Interest in the problem of method biases has a long history in the behavioral sciences. Despite this, a comprehensive summary of the potential sources of method biases and how to control for them does not exist. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to examine the extent to which method biases influence behavioral research results, identify potential sources of method biases, discuss the cognitive processes through which method biases influence responses to measures, evaluate the many different procedural and statistical techniques that can be used to control method biases, and provide recommendations for how to select appropriate procedural and statistical remedies for different types of research settings.

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Common method biases in behavioral research: a critical review of the literature and recommended remedies.

The capacity to exercise control over the nature and quality of one's life is the essence of humanness. Human agency is characterized by a number of core features that operate through phenomenal and functional consciousness. These include the temporal extension of agency through intentionality and forethought, self-regulation by self-reactive influence, and self-reflectiveness about one's capabilities, quality of functioning, and the meaning and purpose of one's life pursuits. Personal agency operates within a broad network of sociostructural influences. In these agentic transactions, people are producers as well as products of social systems. Social cognitive theory distinguishes among three modes of agency: direct personal agency, proxy agency that relies on others to act on one's behest to secure desired outcomes, and collective agency exercised through socially coordinative and interdependent effort. Growing transnational embeddedness and interdependence are placing a premium on collective efficacy to exercise control over personal destinies and national life.

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Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective

According to W. Edwards Deming, American companies require nothing less than a transformation of management style and of governmental relations with industry. In Out of the Crisis, originally published in 1982, Deming offers a theory of management based on his famous 14 Points for Management. Management's failure to plan for the future, he claims, brings about loss of market, which brings about loss of jobs. Management must be judged not only by the quarterly dividend, but by innovative plans to stay in business, protect investment, ensure future dividends, and provide more jobs through improved product and service. In simple, direct language, he explains the principles of management transformation and how to apply them.

Out of the Crisis

Despite the concern that has been expressed about potential method biases, and the pervasiveness of research settings with the potential to produce them, there is disagreement about whether they really are a problem for researchers in the behavioral sciences. Therefore, the purpose of this review is to explore the current state of knowledge about method biases. First, we explore the meaning of the terms “method” and “method bias” and then we examine whether method biases influence all measures equally. Next, we review the evidence of the effects that method biases have on individual measures and on the covariation between different constructs. Following this, we evaluate the procedural and statistical remedies that have been used to control method biases and provide recommendations for minimizing method bias.

Sources of Method Bias in Social Science Research and Recommendations on How to Control It

The field of organizationa l justice continues to be marked by several important research questions, including the size of relationships among justice dimensions, the relative importance of different justice criteria, and the unique effects of justice dimensions on key outcomes. To address such questions, the authors conducted a meta-analytic review of 183 justice studies. The results suggest that although different justice dimensions are moderately to highly related, they contribute incremental variance explained in fairness perceptions. The results also illustrate the overall and unique relationships among distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and informational justice and several organizational outcomes (e.g., job satisfaction, organizational commitment, evaluation of authority, organizational citizenship behavior, withdrawal, performance). These findings are reviewed in terms of their implications for future research on organizationa l justice.

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Justice at the millennium: a meta-analytic review of 25 years of organizational justice research

The authors used theoretical models to organize the diverse unemployment literature, and meta-analytic techniques were used to examine the impact of unemployment on worker well-being across 104 empirical studies with 437 effect sizes. Unemployed individuals had lower psychological and physical well-being than did their employed counterparts. Unemployment duration and sample type (school leaver vs. mature unemployed) moderated the relationship between mental health and unemployment, but the current unemployment rate and the amount of unemployment benefits did not. Within unemployed samples, work-role centrality, coping resources (personal, social, financial, and time structure), cognitive appraisals, and coping strategies displayed stronger relationships with mental health than did human capital or demographic variables. The authors identify gaps in the literature and propose directions for future unemployment research.

Psychological and physical well-being during unemployment: a meta-analytic study.

Employability: A psycho-social construct, its dimensions, and applications

We apply Quinn and Rohrbaugh's (1983) competing values framework (CVF) as an organizing taxonomy to meta-analytically test hypotheses about the relationship between 3 culture types and 3 major indices of organizational effectiveness (employee attitudes, operational performance [i.e., innovation and product and service quality], and financial performance). The paper also tests theoretical suppositions undergirding the CVF by investigating the framework's nomological validity and proposed internal structure (i.e., interrelationships among culture types). Results based on data from 84 empirical studies with 94 independent samples indicate that clan, adhocracy, and market cultures are differentially and positively associated with the effectiveness criteria, though not always as hypothesized. The findings provide mixed support for the CVF's nomological validity and fail to support aspects of the CVF's proposed internal structure. We propose an alternative theoretical approach to the CVF and delineate directions for future research.

Organizational Culture and Organizational Effectiveness: A Meta-Analytic Investigation of the Competing Values Framework's Theoretical Suppositions.

Our focus is on organizational culture and climate and the role that these constructs play in understanding individual as well as collective attitudes, behavior, and performance. We begin with the assumption that both constructs rest upon the notion of shared meanings or a shared understanding of aspects of the organizational context. Climate is defined as a perceptually based description of the what the organization is like in terms of practices, policies, procedures, and routines while culture helps define the underlying reasons and mechanisms for why these things occur in an organization based on fundamental ideologies, assumptions, values, and artifacts. The first half of the chapter provides a comprehensive review of the culture and climate literatures. The second half is framed around a multilevel model that integrates culture and climate through the linking mechanism of organizational structure, practices, and policies. This discussion elucidates a set of mechanisms that foster the emergence of organizational culture and climate and highlights the impact of weak emergent processes on individual and organizational outcomes. We then discuss the topic of culture and climate change and conclude by reviewing directions for future research.


Keywords:

emergent processes;
levels of analysis;
organizational climate;
organizational culture;
shared perceptions

https://goal-lab.psych.umn.edu/orgPsych/readings/15.%20Climate%20&%20Culture/Ostroff,%20Kinicki,%20&%20Muhammad%20(2012).pdf

Organizational Culture and Climate

This study generalized a leading portrayal of how job dissatisfaction progresses into turnover (Horn & Griffeth, 1991) and more rigorously tested this model using structural equations modeling and ...

Angelo J. Kinicki

Papers

Psychological and physical well-being during unemployment: a meta-analytic study.

Employability: A psycho-social construct, its dimensions, and applications

Organizational Culture and Organizational Effectiveness: A Meta-Analytic Investigation of the Competing Values Framework's Theoretical Suppositions.

Organizational Culture and Climate

Toward a Greater Understanding of How Dissatisfaction Drives Employee Turnover