Christopher Orpen
Biographic Data
| ID | 90423 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christopher Orpen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christopher |
| FAMILY NAME | Orpen |
| SIGNATURE | ORPEN C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of the Witwatersrand |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 36 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 24 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 36 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1971 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Teaching students to manage cross culturally
It is argued that the teaching of cross‐cultural management is both possible and, in principle, no different from teaching any other aspect of management. However, given the difficulties involved, it cannot be effectively taught through lectures and formal examinations, but instead requires the simultaneous employment of a variety of student‐involving techniques, some of which are described in the article; such as injecting cultural material into…
The Effects of Organizational Centrality on Employee Career Success and Satisfaction
The relationships between the outcomes of career success and career satisfaction and organizational centrality, how close employees are to where power, information and decision making are concentrated in their organization, was examined among 79 employees from a small manufacturing company. Each employee completed a measure of Organizational Centrality and indicated how much their salary had grown and how many promotions they had received since j…
Correlates of a Careerist Orientation to Work
To examine the correlates of a careerist orientation to work, 104 managers completed the Careerist Orientation Scale as well as measures of the work attitudes of job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment. They also indicated how much their salary had increased since joining the work force and how many promotions they had received over this time as indicators of career success. As predicted, careerism correlated significantl…
Correlates of a Careerist Orientation to Work
The Effects of Ingratiation and Self-Promotion Tactics on Employee Career Success
To examine the relations between political influence behavior and career success, 137 managers completed measures of ingratiation and self-promotion, the two most widely used types of such behaviors. Each manager also indicated how much their salary had grown and how many promotions they had received since joining their current employer at least five years earlier. Significantly positive correlations were obtained between ingratiation and the ind…
The Multifactorial Achievement Scale as a Predictor of Salary Growth and Motivation Among Middle-Managers
Sixty-nine middle managers employed by an Australian manufacturing company completed the 49-item Multifactorial Achievement Scale (MAS) designed to assess six discrete aspects of need for achievement, and indicated the size of their salary increases since joining the firm. Superior ratings of their work motivation were also obtained. A principal components factor analysis yielded a single factor that accounted for 61.4 percent of the variance, ra…
Self-Efficacy Beliefs and Job Performance among Black Managers in South Africa
The relations of self-efficacy beliefs and three indicators of managerial performance were examined among 49 black supervisors working for white superiors in a medium-sized manufacturing company in South Africa. Significantly positive correlations were obtained between self-efficacy beliefs and self-ratings of performance, salary growth since joining the firm, and average ratings of performance from three superiors, confirming results found in we…
The Effects of Self-Esteem and Personal Control on the Relationship Between Job Insecurity and Psychological Well-Being
129 employees of an Australian manufacturer completed measures of job insecurity, self-esteem, personal control and psychological well-being. Using hierarchical regression analysis, it was shown that the personal attributes of self-esteem and personal control moderated the impact of job insecurity on psychological well being, as predicted, with low self-esteem and external control employees being significantly more adversely affected by insecurit…
Organizational Level as a Moderator of the Relationship between Perceived Political Climate and Employees' Work Attitudes
119 employees of a financial services firm performing a variety of jobs completed measures of perceived political climate, organizational commitment, and job satisfaction. Their status or level in the firm was rated by the firm's personnel manager. Hierarchical regression analysis showed that employees' level or status moderated the relationships between political climate and both commitment and satisfaction, with high status employees being less…
Job Dependence as a Moderator of Effects of Job Threat on Employees' Job Insecurity and Performance
The effects of job dependence on the relationships between objective job threat and, respectively, employees' job insecurity and performance were examined among 135 employees of a small Australian manufacturer. Objective job threat was given by the combined ratings of three managers of the likelihood of each of the jobs disappearing over the next few years. Moderated multiple regression analysis showed that job dependence interacted with job thre…
Correlates of Perceived Confidence in Performance Appraisals
The relationships among a number of appraisal, firm, and personal attributes and general confidence appraisals were examined in a sample of 103 Australian middle-managers. Significant correlations were found between confidence and existence of appraisal schemes and between confidence and frequency of appraisals. The correlations between self-esteem of subjects and confidence and between internal control and confidence were both significant. The c…
Correlates of Perceived Confidence in Performance Appraisals
Measuring Support for Organizational Innovation
A 30-item version of the Perceived Support for Innovation scale was completed by 30 employees from an engineering firm judged to be ‘innovative’ by local businesspersons and 30 from a similar firm judged to be ‘noninnovative’ by these persons. Employees from the innovative firm obtained significantly higher mean scores than those from the noninnovative firm on each of the five subscales. Factor analysis of the responses of the two groups of emplo…
Effects of Superiors' Feedback, Credibility, and Expertise on Subordinates' Reactions
The effects of valence of feedback, credibility of superior, and expertise of superior on subordinates' reactions to superior and effort intentions were examined in a 2 × 2 × 2 experimental study in which 120 management students participated. A significant main effect was found for feedback but not for credibility or expertise. It is argued that subordinates' reactions to feedback from superiors may sometimes be relatively unaffected by the perce…
Predictors of Fear of Academic Success among University Students
55 Australian university students completed the Fear of Academic Success Consequences Scale as well as separate measures of nine hypothesized predictors of fear of academic success, namely, age, sex, school and university academic performance, estimates of future academic success, independence from the views and opinions of others, academic motivation, and rated importance of doing well academically. All scale-predictor correlations were nonsigni…
Correlates of Pay Satisfaction
47 managers completed the Pay Satisfaction Questionnaire and separate measures of job involvement, work satisfaction, and internal motivation. They also provided self-ratings of performance, absenteeism, and turnover. Only two of the 24 correlations between these outcomes and satisfaction with pay level, raises, benefits, and structure were significant, those between pay level and motivation and pay level and involvement. The fact that most pay s…
Effects of Race of Rater and Ratee on Peer-Ratings of Managerial Potential
The effect of race of rater and ratee on peer-ratings of managerial potential was examined for 11 whites and 29 blacks attending a Management Training Course held in Zimbabwe. 29 blacks and 11 whites rated the blacks significantly lower than the whites on management potential. The blacks also gave themselves significantly lower self-ratings than the whites. Since the blacks and whites obtained virtually the same mean scores on two separate measur…
Note on Prediction of Managerial Effectiveness from the California Psychological Inventory
It is generally agreed that managerial success or failure depends to a large extent on personality factors that are determined early in one's life ( 1). However, recent reviews have concluded that few attempts to isolate such factors have been successful ( 3 ) . The present study is an attempt to establish the validity of one such attempt that may prove to be the exception, the 206-item managerial key of the California Psychological Inventory, de…
Effect of Job Involvement on the Work-Leisure Relationship
To investigate whether job involvement is positively related to the degree to which their jobs influence the nonworking lives of employees, 51 clerks and 38 policemen were given a measure of involvement and three measures of occupational determinateness, each of which reflects the impact of an individual's work on a particular aspect of his life outside the work setting. In both groups the greater the involvement of employees with their jobs, the…
The Effect of Social Support on Reactions to Role Ambiguity and Conflict
The moderating effects of perceived peer and leader support on the relations between role ambiguity and role conflict and job satisfaction and job performance respectively were examined in a sample of 90 black and 93 white clerks in South Africa. Subgroup analysis indicated that peer and leader support moderated the job stress-performance and job stress-satisfaction relationships among the black clerks, but not among the white clerks. It is argue…
Causal attributions for the success and failure of black and white managers
One hundred and thirty‐six white managers in South Africa evaluated the varying performances of a series of thirty subordinates. Of the subordinates, two (one black, one white) had identically good performance descriptions, and two (one black, one white) had identically poor performance descriptions. Although the supervisors rated their overall performances as equally good or poor, they ascribed the success of the whites mainly to internal factor…
The effect of examiner ethnicity on the job satisfaction responses of blacks in community surveys
To test the hypothesis that the race of the examiner and the anonymity of the subject's responses would influence job satisfaction scores, a black or white examiner gave two scales of job satisfaction to black employees in South Africa under anonymous or personalized conditions. An analysis of variance conducted on the four groups formed in this way showed that the race of the examiner significantly affected job satisfaction scores, but that the …
Demand for Participation
Employee attitudes toward participation in decision-making were examined in a questionnaire study of 87 black and 72 white clerks in South Africa. Unlike previous studies, their attitudes toward direct and indirect forms of influence as well as participation in local, medium, and distant decisions were separately assessed. There were no differences in the amounts of participation desired by the black and white clerks, but the black clerks felt th…
The Effects of Job Enrichment on Employee Satisfaction, Motivation, Involvement, and Performance
The effect of job enrichment on employee responses was investigated in a field experiment conducted in a federal agency among clerical employees, who were randomly assigned to either an enriched or unenriched condition. In the enriched condition, a systematic attempt was made to increase the extent to which the jobs of the employees possessed each of the dimensions of skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback. In the…
The Work Values of Western and Tribal Black Employees
The difference between the work values of Western-oriented and tribal-oriented black employees, as well as the relationship between work values and job satisfaction, was examined in a sample of black supervisors in South Africa, who completed a locally derived measure of modernization, the Brayfield-Rothe index of job satisfaction and the Survey of Work Values (Protestant Ethic). On the basis of their modernization scores and the length of time t…
The Effects of Job Enrichment on Employee Satisfaction, Motivation, Involvement, and Performance
The effect of job enrichment on employee responses was investigated in a field experiment conducted in a federal agency among clerical employees, who were randomly assigned to either an enriched or unenriched condition. In the enriched condition, a systematic attempt was made to increase the extent to which the jobs of the employees possessed each of the dimensions of skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback. In the…
The Effect of Social Support on Reactions to Role Ambiguity and Conflict
The moderating effects of perceived peer and leader support on the relations between role ambiguity and role conflict and job satisfaction and job performance respectively were examined in a sample of 90 black and 93 white clerks in South Africa. Subgroup analysis indicated that peer and leader support moderated the job stress-performance and job stress-satisfaction relationships among the black clerks, but not among the white clerks. It is argue…
The Work Values of Western and Tribal Black Employees
The difference between the work values of Western-oriented and tribal-oriented black employees, as well as the relationship between work values and job satisfaction, was examined in a sample of black supervisors in South Africa, who completed a locally derived measure of modernization, the Brayfield-Rothe index of job satisfaction and the Survey of Work Values (Protestant Ethic). On the basis of their modernization scores and the length of time t…
Causal attributions for the success and failure of black and white managers
One hundred and thirty‐six white managers in South Africa evaluated the varying performances of a series of thirty subordinates. Of the subordinates, two (one black, one white) had identically good performance descriptions, and two (one black, one white) had identically poor performance descriptions. Although the supervisors rated their overall performances as equally good or poor, they ascribed the success of the whites mainly to internal factor…
Job Enlargement, Individual Differences, and Worker Responses
To test the Hulin-Blood hypothesis that job enlargement is only positively associated with job satisfaction among workers who are "involved" in their jobs, three groups of black workers in South Africa performing jobs of different sizes or degrees of enlargement were given a measure of individual urbanization and a Xhosa version of the Brayfield-Rothe index of job satisfaction. On the basis of their scores on the measure of urbanization and the l…
Relative Susceptibility of Catch-Phrase and Propositional Scales to Social Desirability
To investigate the relative susceptibility of catch-phrase versus propositional (traditional) scales the Crowne-Marlowe (C-M) scale of social desirability, as well as the Wilson-Patterson (W-P) catch-phrase conservatism scale and a specially constructed propositional conservatism scale covering the same content area, were given to 90 South African high-school pupils under anonymous conditions and instructions to fake a ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’…
Racial Prejudice and Authoritarianism
The relationship between authoritarianism and racial prejudice in white South Africa was investigated by means of a forced-choice version of the F-scale, a social distance scale and a specially constructed anti-African scale. The insignificant correlations between the F-scale and the latter two prejudice scales are taken as indicating that, in a ‘prejudiced’ society, prejudiced attitudes serve a utilitarian rather than an ego-defensive function f…
The Wheel and the Table
S ummary . A number of semantic scales were presented to subjects in either a wheel format or a more traditional tabular format. The wheel is shown to be ( a ) more reliable; ( b ) less susceptible to patterning of responses, while ( c ) the influence of ordering of scales on responses is reduced. It is contended, therefore, that it is better, in certain circumstances, to use the wheel format rather than the conventional format in collecting sema…
The reference group basis of racial altitudes
To test the argument that prejudice is a reflection of inner needs (‘expressive’ theory) 90 African and 81 White Rhodesian teacher-trainees matched for age and education were given the F-scale measure of personality a measure of social distance toward outgroups and an anti-African measure (in the case ofthe whites) or an anti-European measure (in the case of the Africans), Since the African; were significantly less distant toward outgroup than th…
Alienation from work
To investigate the Mertonian model which maintains that alienation is the result of exposure to conflicting social norms, 72 White and 62 Coloured clerks doing the same kind of work were given (a) a self-rating scale of perceived-discrimination, (b) an Alienation scale which measured anomie, powerlessness, and normlessness, (c) the Brayfeld-Rothe index of job satisfaction and (d) a rating scale of job satisfaction. The Coloured clerks were signif…
The Quick Test With Coloureds in South Africa
The Quick Test (QT) was given to 151 males and 125 females from the Coloured minority group in South Africa. The significantly positive correlations between QT and, respectively, the Ravens Progressive Matrices, the South African Vocabulary Scale, occuparional rank, and level of schooling were taken as indicating that the QT is a fairly valid indicator of intelligence for this group. The Quick Test developed by Ammons and Ammons ( 1962 ) is an in…
A Cognitive Consistency Approach to Job Satisfaction
Korman's (1970) argument that self-esteem moderates the relationships between job satisfaction and perceived need-fulfilment and between job satisfaction and the extent to which one's job meets with group approval was tested with 120 Coloured South African factory workers who were given the Porter need-fulfilment questionnaire, 2 measures of job satisfaction, and 3 measures of self-esteem, and for whom a measure of the extent to which their jobs …
Self-esteem, need-fulfilment and job satisfaction among coloured factory workers
The hypothesis that self-esteem moderates the relationship between job satisfaction and perceived need fulfilment and between job satisfaction and the extent to which on's job meets with group approval was tested with 120 Coloured factory workers who were given the Porter need fulfilment questionnaire, two measures of job satisfaction and three measures of self-esteem and for whom a measure of the extent to which their jobs were found desirable b…
Personality and Academic Attainment
S ummary . This study examines the ‘age effect’ hypothesis from British and American studies, that academic success at primary school is linked to stable extraversion while success at university is associated with introversion, with black and white school children (age 14) and black and white university students (age 20), brought up in non‐Western and Western cultures, respectively. The extraversion and neuroticism scores of the subjects on the J…
Job Enlargement, Individual Differences, and Worker Responses
To test the Hulin-Blood hypothesis that job enlargement is only positively associated with job satisfaction among workers who are "involved" in their jobs, three groups of black workers in South Africa performing jobs of different sizes or degrees of enlargement were given a measure of individual urbanization and a Xhosa version of the Brayfield-Rothe index of job satisfaction. On the basis of their scores on the measure of urbanization and the l…
Contemporary South Africa
The Work Values of Western and Tribal Black Employees
The difference between the work values of Western-oriented and tribal-oriented black employees, as well as the relationship between work values and job satisfaction, was examined in a sample of black supervisors in South Africa, who completed a locally derived measure of modernization, the Brayfield-Rothe index of job satisfaction and the Survey of Work Values (Protestant Ethic). On the basis of their modernization scores and the length of time t…
The Effects of Job Enrichment on Employee Satisfaction, Motivation, Involvement, and Performance
The effect of job enrichment on employee responses was investigated in a field experiment conducted in a federal agency among clerical employees, who were randomly assigned to either an enriched or unenriched condition. In the enriched condition, a systematic attempt was made to increase the extent to which the jobs of the employees possessed each of the dimensions of skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback. In the…
Demand for Participation
Employee attitudes toward participation in decision-making were examined in a questionnaire study of 87 black and 72 white clerks in South Africa. Unlike previous studies, their attitudes toward direct and indirect forms of influence as well as participation in local, medium, and distant decisions were separately assessed. There were no differences in the amounts of participation desired by the black and white clerks, but the black clerks felt th…
Causal attributions for the success and failure of black and white managers
One hundred and thirty‐six white managers in South Africa evaluated the varying performances of a series of thirty subordinates. Of the subordinates, two (one black, one white) had identically good performance descriptions, and two (one black, one white) had identically poor performance descriptions. Although the supervisors rated their overall performances as equally good or poor, they ascribed the success of the whites mainly to internal factor…
The effect of examiner ethnicity on the job satisfaction responses of blacks in community surveys
To test the hypothesis that the race of the examiner and the anonymity of the subject's responses would influence job satisfaction scores, a black or white examiner gave two scales of job satisfaction to black employees in South Africa under anonymous or personalized conditions. An analysis of variance conducted on the four groups formed in this way showed that the race of the examiner significantly affected job satisfaction scores, but that the …
Effect of Job Involvement on the Work-Leisure Relationship
To investigate whether job involvement is positively related to the degree to which their jobs influence the nonworking lives of employees, 51 clerks and 38 policemen were given a measure of involvement and three measures of occupational determinateness, each of which reflects the impact of an individual's work on a particular aspect of his life outside the work setting. In both groups the greater the involvement of employees with their jobs, the…
The Effect of Social Support on Reactions to Role Ambiguity and Conflict
The moderating effects of perceived peer and leader support on the relations between role ambiguity and role conflict and job satisfaction and job performance respectively were examined in a sample of 90 black and 93 white clerks in South Africa. Subgroup analysis indicated that peer and leader support moderated the job stress-performance and job stress-satisfaction relationships among the black clerks, but not among the white clerks. It is argue…
Effects of Race of Rater and Ratee on Peer-Ratings of Managerial Potential
The effect of race of rater and ratee on peer-ratings of managerial potential was examined for 11 whites and 29 blacks attending a Management Training Course held in Zimbabwe. 29 blacks and 11 whites rated the blacks significantly lower than the whites on management potential. The blacks also gave themselves significantly lower self-ratings than the whites. Since the blacks and whites obtained virtually the same mean scores on two separate measur…
Note on Prediction of Managerial Effectiveness from the California Psychological Inventory
It is generally agreed that managerial success or failure depends to a large extent on personality factors that are determined early in one's life ( 1). However, recent reviews have concluded that few attempts to isolate such factors have been successful ( 3 ) . The present study is an attempt to establish the validity of one such attempt that may prove to be the exception, the 206-item managerial key of the California Psychological Inventory, de…
Correlates of Pay Satisfaction
47 managers completed the Pay Satisfaction Questionnaire and separate measures of job involvement, work satisfaction, and internal motivation. They also provided self-ratings of performance, absenteeism, and turnover. Only two of the 24 correlations between these outcomes and satisfaction with pay level, raises, benefits, and structure were significant, those between pay level and motivation and pay level and involvement. The fact that most pay s…
Effects of Superiors' Feedback, Credibility, and Expertise on Subordinates' Reactions
The effects of valence of feedback, credibility of superior, and expertise of superior on subordinates' reactions to superior and effort intentions were examined in a 2 × 2 × 2 experimental study in which 120 management students participated. A significant main effect was found for feedback but not for credibility or expertise. It is argued that subordinates' reactions to feedback from superiors may sometimes be relatively unaffected by the perce…
Predictors of Fear of Academic Success among University Students
55 Australian university students completed the Fear of Academic Success Consequences Scale as well as separate measures of nine hypothesized predictors of fear of academic success, namely, age, sex, school and university academic performance, estimates of future academic success, independence from the views and opinions of others, academic motivation, and rated importance of doing well academically. All scale-predictor correlations were nonsigni…
Measuring Support for Organizational Innovation
A 30-item version of the Perceived Support for Innovation scale was completed by 30 employees from an engineering firm judged to be ‘innovative’ by local businesspersons and 30 from a similar firm judged to be ‘noninnovative’ by these persons. Employees from the innovative firm obtained significantly higher mean scores than those from the noninnovative firm on each of the five subscales. Factor analysis of the responses of the two groups of emplo…
Correlates of Perceived Confidence in Performance Appraisals
The relationships among a number of appraisal, firm, and personal attributes and general confidence appraisals were examined in a sample of 103 Australian middle-managers. Significant correlations were found between confidence and existence of appraisal schemes and between confidence and frequency of appraisals. The correlations between self-esteem of subjects and confidence and between internal control and confidence were both significant. The c…
Psychology (35 works) · Social Psychology (33 works) · Social Psychology (28 works) · Job satisfaction (15 works) · Job Satisfaction and Organizational Behavior (13 works) · Political science (10 works) · Work (physics (10 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Scale (ratio (7 works) · Economics (6 works)