DOES THE MANAGER’S LEVEL OF HOPE MATTER?

Suzanne J. Peterson

Richard T. Farmer

Fred Luthans

Submitted as an original paper to the Organizational Behavior and Theory Tack

ABSTRACT

There are two very closely related fields of research, Industrial/ Organizational Psychology and Organization Sciences. While each covers much the same research, the former is largely housed in Departments of Psychology and the latter in Business Schools. However each applies psychological and social science principles to researching the business environment. As applied sciences, they seek to use the knowledge gained to improve efficiencies and effectiveness. This article results from an early study on hope.

As this is to be a scientific inquiry it is important to clearly define what is to be studied. It is also important to begin with a testable hypothesis. Once the item to be investigated has been defined and the testable hypothesis is articulated, it is then necessary to devise an experiment that will yield telling results. After conducting the experiment and gathering the data, the data must be analyzed to determine if they confirm or disconfirm the hypothesis. This analysis must include ruling out alternative explanations of these data. If the probability of that data is greater assuming that the hypothesis is correct than the probability of the data assuming that the hypothesis is not courses, then the data is said to confirm the hypothesis.

E is evidence for hypothesis H if E is true and the probability of E is greater given H then given ~H

Hypothesis: Managers and assistant manager with High Hope States cause greater efficiencies in the workplace where "greater efficiencies" are defined in terms of greater productivity, retention of employees, and reported work satisfaction as compared with managers and assistant managers in Low Hope States.

This to watch for:

• All other variables accounted for
• Casual connection established (not merely statistical correlation)
• Representative Sample (of managers, of business environments)

Hope is discussed as an important construct that may tap a type of positive thinking and action in mangers that is significantly related to important workplace outcomes.

 

Data Summary:

• The relations of state hope to various performance outcomes were examined in 59 managers.
• High- as compared to low-hope managers had more profitable work-units and had better retention in their work-units.
• Relationship between hope and work-unit profitability remained when the shared variance due to previous work-unit profitability was removed.
• High- as compared to low-hope managers had more satisfied subordinates in their units.

Context of Research:

We live in a turbulent environment. Many things can be seen to erode hope:

• Economy
• mergers and acquisitions
• 24/7 competitive pressures
• escalating technology

We see a prevalence of "hope" in conversational interaction

This may refer merely to the "everyday use:" the belief that things will "turn out okay or for the best."

We need a more technical understanding and accompanying measure:

Positive psychology movement

These researchers are drawing upon the work of Fred Luthans: Pioneering work in the "Positive Psychology" movement

Luthans recent proposals:

• Positive Organizational Behavior: POB
• Positive Approach to Leadership" PAL

In his work in Organizational Behavioral Psychology theories, "Hope" is a core construct

Precise meaning:

· based on a rich theoretical foundation

· valid measures.

· this theoretically-based hope construct has direct relevance to the workplace.

Considerable evidence that hope strongly relates to academic and athletic success, mental and physical health, and coping with difficult situations…

"… to date, there is no direct evidence that a manager’s hope relates to performance outcomes in the workplace."

Purpose of this article:

1. Define exactly what is meant by hope (positive construct)
2. How it differs from closely related constructs
3. Review the "hope" measures
4. Discuss the implications and future of the role of manager hope in the workplace.

The Meaning and Measures of Hope

Clinical psychologist C. Rich Snyder and his colleagues

Hope is made up of two necessary dimensions.

1. People act on goals they set by using their agency (motivation and drive).
2. Alternate pathways are formed to get to these goals or other goals.

POB and PAL:

1. Willpower
2. Waypower

These are:

• Iterative
• Additive
• Positively related

But are still distinct constructs from one another.

Example of the needed relationship:

Consider, for example, a sales manager who can think of many different ways to get new customer accounts (i.e., high pathways thinking), but who is not motivated to take any of these paths (low agency thinking). Conversely, another sales manager is highly motivated to call on customers (i.e., high agency thinking), but cannot think of methods to actually close the deal (i.e., low pathways thinking). Importantly, a successful high-hope manager has both the willpower and the waypower.

Snyder’s hope theory: Similar to but distinct from other related positive constructs.

1. Hope has some common roots with goal-setting:

But Goal setting emphasis on outcome expectancies related to how one attains the desired goal and ignores the agency component

2. Hope has some "self-efficacy":

self-efficacy similar willpower, but the efficacy expectancies are all important to self-efficacy, while hope theory treats agency (efficacy) and pathways (outcomes) as equally important

Optimism

Optimism part of hope, but distinct.

Optimism expectancies are formed through others and forces outside the self

Hope is initiated and determined through the self.

"Positive and negative affectivity" related to hope

• related to perceptions of success or failure in a given situation.
• includes notions about outcome expectancies
• emphasis is on one’s situational thoughts and emotions
• related to perceptions of goal success and failure as being the major causes of behavior.
• ignore the pathways component of hope.

This is a reliable, valid individual difference measure of dispositional as well as state (on-going, situational) hope.

Assessment Instruments:

Self-report instruments (asking them questions) must reflect pathways thinking and agency thinking toward goals.

Consistently yield two factors:

1. Pathways
2. Agency
3. Summation factor (hope).

These measures have already been confirmed as an effective predictor of academic and coping activities (getting through difficult experiences) and that "hope makes such predictions beyond variance due to other related psychological indices." (Other explanations can be ruled out. So we know it's the Hope that is making the difference in performance.)

This only provides us with Indirect Support for the potential power of Hope in the workplace: that is, that Hope has had a positive impact on many nonwork-related outcomes. We might then expect it to have similar impact in work-realted outcomes.

Workplace findings:

1. high hope individuals tend to
1. be more certain of their goal and challenged by them;
2. value progress toward goals as well as the goals themselves
3. enjoy interacting with others
4. readily adapt to new and collaborative relationship
5. are less anxious (in evaluative, stressful situations)
6. adaptive to environmental change

Curiously:

• This seems an ideal profile for a manager.
• Nevertheless hope has received virtually no attention in literature nor has it been directly researched
• Hope has remained virtually unexplored

Why?

Two main reasons:

1. Theoretical model of hope and the associated measures had not been available (not defined clearly enough to measure)
2. Organizational behavior and HRM has traditionally been biased human dysfunctions and problems in the workplace.

Traditional questions for these fields have involves:

• Motivate and lead marginal employees
• correct deficient organizational strategies
• dysfunctional cultures, structures and job designs
• resistance to change
• effectively mange conflict
• cope with stress and burnout

In contrast:

POB and PAL incorporates:

• The hope construct
• optimism
• self-efficacy
• subjective well-being
• emotional intelligence

This moves us away from a negative to a positive approach of to performance management.

Study of social workers revealed that high hope resulted in:

· less emotionally exhaustion

· higher levels of job satisfaction and retention

· seemed to perform better

Now a need to direct test of the relationship between the hope level of managers and work unit outcomes was overdue.

Present study: begin to investigate the role of manager hope

1. in work-unit performance
2. employee retention and job satisfaction.

Study was conducted to test the propositions from POB and PAL

Test: that managers who have higher hope should:

1. have higher performing work units
2. have lower turnover in these units
3. have more satisfied subordinates.

The Method Used in the Exploratory Study

Used a large chain of a well-known fast-food franchise company

21 restaurants in two Midwestern states.

21 managers of these work units

38 assistant managers

Seventy-five percent of these managers were male.

Their mean age (M=34.8 years),

level of education (M=15.3 years)

tenure with the company (4.2 years) did not significantly differ among the managers,

The State Hope Measure

The State Hope Scale (Snyder, et al., 1996) has been shown to be theoretically related to the more traditional measure of hope (i.e., dispositional hope). Moreover, previous research has shown that state hope scores have related positively to various areas of achievement (Snyder, et al, 1996). State hope was used in this study in order to meet the criterion of POB of being open to development and change (Luthans, 2002b).

This easy to administer scale:

• 6-items that includes
• three agency items
• three pathways items.
• reworded from the Dispositional Hope Scale (which puts statements in a more generalized sense)
• Taps into the present state / agency e.g.
• At the present time, I am energetically pursing my goals
• At this time, I am meeting the goals that I have set for myself
• Taps into the present state / two pathways e.g.
• There are lots of ways around any problem that I am facing now.
• I can think of many ways to reach my current goals.

Participants are asked to select the number (from 1 = definitely false to 8 = definitely true) that best describes, “how you think about yourself right now.”

The State Hope is derived from the sum of the six item scores.

The State Hope Scale:

• demonstrated to have high internal reliability
• concurrent validity in relation to other related state measures
• utility has been determined through empirical research to be sensitive enough to capture the variability in level of hope at particular points in time
• beyond projections due to other state indices

The Job Satisfaction Measure

Job satisfaction of the employees in the units was measured using three items taken from the Hackman and Oldham (1980) Job Diagnostic Scale.

• chosen in an attempt to capture overall job satisfaction

Procedures Used in the Study

The managers were;

1. given a generic management development description of the study
2. were told that their participation was voluntary
3. managers completed the State Hope Scale

Used monthly work-unit sales reports which document several different measures of work unit performance including gross profits and employee turnover.

The study was designed for the managers to complete these surveys prior to receiving their statistics so as not to interfere with their state hope.

Managers were identified as high or low in hope on the basis of their scores on the State Hope Scale.

Managers scoring one or more standard deviations[i] below or above the mean on the State Hope Scale were categorized into the low- and high-hope study groups.

The data for these two hope groups were as follows:

low hope M=21.4 SD=1.59, N=35;

high hope M=39.23, SD=1.62, N= 24.

At the same time, the managers’ subordinates (N=685) completed the Job Satisfaction Scale.

This process was completed on company time.

To ensure anonymity, participants placed completed questionnaires in a sealed envelope addressed to the researchers at their university address.

The work unit performance, measured in gross profitability figures, as well as the turnover statistics were provided to the researchers by the company.

Results

State hope effects

Variables:

1. gross profitability
2. retention
3. subordinate job satisfaction

State Hope scores analyzed as predictor

Results:

• Higher hope predicted superior
• work unit performance
• retention
• satisfaction outcomes

Mediational effects of previous work unit profitability

Is the relation cause? And if so, in which direction.

• If a high-hope manager’s work unit was highly profitable in the past, then these managers might likely have a reason to stay hopeful in the present or future compared to those managers of traditionally lower performing units.

Tried to account for that. Seems to be satisfied that that is not the case.

Discussion:

• Exploratory study
• Suggest that state hope is a robust predictor of work-unit performance, retention, and subordinate job satisfaction.

"More specifically, results suggest that work units run by managers or assistant managers with higher hope were more profitable than stores run by mangers who had lower hope. Moreover, work units run by managers with higher hope also had less turnover (better retention) of their employees (a big problem in this industry) than their lower hope counterparts. Finally, work units with high hope managers tended to have more satisfied subordinates. These results suggest that manager hope may prove to be a powerful force in improving work unit performance, retention, and attitudes.

Study’s limitations:

Was this a representative Sample?

1. Of managers?
2. Of Managing Duties/ Environments?

Managers in a low task complexity service setting

Majority of the managers were male

Inability to measure hope at more than one point in time (therefore perhaps not accurate measure of State Hope)

Age?

Ethnicity?

Relation of gender, age and ethnicity between the manager and the workers?

Interplay between State Hope and Dispositional Hope

• Dispositional hope is thought to be static and trait-like; expect this to stay constant over time.
• In contrast, state-hope is considered to be a dynamic construct that can change. And would be expected to see state hope change depending upon situational factors
• Previous research with athletes measured state hope on a weekly basis to track ongoing states of hope with the purpose of uncovering what triggers may contribute to enhanced or inhibited athletic performance.
• Aided with coaching methods in athletic endeavors.
• In the workplace, it may be beneficial for organizations to know not only what employees bring to the table in terms of predisposed levels of hope (dispositional) for selection purposes, but also to understand what triggers might encourage or abate state hope. This may help organizations in designing reward systems or in knowing what to expect given organizational change events which may diminish hope and lead to undesirable outcomes.

Study Conclusion

"For work organizations, this exploratory study suggests that hope may tap a type of positive thinking and action in managers that is significantly related to important workplace outcomes. Certainly, accomplishing work-related goals (in this case, areas such as faster drive thru times or better customer service ratings that lead to higher revenues and profits) entails the establishment of pathways to goals (i.e., waypower) as well as the agentic motivation (i.e., waypower) to initiate and sustain the use of these pathways. Thus, state hope, because it is malleable, has implications for training and coaching. As suggested by POB and PAL, organizations can develop in leaders a stronger sense of agency and pathways thinking (i.e., hope).

In conclusion, the present exploratory study suggests that hope in managers does seem to predict superior work-unit performance and subordinate retention and job satisfaction in this setting. Although these results are promising, they offer only a small first step in what may become an expanded field of research opportunities and effective application of POB and PAL. Hope and other positive psychological capacities may indeed help organizational leaders meet the challenges of today’s turbulent, unprecedented environment.

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[i] Side note on Standard Deviation:

We begin with a range of values of a population. Then we then fine the mean (average) and then we look to see what the degree is difference is (variance) between the members of the population and the mean value. If the variables are distributed in the normal bell-shaped curve, most individuals in the population with approximate the average closely with fewer and fewer outliers the further you get from the mean. One question that might arise is: "What percentage of the population falls within what range of values?" Another way to put this: "What is the likelihood of an individual member of the population falling within a value range?" For the bell-shape range of values, about 95 % of the population will fall within two standard deviations of the mean.

But what’s a standard deviation? That is a variance from the mean that is statistically significant for just such predictive purposes.

Consider a population consisting of the following eight values:

These eight data points have the mean (average) of 5:

To calculate the population standard deviation:

1. First compute the difference of each data point from the mean
2. Second square the result of each:

3. Compute the average of these values

9+1+1+1+0+0+4+16

                _________________  = 4

                                8

4. Take the square root:

This quantity is the population standard deviation; it is equal to the square root of the variance. The formula is valid only if the eight values we began with form the complete population. If they instead were a random sample, drawn from some larger, “parent” population, then we should have used 7 (n − 1) instead of 8 (n) in the denominator of the last formula, and then the quantity thus obtained would have been called the sample standard deviation.

A slightly more complicated real life example, the average height for adult men in the United States is about 70", with a standard deviation of around 3". This means that most men (about 68%, assuming a normal distribution) have a height within 3" of the mean (67"–73") — one standard deviation — and almost all men (about 95%) have a height within 6" of the mean (64"–76") — two standard deviations. If the standard deviation were zero, then all men would be exactly 70" high. If the standard deviation were 20", then men would have much more variable heights, with a typical range of about 50"–90". Three standard deviations account for 99.7% of the sample population being studied, assuming the distribution is normal (bell-shaped).