SHRM Foundation Announces Completed and New Research
Where can leaders find the information they need to make informed decisions? Fads come and go in the business world, but only well-designed research studies can determine if, in fact, these practices are effective. Through its grant-funding program, the SHRM Foundation is providing HR executives with research-based knowledge they can count on. The cumulative effect of multiple research studies is discovering and documenting which practices work best and under what conditions.
With your financial support, the SHRM Foundation funds high-impact, original research that advances the knowledge base of the HR profession. In the past 12 years, the SHRM Foundation has funded more than $2.3 million in research grants for over 100 research projects. The SHRM Foundation is on track to fund $500,000 in new grants this year, which is in addition to the 21 projects that are currently in process. This work is only made possible by your generous donations to the SHRM Foundation.
The SHRM Foundation is committed not only to the discovery of new knowledge but also to its dissemination. To help get practical research results into the hands of HR practitioners who can use them, the Foundation produced a brochure at the end of 2009 called HR Research Results, which features short summaries of the key takeaways from three recent SHRM Foundation-funded grants:
· The Impact of HR Practices on Organizational Social Performance
· Telework Programs
· The Link Between Performance Appraisal and Culture: An Examination Across 21 Countries
In this month’s LeadersEdge, we would like to share with you an update on three other recently completed SHRM Foundation research projects and two newly-funded grants. Volunteer leaders may wish to share this information with their members as an example of the type of research that is funded by contributions to the SHRM Foundation’s Annual Campaign.
To learn more about SHRM Foundation funded research, visit www.shrm.org/foundation and select “Research Grants.”
Recently Completed Projects
The following three research projects were recently completed.
1 – Using After-Event Reviews (AERs) to Improve Leadership Development
Researchers: D. Scott DeRue, Ph.D., University of Michigan; John R. Hollenbeck, Ph.D., Michigan State University; and Jennifer D. Nahrgang, Michigan State University
Funded: June 2007
Completed: April 2010
Completed: April 2010
Summary: In 2009, U.S.-based organizations spent an estimated $12 billion (24% of their overall training budgets) on formal leadership development programs and services. Yet, most leadership development occurs on the job, not in formal training or classroom contexts. Organizations need tools and technologies that help individuals learn the right lessons and develop their leadership skills from on-the-job experiences. This study demonstrates that "after-event reviews" (AER) are one such tool that effectively promotes experience-based leadership development. An AER is a reflection-based, organizational learning procedure that guides individuals through a systematic analysis of their behavior and its contribution to performance outcomes. In this study, individuals who went through the AER process following four key developmental experiences achieved an 8% improvement in their leadership effectiveness ratings over eight months. Individuals who did not go through the AER process saw no improvement in their leadership effectiveness ratings.
2 – Factors Related to the Success of Employee Training
Researchers: Brian D. Blume, Ph.D., University of Michigan, Flint; J. Kevin Ford, Ph.D., Michigan State University; Timothy T. Baldwin, Ph.D., Indiana University; and Jason L. Huang, Michigan State University
Funded: November 2008
Completed: March 2010
Completed: March 2010
Summary: Organizations in the United States spend more than $125 billion annually on employee training and development. However, the success of these interventions is largely unknown. Training is only truly successful when employees apply what they learned by using the knowledge, skills, and/or abilities gained in training on the job. Brian D. Blume and his colleagues examined previous research that has explored the factors related to whether trainees use the material they learned in training on the job. They identified several important trainee characteristics, and work environmental factors that may play a role in determining just how effective an organization's training efforts are.
3 – Sustaining Success by Building Team Resilience: Lessons Learned from College Sports Coaches
Researchers: Ben Rosen, Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Brad Kirkman, Ph.D., Texas A&M University
Funded: March 2007
Completed: March 2010
Completed: March 2010
Summary: Work teams and sports teams share many things in common, not the least of which is the desire to succeed and to sustain success over time. In sports and in business, the path to success is not without pitfalls. Sports teams sometimes lose key players to injuries, go into slumps, and lose focus. Work teams lose key members to reassignment, encounter unexpected customer demands, and encounter unexpected obstacles. Both sports teams and work teams encounter adversity—barriers, challenges, and setbacks.
Teams that encounter adversity may slide down a slippery slope of confusion, conflict, finger-pointing, and lasting failure. Yet some teams are particularly adept at dealing with adversity. Teams that recover from all kinds of adversity are called resilient teams. Resilient teams show the capacity to bounce back, and return to or even exceed their prior levels of performance.
Teams that encounter adversity may slide down a slippery slope of confusion, conflict, finger-pointing, and lasting failure. Yet some teams are particularly adept at dealing with adversity. Teams that recover from all kinds of adversity are called resilient teams. Resilient teams show the capacity to bounce back, and return to or even exceed their prior levels of performance.
Benson Rosen and Bradley L. Kirkman sought to understand what it takes to build a resilient team. To do so, they collected data from almost 2,000 college coaches on how to build team resilience. Coaches’ strategies for building resilient teams were summarized into five categories.
New Grants
1 – The Motivational Leadership Training Program
Researcher: Marylène Gagné, Concordia University, Canada
Abstract: The Motivational Leadership Training Program examines the poorly established relationship between leadership training and changes in employee motivation, performance and well-being. Motivation is treated as a mediator in the relationship between leadership with performance and well-being. Grounded in the theory of full-range leadership and self-determination theory, this training program can potentially offer additional training tools for organizations to improve managerial effectiveness. The training program will be tested through a quasi-experimental design including pre/post-tests with time-lagged control groups to evaluate if it has an impact on subordinate motivation, performance, and well-being. Statistical analyses will include hierarchical linear modeling. The return on investment of the training program will be evaluated through the Yates method.
2 – Predicting Ten Years of Worker Career Success from Employee Development Behavior
Researcher: Todd Maurer, Georgia State University
Abstract: Despite great interest in employee development in the HR literature and great expense in HR practice, there is a surprising lack of long-term longitudinal research establishing an empirical link between employee development and career success in the work force. The present study, combining archival data and a follow-up survey (as well as analytical methods such as factor analysis, regression, path, and/or correlation analysis), will explore these empirical linkages over a period of ten years within a diverse sample of employees. The project will identify which situational and/or individual variables have effects, providing guidance for theory and organizational interventions.
