Person-Centered Messages, Supervisors, and Job Satisfaction

I just read a research article that discussed Person-Centered messages in the workplace (Fix & Sias, 2006). If you recall from my previous posts, person-centered messages describe those times when you decide what to say by accurately predicting how the listener will respond to your message and adapting accordingly. According to the article I read, [...]

Dissent and Fairness

An article published last year reported that how fair you perceive your organization to be determines how and whether you voice frustrations in the workplace (Kassing & McDowell, 2008). The researchers examined procedural justice (are procedures for decision-making fair) and interactional justice (are interactions with supervisors fair). They found that managers were more likely to [...]

Workplace Relationships and Job Satisfaction

I was talking with a former student the other day who told me that he hates his job. The person has been in his job for over a year. He likes the tasks that he does. It’s his coworkers that make life miserable. I don’t have space to describe the specifics, but I doubt that [...]

Nonprofit Organizations–Take Care of Your Volunteers

I recently finished a research project looking at how volunteers and paid staff communicate with each other at nonprofit organizations.  One part of that was measuring how satisfied volunteers were, and I considered four types of satisfaction—satisfaction with the way the organization supports me, satisfaction with my ability to make a difference, satisfaction with the [...]

Be Careful What You Ask in Job Interviews

To get the best candidate for a job, you have to ask good questions. In order to ask good interview questions, one of the most important things to do is identify the knowledge and skills that are necessary for the job. Then look for those qualities in the job applicant. Ask questions that present candidates [...]

Setting Yourself Apart in Job Interviews

Interviewing for a job is a matter of convincing the person interviewing you that you are the a good fit for the organization. Big deal, especially in today’s economy. I was talking to some hiring people that were visiting my university last year, and I asked what was one thing that they always looked for. [...]

Organizational Democracy

Organizational democracy is something that is talked about in academic circles, but I have not heard much discussion about it from business leaders. Cheney (1995) defines organizational democracy as organizational governance that balances individual needs and goals with organizational needs and goals and that seeks employee feedback in organizational decision-making. Doesn’t sound like your typical [...]

Communicating in Probabilities

Why do miscommunications happen in organizations? Yes, sometimes it is because people don’t listen or don’t pay attention, but I would argue that those times may be in the minority. Miscommunications often occur because we communicate in probabilities. Clampitt (2005) explained it well. We have the mistaken impression that the words we use have only [...]

Research Helping Business

Today’s post is not so much a tip for people working but a confession and a resolution. I was just reading about the importance of engaged scholarship, where academics are working on real problems faced by real people. The article complained that too often, academic researchers do what they do for the sake of knowledge [...]

Tips for Teaching PowerPoint skills

I came across a web site with interesting ideas for using templates to teach students how to use PowerPoint. I am glad  more and more sites are appearing that emphasize that, despite how user-friendly PowerPoint is, you can’t stick someone in a room with a computer and Microsoft and expect them to figure out how [...]