ISSN 1360 Employee Engagement in Developmental Activities Research Article Review

ISSN 1360 Employee Engagement in Developmental Activities Research Article Review ISSN 1360 Employee Engagement in Developmental Activities Research Article Review ORDER NOW FOR CUSTOMIZED AND ORIGINAL NURSING PAPERS Unformatted Attachment Preview RESEARCH STUDY REVIEW ASSIGNMENT INSTRUCTIONS OVERVIEW This assignment will increase your understanding of performance management and give you a greater awareness of the research related to the topic. The summaries are designed towards concentration on the most important aspects of the research study by following set guidelines that keep the focus of the review on the most critical aspects of the study. This will help you not only in this course but with future research and coursework as well. INSTRUCTIONS Using current APA style the review must include the following: • Title page • Specific sections, each with an appropriately formatted APA heading: o Introduction (no heading) – title of article and author(s); why the article was written (purpose) o Hypothesis – what it attempts to find or answer, include each hypothesis o Methodology – how it answers the hypothesis, process, population, statistical tests used o Results – what were the outcomes; provide the significance levels o Discussion – what the results actually mean, how is it applicable, why is it important in the field of Industrial and Organizational Psychology • Reference list Additional requirements of the assignment: • • • • • Length of assignment: 500 words o Excludes title page and reference section Do not use direct quotes Current APA formatting Your only citation will be the study that you are reviewing Acceptable sources are quantitative research studies published within the last five years Note: Your assignment will be checked for originality via the SafeAssign plagiarism tool. International Journal of Training and Development 13:3 ISSN 1360-3736 Linking employee development activity, social exchange and organizational citizenship behavior Heather R. Pierce and Todd J. Maurer The authors examined ‘perceived bene?ciary’ of employee development (self, organization) for relationships with employee development activity. Perceived organizational support served as a moderator. The authors conclude that employees may engage in development activities to partly bene?t their organization to the extent that a positive exchange relationship exists. Correlational data also show that development behavior is related to organizational citizenship behavior, and this is particularly true for work-related development activity. This research links employee development with social exchange and organizational citizenship, providing implications for both research and practice. ijtd_323 139..147 Introduction Organizations are increasingly relying on employee and leadership development as a key part of how they function effectively and continuously improve. At the same time, rapidly changing organizations are often required to accomplish more ambitious goals using the same or a fewer number of employees. ISSN 1360 Employee Engagement in Developmental Activities Research Article Review. This makes employee behavior that is helpful to the organization’s goals but which is discretionary and non-required very valuable to the organization. Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), a term introduced by Organ (1977), refers to ‘individual behavior that is discretionary, not directly or explicitly recognized by the formal reward system, and in the aggregate promotes the ef?cient and effective functioning of the organization’ (Organ, 1988, p. 4). Types ? Heather R. Pierce, Human Resources Consultant, Georgia Institute of Technology, 6535 Center Grove Street, Cumming, GA, USA. Email: pierce_hr@hotmail.com. Todd J. Maurer, Professor, Georgia State University, Department of Managerial Sciences, PO Box 4014, Atlanta, GA, USA. Email: tmaurer@gsu.edu © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Employee development and social exchange 139 ijtd_323 139..147 of behaviors included as OCBs are helping coworkers with a job-related problem, accepting orders without a fuss, helping keep the work area clean and promoting a positive work climate (Bateman & Organ, 1983). Interestingly, although there has not been a lot of prior literature that has suggested possible connections between employee development and OCB (Organ, 1988), there has been some suggestion that these two domains may interrelate in meaningful ways. Prior literature has recognized that some types of developmental behaviors will bene?t the organization, and can be viewed as OCBs. One of the activities that has been included in the literature as developmental, volunteering for committees, was included by Brief and Motowidlo (1986) as one of 13 kinds of prosocial organizational behavior. In addition, Scholl et al. (1987) developed a measure of OCB, or extra-role behavior that included taking on extra responsibility and continuing education, both activities that have previously been de?ned as development activities. The idea that self-development is a form of prosocial behavior was also recognized by McEnrue (1989), who stated ‘the process of self-development requires employees to sacri?ce their own time, energy, and other resources both on and off the job. It, therefore, represents a form of prosocial behavior’ (p. 58). Likewise, George and Brief (1992) identi?ed developing oneself as a key dimension of citizenship behavior. These authors suggest that this might include seeking out and taking advantage of advanced training courses, keeping abreast of the latest developments in one’s ?eld and area, or even learning a new set of skills so as to expand the range of one’s contributions to an organization. Maurer et al. (2002b) presented a model of employee decision making and behavior that integrated research on employee development with that of OCB. In this model, employee development may be undertaken to bene?t someone other than the employee himself/herself, thus providing additional variables as possible predictors of development behavior. The basis for this model is the concept of ‘perceived bene?ciary’ of developmental efforts, where not only the employee but also other entities such as the organization may bene?t in varying degrees from the employee’s participation in development. The Maurer et al. model presents the possibility that, in addition to the belief that one will personally bene?t from development, the belief that the organization will bene?t may motivate development activity. When this will happen depends on the quality of exchange relationships between the individual and the organization. Writings on social exchange theory and the ‘norm of reciprocity’ suggests that individuals will exert effort to repay those who have bene?ted them. According to this perspective, individuals should help those who have helped them in the past. Blau (1964) suggests that the norm of reciprocity acts to reinforce social exchange relationships.ISSN 1360 Employee Engagement in Developmental Activities Research Article Review. Blau (1964) de?ned social exchange as ‘voluntary actions of individuals that are motivated by the returns they are expected to bring and typically do in fact bring from others’ (p. 91). The basic idea behind social exchange is that providing a bene?t to someone, which can be in the form of a gift, a favor, etc., obligates the receiver to repay that bene?t. As with the norm of reciprocity, this is believed to be a universal phenomenon. The concept of social exchange has been applied to employee behavior. Organizations can bene?t when employees feel obligated to repay the organization for bene?ts provided. Research and theory have proposed that social exchange theory is the best explanation for OCB (i.e. Organ, 1990). This view of OCB is one of a controlled nature, in which individuals develop a cognitive appraisal of the current situation and compare it with a standard of fairness. If the situation is perceived as fair, the individual is more likely to engage in OCBs (Organ, 1988). The exchange between an organization and an employee is the focus in perceived organizational support (POS), de?ned as a global belief concerning the extent to which the organization values employee contributions and cares about their well-being (Eisenberger et al., 1986). Levinson (1965) supported the idea that an individual can have a relationship with an organization. He proposed that ‘people project upon organizations human qualities and then relate to them as if the organizations did in fact have human qualities’ (p. 377). Building on this notion, Eisenberger et al. (1986) presented the concept of POS. 140 International Journal of Training and Development © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Although these POS beliefs are in?uenced by a variety of factors, such as pay, praise and approval received, and organizational policies, the basic premise is that it is a global evaluation. The concept of POS is grounded in social exchange theory. When employees perceive that the organization values employee contributions (the de?nition of POS), this should be viewed by employees as evidence that any behaviors they undertake to bene?t the organization will be reciprocated. Eisenberger et al. (1986) hypothesize POS to raise employee’s expectancy that the organization would reward greater effort toward meeting organizational goals. Therefore, if POS is high, employees should exert greater effort on behalf of the organization. ISSN 1360 Employee Engagement in Developmental Activities Research Article Review. The present research will address three key issues. First, knowing that people engage in development to bene?t themselves, does the addition of the other dimension (organization bene?t) add to motivation to participate? These perceptions of bene?t should be most relevant to development when the individual is motivated to engage in behaviors that will bene?t the organization. Research on OCB and social exchange theory suggest that positive exchange relationships lead to such situations, and therefore, it is expected that POS will moderate the relationships between perceived bene?t and development activity. An essential component of the model is the extent to which the individual perceives his/her own participation in an activity to be bene?cial to the organization. Development will only be used as a means to reciprocate positive exchange relationships when the individual perceives a bene?t to the organization from their behavior. Hypothesis 1: The relationship between perceived bene?t to the organization and development activity will be moderated by POS. The relationship will be stronger when POS is high. The second issue addressed by this research is the extent to which traditional measures of OCB and development activity are related. Although some literature has suggested that there might be a relationship (cf. George & Brief, 1992), Podsakoff et al. (2000) report that ‘self development has not received any empirical con?rmation in the citizenship behavior literature’. However, those authors also suggest that ‘it does appear to be a discretionary form of employee behavior that is conceptually distinct from other citizenship behavior dimensions’ (p. 525). Therefore, the current literature is suggestive with no empirical exploration of the proposed linkages. The present study undertook a direct examination of those linkages. Employee development behavior can be quite diverse in form, and can include things like (1) job-related courses, programs and reading, which includes visiting on-site development centers, college courses that are related to the job, on-the-job training, non-college courses or training programs, and job-related reading; (2) nonjob-related courses, programs and reading, including visiting a development center to work on a non-job-related learning package and developmental reading that is not related to the current job; (3) feedback and assessments, including performance and development reviews, psychological assessments, assessment center feedback, 360° feedback and informally seeking performance feedback; (4) job experience, which includes job enlargement, job rotation, transfers, promotions and employee exchanges; (5) relationships, which includes mentoring and peer relationships; (6) career planning activities, including attending a career or personal development fair, and updating written records of development plans and achievements; and (7) work-related development, including participating in work groups to consider particular issues, personal projects, being seconded to other departments or positions, taking on roles additional to normal duties, visiting suppliers, customers or dealers to gain a wider understanding of the business, challenging task assignments and special projects or task forces. Given that OCBs are de?ned primarily by those behaviors that in the aggregate promote the effective functioning of the organization, we expected that the relationship between ‘work-related development’ and OCB would be the strongest.ISSN 1360 Employee Engagement in Developmental Activities Research Article Review. Getting extra work done that is not required by employee roles seems perhaps the most direct and signi?cant way an employee can bene?t the organization’s objectives. Employee development and social exchange 141 © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Hypothesis 2: The relationship between work-related development and OCB will be stronger than the relationship between other categories of development and OCB. Method Participants This study was conducted as part of a larger project addressing employee development and social exchange with organizations and supervisors. The present report focuses on the relationship and bene?t to the organization in a ?eld setting. Surveys were sent to a total of 457 employees in the corporate headquarters of a large package delivery organization. Usable data was obtained for 162 respondents, for an overall response rate of 35 percent. The sample included employees in three job categories: administrative/technical (n = 67, 41 percent), specialists (n = 26, 16 percent) and supervisors (n = 46, 28 percent). The remaining 23 respondents (14 percent) chose not to respond to the position question. Of those responding to the remaining demographic questions, 75 percent were female, 25 percent were male; 6 percent were 24 or younger, 23 percent were 25–29, 35 percent were 30–39, 27 percent were 40–49 and 8 percent were 50 or older; 63 percent were white, 31 percent were African American/Black and the remaining 6 percent belonged to different racial groupings. Materials The questionnaire sent to employees contained several scales. Development activity Only development activities that were optional were considered because the focus of this investigation was participation in development activities that are voluntary. The research literature in this area suggests that self-report offers the soundest approach to measuring employee development activity because archival data from personnel ?les may not be objective and reliable, ?rms may not systematically collect information regarding development activity of employees, or employees may not report participation to their employers (cf. Birdi et al., 1997; Maurer & Tarulli, 1994; Noe & Wilk, 1993). The employees themselves are the only ones likely to possess the broad types of information sought here. Respondents were presented with a list of 35 development activities and asked to provide ratings of each in terms of how frequently they had performed the activity in the past 12 months as well as how frequently they intended to perform each activity during the next 12 months. A 7-point scale was used, with anchors of 0 (never) to 6 (about six times or more). Both past and intended development activity has been studied in the literature and both are considered important constructs in this (cf. Maurer & Tarulli, 1994; Maurer et al., 2002a,b). An overall/summary development activity score was created from this list. Similar to Birdi et al. (1997), several scores were created for each of the seven prede?ned categories of development behaviors described above by calculating a mean across the behaviors in each category. Those authors report no reliability data for the scales they used. Maurer and Tarulli (1994) similarly used rational grouping and also empirical methods to create three development activity scales, and those authors reported reliability of the three scales to be 0.45, 0.55 and 0.59. Reliability analyses were conducted for both past and future development ratings in the current study, and they are listed here in the order future participation, past participation: overall (entire scale), a = 0.93, 0.86; job-related courses, programs and readings, a = 0.84, 0.50; non-job-related courses, programs and readings, a = 0.57, 0.47; feedback and assessments, a = 0.77, 0.72; job experience, a = 0.82, 0.46; work-related development, a = 0.82, 0.75; career planning, a = 0.80, 0.72 and relationships, a = 0.82, 0.60. Given low reliabilities in some scales, item-total correlations were examined to determine if removing any of the items from the scales would result in improved reliability. There were no items that, if removed, would lead to increased reliability of the scale. Given the direct 142 International Journal of Training and Development © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. interpretability of the scale content relative to the categories described above and the fact that the reliability scores here were either consistent with or exceeded reliabilities in prior literature in this area cited above, these scales were used in analyses. Ratings of bene?t Each development activity was rated in terms of the extent to which it is personally bene?cial and bene?cial to the organization. Each activity was rated using a 5-point scale. Two scale scores (individual and organization) were created for the overall as well as each of the seven categories of development as a mean of the perceived bene?t ratings. POS The short version of the survey of POS developed by Eisenberger et al. (1986) was used (a = 0.93). The scale contains 17 statements related to the value the organization places on the employee and how the organization would treat the employee in a variety of situations. Statements were rated using a 5-point Likert scale, with a mean score of 3.18 and a standard deviation of 0.77. OCB The OCB measure developed by Smith et al. (1983) was used (a = 0.80). The scale contains 16 behaviors related to helping others (altruism) and general conscientiousness (compliance). Each behavior was rated on a 5-point scale, with a mean of 4.08 and a standard deviation of 0.49. Results and discussion Regression analyses were performed for both past participation and intentions to participate. Individual bene?t was entered ?rst, with POS and perceived bene?t to the organization entered in the second step and the interaction between POS and perceived bene?t added in the third step. The main focus in testing hypothesis 1 was the interaction effect. Table 1 presents the results of the regression analyses on the overall development activity score. There were signi?cant effects for both past and future Table 1: Results of regression analyses: coef?cients and R2 Hypothesis 1 Step 1 Individual bene?t Total R2 Step 2 Individual bene?t POS Perceived organization bene?t DR2 Total R2 Step 3 Individual bene?t POS Perceived organization bene?t POS ¥ organization bene?t DR2 Total R2 Past Future 0.45** 0.20** 0.50** 0.25** 0.26* 0.07 0.24* 0.03 0.23** 0.36** 0.11 0.17 0.02 0.27** 0.26* -0.93* -0.55 1.34* 0.03* 0.26** 0.36** -1.03* -0.73* 1.53** 0.04** 0.31** * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01. POS = perceived organizational support. Employee development and social exchange 143 © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Table 2: OCB development correlations Category of development Correlation with OCB Overall development activity Job-related courses, programs and reading Non-job-related courses, programs and reading Feedback and assessments Job experience Work-related development Relationships Career planning Last year Next year 0.35* 0.25* 0.13 0.28* -0.03 0.38* 0.21* 0.04 0.26* 0.26* 0.12 0.27* -0.06 0.25* 0.21* 0.04 * p < … Purchase answer to see full attachment Get a 10 % discount on an order above $ 100 Use the following coupon code : NURSING10