The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of the Psychology of Training, Development, and Performance Improvement

Kurt Kraiger, Jonathan Passmore, Nuno Rebelo dos Santos, Sigmar Malvezzi, Kurt Kraiger, Jonathan Passmore, Sigmar Malvezzi, Nuno Rebelo dos Santos, Kurt Kraiger, Jonathan Passmore, Sigmar Malvezzi, Nuno Rebelo dos Santos

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781119673668, 9781118737019
• eBook ISBN: 9781118744628
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Industrial & Organizational Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The latest Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Organizational Psychology uses a psychological perspective, and a uniquely global focus, to review the latest literature and research in the interconnected fields of training, development, and performance appraisal.

• Maintains a truly global focus on the field with top international contributors exploring research and practice from around the world
• Offers researchers and professionals essential information for building a talented organization, a critical and challenging task for organizational success in the 21^st century
• Covers a diverse range of topics, including needs analysis, job design, active learning, self-regulation, simulation approaches, 360-degree feedback, and virtual learning environments

1
The Psychology of Training, Development, and Performance Improvement

Kurt Kraiger, Jonathan Passmore, Nuno Rebelo dos Santos, and Sigmar Malvezzi

Introduction

It is well established that the management and development of human resources is critical to the well-being and effectiveness of organizations. In their recent monograph, Salas, Tannenbaum, Kraiger, and Smith-Jentsch (2012) concluded: “Continuous learning and skill development is now a way of life in modern organizations. To remain competitive, organizations must ensure their employees continually learn and develop. Training and development activities allow organizations to adapt, compete, excel, innovate, produce, be safe, improve service and reach goals” (p. 1). While the emphasis of the Salas et al. chapter is on training and development, training is but one of many methods by which organizations shape the knowledge, skills, and competencies of its workforce. In this volume, we focus on training and instruction, personal and professional development, and appraisal and feedback.

In concept and in practice, distinctions among training, development, and appraisal are at times artificial if not distracting. When a manager or supervisor appraises the performance of a subordinate and gives feedback, the purpose of that action is (often) to stimulate if not guide the development of the subordinate’s skills and competencies. When organizations establish formal development programs for members (e.g., leader self-development activities), formal and informal training are also critical components. Finally, training at its best is a multifaceted approach to stimulating change and can incorporate both personal development and assessment and feedback of trainees.

The effective development of human resources is one of the best ways that organizations can differentiate themselves in the marketplace (Huselid & Becker, 2011). This point is made by Boudreau and Ramstad in a 2005 paper. They argued that organizations are increasingly unable to differentiate themselves by access to capital, better product design, or unique markets. All organizations now compete in relatively the same marketplaces, with similar products, and with similar access to financing. Thus, it is the extent to which organizations can locate, procure, train, develop, and retain human capital that best enables them to compete.

Research in strategic human resource (HR) management typically finds that it is not isolated HR practices that lead to greater organizational effectiveness, but the bundling of practices. For example, Delaney and Huselid (1996) reported that the coupling of staffing and training practices by organizations related to staffing and training correlated to organizational performance. Similarly, Huselid (1995) defined high-performance work practices as integrated systems of recruitment and selection, performance management, and training, and found that use of such systems predicted employee retention, individual performance, and long-term corporate financial performance. Crook and colleagues (2011) reported a meta-analysis of 66 studies and found that aggregate human capital (knowledge, skills, and abilities) within organizations strongly predicted firm performance; human capital relates strongly to performance, especially when that human capital is not readily acquirable in the labor market. Finally, Aguinis and Kraiger (2009) reviewed multiple studies conducted in Europe that showed the impact of sound training policies and practices on measures of organizational effectiveness. Indeed, the integration of training, development, and appraisal is so well accepted, that texts on job and work analysis (Brannick, Levine, & Morgeson, 2007), industrial/organizational psychology (Cascio & Aguinis, 2011), and performance improvement (Mager & Pipe, 1997) all emphasize the importance of first identifying the skills and knowledge needed to perform jobs effectively, and then assigning the skill to one or more HR systems that include training, development, and performance appraisal. In other words, each system is seen as an alternative path to the same goal: a competent workforce.

Looked at another way, organizations can best accomplish their goals, continually innovate, and differentiate themselves from competition by optimizing talent within the organization. Katz and Kahn (1978) model organizational effectiveness as input–throughput–output systems, with talent – partly in the form of member knowledge and skills – as a major input. How do organizations optimize talent? In the simplest sense, they find it, manage it, or grow it. That is, the effective organization institutes systems for attracting, selecting, and assigning new employees; setting performance standards and maintaining efficient and effective work procedures; and training and developing its members. We do not argue here that training and development are more important than selection and management systems, but simply that they are necessary components of effective organizations.

Why the Psychology of Training, Development, and Performance Improvement?

Browsing the business section of the airport book store can reveal a number of practice-oriented books on training, development, and performance appraisal and feedback. Similarly, while not all business management students are required to take a course in human resource development, those that do are exposed to multiple systems for how to train and develop human capital. Why then a handbook on the psychology of training, development, and appraisal? The direct answer is that the consumers of all these systems are human beings who can be best be characterized as unpredictable in terms of how they respond to any intervention geared towards personal or professional improvement.

Industrial and organizational psychology (I/O) is the study of human behavior, emotion, and cognition at work. In short I/O brings science to investigating how individuals, organizations, and states can support, train, develop, and provide feedback to their human resources to optimize performance and well-being.

Consider two examples. First, in the area of workplace training: multiple meta-analyses reveal that in general training works – individuals who received training show more knowledge and better skills than they did before training, or in comparison to those who did not receive training (see Salas et al., 2012, for a summary of such meta-analyses). However, anyone who has delivered training or taught in a classroom can attest that there is a wide range of responses to even effective instruction. Some learners are attentive and appear to get it, others seem puzzled, and yet others are more interested in engaging with other distractions, from technology to doodling on the page. Similarly, in nearly all aforementioned meta-analyses, there are broad confidence intervals around the mean effect sizes for interventions – meaning that the effectiveness of training varies considerably across studies, settings, populations, and so forth. In one meta-analysis, Kraiger and Jerden (2007) examined the effectiveness of providing learner control in computer-based training. Learner control refers to the extent to which the learner can influence his or her learning experiences by determining features of the learning environment such as the topics or sequencing of learning activities. Learner control is generally perceived as not only advantageous to learning, but also desirable to learners. While Kraiger and Jerden found some support for the learner control leading to more learning for certain outcomes, in general, the mean effect sizes for most outcomes were near .00 with large confidence intervals, suggesting that as often as learner control helped learning, it hindered it. Perhaps more striking, similar results were found for reactions to (or liking) of the provision of control. Across studies, trainees were almost as likely not to like learner control as to endorse it. These findings led Kraiger and Jerden to propose a construct of “preference for control,” which moderates both the extent to which trainees respond (affectively) to learner control and benefit by it. Put more simply, people are different and those differences matter in the training environment.

Second, in the area of performance management, it is well documented that feedback is essential to performance improvement. For example, Cascio and Aguinis (2011) contend: “One of the central purposes of performance management systems is to serve as a personal development tool. However, the mere presence of performance feedback does not guarantee a positive effect on future performance” (p. 104). Again, anyone who has had to provide feedback to a subordinate or graduate advisee knows that there is considerable variability in how individuals respond to feedback (e.g., information vs. motivational vs. threatening). Indeed, Alvero, Bucklin, and Austin (2001) reviewed 68 feedback studies and concluded that “feedback does not uniformly improve performance” (p. 3). More specifically, Kluger and DeNisi (1996) conducted a meta-analysis of 131 studies and showed that while performance feedback had an overall small positive effect on subsequent performance, in 38 percent of the interventions, it had a negative effect on performance. In a meta-analysis of the effects on multisource feedback on performance, while most effect sizes were positive, overall effects were small (Smither, London, & Reilly, 2005).

To be certain, much of the variability in the effectiveness of performance feedback depends on characteristics of the feedback itself (cf., DeNisi & Kluger, 2000). But, it is also the case that receiving, processing, and responding to feedback represents a series of psychological behaviors (Ilgen, Fisher, & Taylor, 1979). As such, different individuals are likely to respond to identical feedback in different ways. Consistent with this, London and Smither (2002) proposed the construct of feedback orientation, a characteristic of individuals that includes affect towards and perceived value of feedback, propensity to seek feedback, the propensity to process feedback mindfully, sensitivity to others’ perspectives, and a sense of accountability to act on feedback. Once again, the point here is that people differ, and those differences matter in how feedback is received, processed, and acted upon.

Similar examples can be found for other training methods, as well as...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Wiley Blackwell Handbooks in Organizational Psychology
• Title page
• Copyright page
• About the Editors
• About the Contributors
• Foreword
• Series Preface
• Railway Children
• 1 The Psychology of Training, Development, and Performance Improvement
• Section I: Training
• Section II: E-Learning
• Section III: Personal and Professional Development in Organizations
• Section IV: Performance Management
• Index
• End User License Agreement