White Papers
The Industrial-Organizational psychologists and psychometricians at Hogan provide significant, well-documented expertise in the following areas:
- Personality characteristics of good and bad bosses
- Traits of leaders who fail
- Definition of leadership
- Reducing turnover and retaining employees
- Developing good managers
- Determining if a personality assessment is valid
- Controversy of faking assessments
- Performance measurement
- Adverse impact and legality of the assessment process
Following is a sampling of some of our latest white paper documents on the assessment process.
What's in a Low HDS Score? Executive derailment is usually discussed in terms of high scores on certain Hogan Development Survey scales. But, what about people who exhibit extremely low scores? In “What’s in a Low HDS Score,” Drs. Rodney Warrenfeltz and Marty Seldman examine a peculiar case of executive derailment and its implications for how we coach around the HDS scales.
The Culture Clash At first glance, Robert Nardelli seemed like the perfect candidate to renovate Home Depot’s market presence. Known for his militaristic style and relentless work ethic, the former General Electric Executive was hailed in the business press as the ideal commander to bolster the home improvement chain’s slipping market share and lead the company back to its former glory. As Nardelli’s tenure wore on, however, things fell apart and, prompted by stalled stock prices and increasing investor outrage over Nardelli’s compensation, Home Depot’s board of directors ousted the embattled CEO in 2007. “The Culture Clash," the last in a three-part series, examines the effect of personality on leadership style, unconsious biases, and the work culture that leaders create.
The Value of Values Faced with a slower-than-expected recovery, researchers are working to identify the cause for the economy’s anemic rate of expansion. Recent findings from the Economic Policy Institute suggest one such cause may be a white collar job shortage. Underemployment among workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher grew from 3.9% in December 2007 to 8.4% in March 2011, an increase larger than any other segment of the economy. In fact, for every one available job, there are four well-qualified unemployed or underemployed candidates. The second of a three-part whitepaper series, "The Value of Values" focuses on the use of values assessment as part of the hiring process to craft a more engaged, more productive workforce.
The Power of Unconscious Biases The 2001 collapse of the Enron Corporation eliminated more than $60 billion in market value and roughly 5,600 jobs. It was, at the time, the largest and most complex bankruptcy filing in American history, and the scandal that unfolded in its aftermath made the Enron name synonymous with white collar crime. Now, 10 years later, the story of Enron’s demise is a poignant example of the power of unconscious biases in the workplace. The first in a three-part whitepaper series, “The Power of Unconscious Biases,” explores the influence of unconscious biases, which occur when we project our values onto others, on team dynamics, workplace culture, and corporate performance.
The Ambiguities of Effectiveness Although important, a career in entrepreneurism is not for everyone; more than 60% of small businesses fail within two years of opening. To understand what separates successful entrepreneurs from the rest of us, Hogan invited 55 entrepreneurs, chosen on the basis of their success at growing a profitable business, to complete our assessment battery. We then compared this sample of entrepreneurs with a sample of 8,490 U.S. managers from a representative sample of organizations and business sectors. “The Ambiguities of Effectiveness,” by Dr. Robert Hogan, outlines the results of this study and their implications.
Are You Employable? The widespread and persistent nature of under- and unemployment among the new workforce suggests that, though well-educated and technically skilled, this demographic lacks some skill set necessary to obtain employment. The question, then, is: what do employers want? "Are You Employable?” draws on three decades of scientific study to answer that question and examine existing and needed solutions to ensure the viability of the future workforce.
Off the Rails: Avoiding the High Cost of Failed Leadership Two thirds of people currently in leadership positions will fail, often as the result of their inability to build and maintain a team. Fortunately, companies are not helpless in the fight against bad bosses. Although it can't be avoided completely, personality assessment and coaching as part of executive selection and training programs can mitigate executive derailment.
Educating the Modern Manager Continuous changes in both the economy and technology, as well as changes in the speed of change, suggest that managers who lead modern organizations need to be engaged in a constant learning process. Although much executive education focuses on technical and financial issues, the big mistakes in careers and organizations result from a lack of knowledge of a different kind - from gaps in self-awareness. "Educating the Modern Manager," Hogan's definitive position on managerial education, works to define key terms, examines learning outcomes, and suggests that executive education is most effective when it is passed on a scientific assessment of the individual's strengths, weaknesses, and drivers.
Understanding Lawyers: Why We Do The Things We Do Hogan and Hildebrant Baker Robbins collaborated to examing the characteristics of nearly 2,000 lawyers. For this research, we follow the Hogan method and use three assessments (HPI, HDS, MVPI) that evaluate three discrete, but related, aspects of personality: style, values, and derailers. Each has its own tradition of research within personality psychology, but taken together, they are powerful predictors of behavior.
HPI + HDS: Combining Assessments To Predict Job Performance This report provides evidence that will yield companies an enhanced return on investment for the cost of selection procedures by using the HDS in combination with the HPI to screen applicants for a variety of jobs.
Management Derailment: Personality Assessment and Mitigation The vast body of research on the closely related topics of management and leadership accumulated over the past 100 years leads to two very different conclusions. On the one hand, many people believe that the effort has largely been wasted.
What We Know About Leadership This paper reviews the empirical literature on personality, leadership, and organizational effectiveness in order to make three major points. First, leadership is a real and vastly consequential phenomenon, perhaps the single most important issue in the human sciences. Second, leadership is about the performance of teams, groups, and organizations; good leadership promotes effective team and group performance, which in turn enhances the well being of the incumbents; bad leadership degrades the quality of life for everyone associated with it. Third, personality predicts leadership—who we are is how we lead—and this information can be used to select future leaders or improve the performance of current incumbents.
The Dark Side of Discretion Discussions of leadership typically glorify senior managers, a practice that seems increasingly suspect (Kellerman, 2005). We propose that, although discretion is necessary for leaders to make positive contributions to their organizations, it also provides the potential for leaders to disrupt and destroy them. This dilemma has possible implications for the fate of organizations and even societies. Thus, given the tendency for academics to romanticize senior leaders, we focus on the dark side of discretion and how it links leader personality to organizational failure.
Adverse Impact and the HPI In this paper, we define adverse impact (AI) and provide empirical evidence for no AI in personnel selection situations using the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI).
Meta-Analytic Correlation Between the Big Five Personality Constructs of Emotional Stability and Conscientiousness Of specific interest here are the various meta-analytic estimates of population correlations between two specific Big Five personality test scales, Emotional Stability and Conscientiousness. These are the two most important broad personality factors associated meta-analytically with job performance.
Encyclopedia of Psychological Assessment Common sense suggests that leadership is the most important topic in the social, behavioral, and organizational sciences. A trip through the business section of any bookstore will also reveal that it is the most popular—based on the number of books written on the topic (well over 7000).
Using Theory to Evaluate Personality and Job Performance Relations: A Socioanalytic Perspective This study uses socioanalytic theory to understand individual differences in peoples' performance at work. Specifically, if predictors and criteria are aligned using theory, then the meta-analytic validity of personality measures exceeds that of atheoretical approaches.
