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Robert S. McNamara (1916-2009) was the most powerful American Secretary of Defense in history and in many ways the architect of the modern war on terror. He was an immensely talented and successful man, whose career went up like a rocket from the beginning. Born in San Francisco, he was an Eagle Scout and President… Read more »

To err is truly human and mistakes are truly inevitable. Paul Nutt, an Ohio State University business school researcher, provides data showing that half of all decisions made in business organizations fail. In his book, Why Decisions Fail, he shows that decisions mostly fail because the deciders ignore feedback. The lesson is clear, decision making… Read more »

Kaizen refers to continuous, steady improvement. It means never being satisfied. It means continuous improvement in processes as well as products. If a company pursues kaizen, it will be able to produce higher quality products for less money. How does assessment fit with all of this? Hiring better people is part of continuous improvement. Assessment… Read more »

We now know that personality predicts leadership style, and that leadership style predicts ratings of leader effectiveness. There are also some data showing that leadership style predicts business unit performance. So there is a kind of causal arrow going from personality through leadership style to the performance of the business unit of which a manager… Read more »

(Note: This is an abstract of a chapter by Robert Hogan and Michael Benson in The Perils of Accentuating the Positive (Hogan Press), edited by Robert B. Kaiser) George Gallup and Donald Clifton pioneered Positive Psychology under the banner of “science and the study of strengths”. Their survey research methodology is exemplary, and reveals important… Read more »

Personality psychology began with German and Swiss psychiatry; Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung exerted an immense historical influence on all theorizing about human nature. In particular, they argued that everyone has problems and that their problems are caused by being out of touch with their emotions, by lacking appropriate self-knowledge. The solution to their problems… Read more »

  HoganPress is pleased to announce the second-edition release of Personality: Theories and Applications, by Robert Hogan and Robert Smither. From the back cover:

I have known many smart guys in my life, but John Holland, who died last month, was the man who most influenced my career. John was part of a small group of famous psychologists (John Flannagan, J. P. Guilford, Robert Thorndike, Harrison Gough, Hans Eysenck, Alphonse Chapanis, and B.F. Skinner) whose interest in applied psychology… Read more »

  The following is a column by Dr. Robert Hogan, that recently appeared in the “2009 Forecast” edition of Human Resources Executive. Dr. Hogan was asked to comment on what he sees as the most significant change affecting the HR community in the future. By now, everyone is aware of the coming demographic tsunami which… Read more »

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), the Irish-born playwright and novelist, was the only writer to win both the Nobel Prize for Literature and a movie Oscar. Shaw was an ardent socialist who, nonetheless, founded the London School of Economics (LSE)—a hotbed of British capitalist thinking. But most importantly, as an Irishman, Shaw was a gifted and… Read more »