New issue of JOOP

The December issue of the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology is out so let's take a look.

First up, an article about reactions to performance feedback. Unfortunately the sample is not described (nor the measures) but the results were that leaders who received numerical/normative feedback responded better than did leaders who received text feedback--regardless of the source. Support, perhaps, for the typical practice in assessment of providing numerical scores; I'm guessing more important than type is whether feedback is provided at all, which we know is so important for feelings of procedural justice.

The next article that looks interesting is a study of teams and whether a multidisciplinary group is necessarily the best bet in all cases. The study of health care workers found that having a multidisciplinary team was related to success if defined as quality of innovations generated but not number of innovations generated.

Next up is a study of almost 52,000 school teachers in Israel. The research question? The impact of promotions on absences. The findings? The higher the person was promoted (in terms of level), the greater the decrease in absences. This impact was stronger for individuals with less tenure. Conclusion? If someone's having an abscene problem, promote them as high in the organization as you can (a little Thanksgiving Day humor for you, there).

Last but not least is a longitudinal study of 54 British symphony orchestra members (apparently a notoriously difficult group to study). Looks to me like the qualitative interview data yielded some rich information regarding the musicians' motivations and commitments. I'm always looking for good job analysis information; if you're sourcing or hiring for musicians this could give you some fresh perspectives.