Social identity theory and the organization

Organizations in the United States alone spend billions on training each year. These training and development activities allow organizations to adapt, compete, excel, innovate, produce, be safe, improve service, and reach goals. Training has successfully been used to reduce errors in such high-risk settings as emergency rooms, aviation, and the military. However, training is also important in more conventional organizations. These organizations understand that training helps them to remain competitive by continually educating their workforce. They understand that investing in their employees yields greater results. However, training is not as intuitive as it may seem. There is a science of training that shows that there is a right way and a wrong way to design, deliver, and implement a training program. The research on training clearly shows two things: (a) training works, and (b) the way training is designed, delivered, and implemented matters. This article aims to explain why training is important and how to use training appropriately. Using the training literature as a guide, we explain what training is, why it is important, and provide recommendations for implementing a training program in an organization. In particular, we argue that training is a systematic process, and we explain what matters before, during, and after training. Steps to take at each of these three time periods are listed and described and are summarized in a checklist for ease of use. We conclude with a discussion of implications for both leaders and policymakers and an exploration of issues that may come up when deciding to implement a training program. Furthermore, we include key questions that executives and policymakers should ask about the design, delivery, or implementation of a training program. Finally, we consider future research that is important in this area, including some still unanswered questions and room for development in this evolving field. Language: en

The Science of Training and Development in Organizations What Matters in Practice

The use of humor has become common practice in advertising; yet our knowledge about its impact has not been updated since the last major review almost twenty years ago. In the interim, a great deal of humor research has been conducted. The outcome of this research only partially supports earlier conclusions and highlights the need to apply humor with care. Humor is by no means a guarantee of better ads, but its effect can be enhanced with careful consideration of the objectives one seeks to achieve as well as the audience, situation, and type of humor.

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The Impact of Humor in Advertising: A Review

Objective:Debriefs (or “after-action reviews”) are increasingly used in training and work environments as a means of learning from experience. We sought to unify a fragmented literature and assess ...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0018720812448394

Do Team and Individual Debriefs Enhance Performance? A Meta-Analysis:

Although interruptions are daily occurring events for most working people, little research has been done on the impacts of interruptions on workers and their performance. This study examines the e Vects of interruptions on task performance and its regulation, as well as on workers’ psychological and psychophysiological state. Two parallel experiments were carried out in the Netherlands and in Russia, using a common conceptual framework and overlapping designs. Employees with relevant work experience carried out realistic text editing tasks in a simulated o Yce environment, while the frequency and complexity of interruptions were experimentally manipulated. It was hypothesized that interruptions: (i) would cause a deterioration of performance; (ii) evoke strategies to partially compensate for this deterioration; (iii) aVect subjects’ emotions and well-being negatively; and (iv) raise the level of eVort and activation. It was also hypothesized that greater frequency and complexity of interruptions would enhance the expected e Vects. The hypotheses are only partially cone rmed. The results show that, contrary to what was expected, interruptions cause people to perform the main task faster while maintaining the level of quality. Participants develop strategies enabling them to deal e Vectively with the interruptions, while actually over-compensating the potential performance decline. Interruptions do have a negative impact on emotion and well-being, and lead to an increase of e Vort expenditure, although not to an increase in activation. Thus the improved performance is achieved at the expense of higher psychological costs. Greater complexity evoked more favourable responses among the Dutch participants and more unfavourable ones among the Russian participants. These diVerences are interpreted in terms of the participants’ professional background. The research demonstrates that the e Vects of interruptions reach beyond the execution of additional tasks and the change of work strategies. Interruptions appear to have an after-e Vect, ine uencing the workers’ subsequent readiness to perform. Detailed analysis of the activity in the interruption interval, focusing on

Temporal factors in mental work: effects on interrupted activities

Given the ubiquity, time investment, and theoretical relevance of meetings to work attitudes, this study explored whether organizational science should consider employee satisfaction with meetings as a contemporary, important, and discrete facet of job satisfaction. Using affective events theory, we postulated that meetings are affect-generating events that meaningfully contribute to overall job satisfaction. Two surveys queried working adults: Study 1 used a paper-based survey (n = 201), while Study 2 used an Internet-based survey (n = 785). Satisfaction with meetings was positively related to and significantly predicted overall job satisfaction (p < .05) after controlling for individual difference variables (e.g., participant background variables, negative affect), traditional job satisfaction facets (e.g., work, supervision, pay), and other conceptually relevant constructs (e.g., satisfaction with communication, organizational commitment). Exploratory (Study 1) and confirmatory (Study 2) factor analyses provided evidence that meeting satisfaction is a distinct facet of job satisfaction. Finally, as hypothesized, the relationship between meeting satisfaction and job satisfaction depends in part upon the number of meetings typically attended. The relationship was stronger (more positive) when meeting demands were higher and weaker when meeting demands were lower. Implications for assessment, leadership development, on-boarding, and high potential initiatives are discussed. ©2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Employee satisfaction with meetings: A contemporary facet of job satisfaction

Leaders in high-reliability organizational contexts such as firefighting, emergency medicine, and law enforcement often face the challenge of making sense of environments that are dangerous, highly

Organizing Ambiguity: A Grounded Theory of Leadership and Sensemaking Within Dangerous Contexts

In a series of field studies, social and business events were promoted using humorous, non-humorous, and control formats. The humorous promotions significantly increased attendance for the social events, but showed no significant impact for business events.

Consumer Response to Humor in Advertising: A Series of Field Studies Using Behavioral Observation

Meetings are a central fact of organizational life. As a vehicle for communication, they can be extremely valuable mechanisms for disseminating vision, crafting strategic plans, and developing responses to challenges and opportunities. They can also be helpful for gathering ideas, brainstorming, and generating higher levels of employee involvement. But too many meetings are seen as a waste of time ? as a source of frustration rather than enlightenment. The authors explore some basic questions: How much time do people really spend in meetings? Are employees burning out from meeting overload? To what extent do people consider their time in meetings unproductive? And how can companies use meeting time better? To answer these questions, they look at a variety of sources: research and application literature; their own experiences working with clients; and data from two multinational studies of employees (including one that provided the basis of an article titled ??Not Another Meeting!? Are Meeting Time Demands Related to Employee Well-Being?? Journal of Applied Psychology 91, no. 1 (2006): 86-96, by Rogelberg, Leach, Warr and Burnfield). Based on these inquiries, they offer insights into the world of meetings and how organizations can use them more effectively.

The Science and Fiction of Meetings

Debriefs are a type of work meeting in which teams discuss, interpret, and learn from recent events during which they collaborated. In a variety of forms, debriefs are found across a wide range of organizational types and settings. Well-conducted debriefs can improve team effectiveness by 25% across a variety of organizations and settings. For example, the U.S. military adopted debriefs decades ago to promote learning and performance across the various services. Subsequently, debriefs have been introduced in the medical field, the fire service, aviation, education, and in a variety of organizational training and simulation environments. After a discussion of various purposes for which debriefs have been used, we proceed with a historical review of development of the concepts and use in industries and contexts. We then review the psychological factors relevant to debrief effectiveness and the outcomes for individuals, teams, and organizations that deploy debriefs. Future directions of particular interest to team researchers across a variety of psychological disciplines are presented along with a review of how best to implement debriefs from a practical perspective. (PsycINFO Database Record

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Cliff W. Scott

Papers

Employee satisfaction with meetings: A contemporary facet of job satisfaction

Organizing Ambiguity: A Grounded Theory of Leadership and Sensemaking Within Dangerous Contexts

Consumer Response to Humor in Advertising: A Series of Field Studies Using Behavioral Observation

The Science and Fiction of Meetings

Debriefs: Teams learning from doing in context.