Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management: Volume 24

Volume 24 of Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management contains seven thought-provoking papers. The first two papers (Gully & Phillips; Colquitt, Zapata-Phelan & Roberson) address motivation and justice issues at multiple levels of analysis. The third paper (Miceli & Near) contains a review of the whistle-blowing literature, bringing us up-to-date on theoretical issues pertaining to the whistle-blowing phenomenon. The fourth and fifth papers (Marler & Dulebohn; DeRouin, Fritzsche & Salas) offer thought-provoking ideas and reviews of the use of human resource information systems and learning in e-environments. The final two papers (Klein & Fein; Wheeler, Buckley, Halbesleben, Brouer & Ferris) further advance our knowledge of person–organizational fit through an integration of alternative fit perspectives, and expand our thinking about employee motivation through the proposal of a construct called goal propensity.

The purpose of this chapter is to extend research and theory on learning and performance orientations to multiple levels of analysis. We begin by introducing a model describing the impact of individual learning and performance orientations on attentional focus, response to failure, experimentation, and motivation, and identify potential sources of these orientations. We then describe how learning and performance orientations are linked to incremental and profound change, and theoretically based propositions are presented to guide future research efforts. Leadership, organizational learning, and strategic human resource management are discussed in relation to the model, and implications of the framework for future research and practice are revealed.

The use of teams has increased significantly over the past two decades, with recent estimates suggesting that between 50% and 90% of employees work in some kind of team. This chapter examines the implications of this trend for the literature on organizational justice – the study of fairness perceptions and effects in the workplace. In particular, we explore three specific research questions: (1) Will the justice effects observed in individual contexts generalize to team contexts and member-directed reactions? (2) Will the justice experienced by specific teammates have direct or interactive effects on members’ own reactions? (3) Will the justice experienced by the team as a whole impact reactions at the team level of analysis? Our review of almost 30 studies suggests that each question can be answered in the affirmative, illustrating that team contexts can magnify the importance of justice in organizations.

Research on whistle-blowing has focused on the questions of who blows the whistle, who experiences retaliation, and who is effective in stopping wrongdoing. In this article, we review research pertinent to the first of these questions. Since the last known review (Near & Miceli, 1996), there have been important theoretical and, to a lesser extent, empirical developments. In addition, the U.S. law is changing dramatically, which may serve to promote valid whistle-blowing, and international interest in whistle-blowing is widespread and increasing. Unfortunately, evidence strongly suggests that media, popular, and regulatory interest is far outpacing the growth of careful scholarly inquiry into the topic, which is a disturbing trend. Here, we argue that the primary causes of the underdevelopment of the empirical literature are methodological, and that workable solutions are needed but very difficult to implement. By calling attention to these issues, we hope to help encourage more research on whistle-blowing.

We review the literature on individual acceptance of technology to show how organizations can improve the effective use of human resource web-based technologies. Integrating and expanding several theoretical models of technology acceptance, we develop a perceptual model of employee self-service (ESS) acceptance and usage. Based on this model, we propose several key individual, technological, and organizational factors relevant to individual intentions to use ESS technology. We summarize these in several testable propositions and also discuss implications for organizational researchers and practitioners.

In this paper, we review the literature on learner control and discuss the implications that increased control may have for training in e-learning environments. The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of the learner control literature, focusing on adults and workplace training. We begin by reviewing the literature on learner control, focusing on the positive and negative effects associated with providing adult learners with control in e-learning environments. We organize our review into instructional design factors that have been manipulated to provide learners with control and person issues that moderate the relation between learner control and outcomes. Then, we summarize developments in training research and in adult learning that relate to learner control in order to provide a theoretical context for understanding learner control in adult workplace e-learning.

This chapter proposes the development of a compound personality trait termed “goal propensity”. Motivation is a key determinant of performance in virtually all contexts, and personality has long been viewed as an important influence on motivation. Despite the long history of exploring how personality influences motivation, we do not have a clear understanding of the linkage between individual differences in personality and work motivation or the tools to reliably and accurately predict individual differences in motivation. Advances in our understanding of personality and the convergence of motivation theories around models of self-regulation present the opportunity to achieve that understanding and predictive efficacy. Goal propensity would be a theoretically derived trait that would explain the role of personality in self-regulation models of motivation as well as allow the prediction of tendencies to engage in self-regulation. This chapter provides the rationale for the development of this construct, articulates the nature of the proposed goal propensity construct, and explores the value of such a construct for theory, future research, and human resource practice.

“Fit” as a human resources decision criterion has emerged as an active body of research in recent years, but its “elusiveness” as a scientific construct, noted more than a decade ago by Judge and Ferris, still remains. To best address this issue, this chapter proposes an integrative theory of multidimensional fit that encompasses five relevant (and distinct) streams of current fit research: Person-Organization Fit, Person-Vocation Fit, Person-Job Fit, Person-Preferences for Culture Fit, and Person-Team Fit. It is proposed that these five dimensions of fit relate to an individual's self-concept; moreover, an individual assesses multidimensional fit utilizing a social cognitive decision-making process called prototype matching. By assessing fit across multiple dimensions, an individual can both gain a social identity and expand the self-concept, which explains the motive to fit. Testable propositions are formulated, and implications for multidimensional fit across the employment lifecycle are discussed. Furthermore, directions for future fit research are provided.

M. Ronald Buckley is a Professor of Management and a Professor of Psychology and the holder of the JC Penney Company Business Leadership Chair in the Michael F. Price College of Business at the University of Oklahoma. He received his Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Auburn University. His research interests are diverse and include decision making in the employment interview, performance evaluation, organizational entry processes, and the issues surrounding unethical behavior in organizations. He has published over 70 refereed journal articles in, among others, the Academy of Management Review, Journal of Applied Psychology, Applied Psychological Measurement, Journal of Management, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes on topics related to human resource management issues.