Ten production sites in the United Kingdom, North America, Japan, and Malta tested a model of worker discretion in job tasks, based on customer preferences. Results suggest that production jobs should be designed to maximize worker judgment, knowledge, and initiative, allowing broad discretion in all tasks except those that can have a negative…

The skills debate in many European countries has for many years been preoccupied with the supply of qualified individuals and participation in training events. However, recent case-study work suggests that qualifications and training are partial measures of skill development as most learning arises naturally out of the demands and challenges of…

Presidents are expected to articulate vision, devise plans, and facilitate decision making. These different dimensions of the job are sometimes complementary, but they may also compete for the president's attention or suggest contradictory ways of proceeding.

When confronted with the problems of urban school districts, such as an ever-increasing achievement gap, the underfunding of school districts, increased shortages of qualified teachers, greater emphasis on accountability, and the loss of public confidence, African American superintendents have considerable difficulty leading their school…

Coaching has received considerable attention in recent years as the responsibility for employees' learning and development has been increasingly devolved to line managers. Yet there exists little published empirical research that measures specific coaching behaviors of line managers or examines the linkages between line managers' coaching behavior…

The mere word "bureaucracy" brings to mind images of endless lines, piles of paperwork, and frustrating battles over rules and red tape. But some bureaucracies are clearly more efficient and responsive than others. Why? In "Teaching, Tasks, and Trust", distinguished political scientists John Brehm and Scott Gates show that a good part of the…

This longitudinal study tested the degree to which an individual characteristic, psychological flexibility, and a work organization variable, job control, predicted ability to learn new skills at work, job performance, and mental health, amongst call center workers in the United Kingdom (N = 448). As hypothesized, results indicated that job…

While research has focused on the effects of diversity on individual and group level outcomes, there has been little inquiry concerning the organizational level. Cox (1994) states that the most frequently asked question by executives regarding workforce diversity involves how it affects the performance of organizations. In order to manage the…

America's workforce is aging, with over 20% of the workforce expected to be aged 55 and over by the year 2015, an increase of nearly 50% through 2014. As people age, their resistance to harmful exposures is reduced. Injury data suggest that although elderly workers are less likely to be hurt seriously enough to lose worktime, they often take twice…

This paper describes the Work Performance Assessment (WPA) and the Work Personality Profile (WPP) and provides instructions for their use. The WPA and WPP evaluate behaviors associated with job retention and advancement among disabled workers. Together the two evaluation components form a comprehensive observational assessment designed to provide…

Although principals are essential to their schools' effectiveness, they often receive only perfunctory evaluation. Themes from current literature on principal evaluation are highlighted in this digest; they include the reasons for principal evaluation, initial steps in designing evaluation systems, methods and sources of evaluation, and models of…

Selected cognitive science methods were used to modify existing test development procedures so that the modified procedures could in turn be used to improve the usefulness of job knowledge tests as a proxy for hands-on performance. A plan-goal graph representation was used to capture the knowledge content and goal structure of the task of using a…

A study was done of individual job involvement as it affects support services in some areas of higher education. The basic research question was: Given selected personal characteristics of support services staff members and certain situational characteristics, which set of variables would most effectively account for the variations in the degree…

Competent performance is described in terms of the competency to be performed and a set of standards applied to that performance that covers both routine and nonroutine skills. The competency-based approach brings flexibility to a training and education system. It allows the development of a continuum of competence statements from basic to…

Eighty Utah companies currently hiring Indochinese refugees and 73 identified simply as "general employers" took part in a study of employers' reactions to Indochinese refugees as job applicants and as employees. The study used questionnaires and oral interviews directed at personnel managers and supervisors and some language proficiency…