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The purpose of this paper is to describe common questionable research practices (QRPs) engaged in by management researchers who use confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) as part of their analysis.

The authors describe seven questionable analytic practices and then review one year of journal articles published in three top-tier management journals to estimate the base rate of these practices.

The authors find that CFA analyses are characterized by a high base rate of QRPs with one practice occurring for over 90 percent of all assessed articles.

The findings of this paper call into question the validity and trustworthiness of results reported in much of the management literature.

The authors provide tentative guidelines of how editors and reviewers might reduce the degree to which the management literature is characterized by these QRPs.

This is the first paper to estimate the base rate of six QRPs relating to the widely used analytic tool referred to as CFA in the management literature.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the effectiveness of transformational leadership behaviors are moderated by a country’s cultural values and cultural practices.

The authors describe a meta-analytic review of the relationship between transformational leadership and employee performance (task performance and OCBs) using data from over 57,000 individuals, 215 samples and 34 countries. The authors examine whether this relationship is moderated by the cultural values and practices of the country in which the study was located – after first controlling for methodological factors.

The authors find that cultural values and practices moderate the transformational leadership – employee performance relationship such that the relationship is much stronger in countries whose culture is incongruent with transformational leadership.

Data were only available for 34 countries and it is unclear what role industry type and job type play in determining transformational leadership effectiveness or if these situational variables are confounded with culture. The findings call into question the generalizability of transformational leadership across countries and cultures.

The findings suggest that the value of transformational leadership behaviors may be limited in developed economies such as Western Europe and North America, while transformational leadership is most effective in Africa, the Middle East, South America and parts of Southeast Asia.

This is the first paper to examine the generalizability of transformational leadership across 34 countries and is by far the largest review ever conducted into the relationship between transformational leadership and subordinate performance.

Prior research has documented a generally positive relationship between employees’ standing on constructs that are commonly studied by positive psychologists and workplace outcomes, such as job performance and retention. Constructs such as adaptability, empowerment, hope, optimism, and resilience are believed to reflect psychological resources that employees can draw upon when facing adversity and challenges in their work, while also reflecting a general tendency or disposition to experience positive emotions and engage with others in ways that reflect such positive emotions. As such, positive psychology constructs may be particularly important for performance in jobs characterized by high levels of social interaction, stress, and challenge. In order to explore the manner in which different positive psychology constructs are related to sales performance, this chapter presents findings from a meta-analytic investigation into the relationships between sales performance and a variety of positive psychology constructs. Findings based on data from 59 unique samples and 14,334 salespeople indicate that some positive psychology constructs exhibit moderate to even strong relationships with the performance of salespeople, although the strength of these relationships appears to have been substantially inflated by common-source bias. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for selection and training within sales occupations, and advance an agenda for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to test the interactive effects of grit (e.g. supervisor and employee) and politics perceptions on relevant work outcomes. Specifically, the authors hypothesized that supervisor and employee grit would each demonstrate neutralizing effects when examined jointly.

Three studies (N’s=526, 229, 522) were conducted to test the moderating effect across outcomes, including job satisfaction, turnover intentions, citizenship behavior and work effort. The authors controlled for affectivity and nonlinear main effect terms in Studies 2 and 3 following prior discussion.

Findings across studies demonstrated a unique pattern differentiating between grit sources (i.e. employee vs supervisor) and outcome characteristic (i.e. attitudinal vs behavioral). In sum, both employee and supervisor grit demonstrated neutralizing effects when operating in politically fraught work settings.

Despite the single source nature of data collections, the authors took steps to minimize potential biasing factors (e.g. time separation, including affectivity). Future research will benefit from multiple sources of data as well as a more expansive view of the grit construct.

Work contexts have grown increasingly more political in recent years primarily as a result of social and motivational factors. Hence, the authors recommend that leaders investigate factors that minimize its potentially malignant effects. Although grit is often challenging to cultivate through interventions, selection and quality of work life programs may be useful in preparing workers to manage this pervasive source of stress.

Despite its practical appeal, grit’s impact in work settings has been under-studied, leading to apparent gaps in science and leadership development. Creative studies, building off the research, will allow grit to maximize its contributions to both scholarship and employee well-being.

This survey covers civil, electrical and electronics, energy, environment, general, materials, mechanical, and traffic and transportation engineering. Areas such as biomedical and chemical engineering will be dealt with in future issues. Readers may find that the classifications included in this survey are not mutually exclusive but do occasionally overlap with one another. For instance, the section on environmental engineering includes a review of a book on the environmental impact of nuclear power plants, which might as easily have been part of the section on energy technology. Before we go into a discussion of data bases and indexes, I would like to note in this introductory section some recent bibliographic aids published during the period surveyed. Most engineering libraries will find them very valuable in their reference and acquisition functions. Since normal review sources will cover these books, I am merely listing them below: Malinowski, Harold Robert, Richard A. Gray and Dorothy A. Gray. Science and Engineering Literature. 2d ed., Littleton, Colorado, Libraries Unlimited, 1976. 368p. LC 76–17794 ISBN 0–87287–098–7. $13.30; Mildren, K. W., ed. Use of Engineering Literature. Woburn, Mass., Butterworths, 1976. 621p. ISBN 0–408–70714–3. $37.95. Mount, Ellis. Guide to Basic Information Sources in Engineering. New York, Wiley, Halsted Press, 1976. 196p. LC 75–43261 ISBN 0–47070–15013–0. $11.95 and Guide to European Sources of Technical Information. 4th ed., edited by Ann Pernet. Guernsey, Eng., F. Hodgson, 1976. 415p. ISBN 0–85280–161–0. $52.00.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on developing and validating a multidimensional measure of work-related age-based stereotypes (WAS) scale.

Based upon a review of the literature, a three-dimensional stereotype content model including both negative (incompetence, inadaptability) and positive (warmth) stereotypes of older workers was created. Construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity for the WAS scale were examined across three independent samples constituting both lab-based experimental studies and a field-based survey (total n=1,245).

Across all samples, the WAS evidenced good construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity.

As evidenced by a review of the literature, the WAS is unique in that it measures both negative and positive stereotypes of older workers. Implications for research are discussed.