pointed out the important role of working memory for multitasking performance in general. To understand more about the role of working memory in predicting the speed and the error aspect of multitasking performance, this research was based on a newly developed and well-elaborated multidimensional model of working memory (Oberauer, Süß, Wilhelm, & Wittmann, 2003). Its 3 dimensions are storage in the context of processing, coordination, and supervision. In addition, attention and reasoning were controlled when predicting multitasking speed and error. A multitasking scenario, a battery of working memory tests, a battery of reasoning tests, and 2 attention tests were administered to 135 participants. As expected working memory was the best predictor of multitasking performance, followed by reasoning and attention. Working memory components showed a differential validity when predicting multitasking speed and multitasking error: Multitasking speed was predicted mainly by coordination, and multitasking error mainly by storage in the context of processing. Thus, this study provided a deeper insight into the relevant abilities of multitasking. Implications for personnel selection are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explored predictors of multitasking performance. Based on cognitive psychology research, attention and working memory were assumed to be predictors. Fluid intelligence, polychronicity (as the preference for multitasking and the belief that their preference is the best way to handle things), and Extraversion were argued to be additional predictors. Multitasking performance was measured with the scenario"Simultaneous capacity/Multi-tasking (SIMKAP)"(n = 122). Hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed that working memory was the most important predictor in addition to attention and fluid intelligence. The latter two constructs contributed significantly to the explained variance, but to a lesser extent. Polychronicity was not a significant predictor, nor was Extraversion. Implications for personnel selection and for time management are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]