Management, Spirituality, and Religion Retreat (August 16-18, Atlanta, GA)

The Management, Spirituality and Religion (MSR) Interest Group of the Academy of Management is offering its Fourth Annual MSR Retreat at the end of the Academy meeting this summer. The two-day retreat seeks to create a reflective space for participants; it offers opportunities to renew our personal commitments to what we find meaningful in life; it offers an opportunity to learn and engage in new spiritual practices. The retreat will be held at a quiet, wooded conference center just outside Atlanta and will end at noon Friday the 18th. The retreat is led by fellow academics and is not tied to any specific religion or spiritual tradition. Please email Len Tischler or Jerry Biberman this month if you would like more information, or if you are planning to attend the retreat.

Call for Papers - Journal of Managerial Psychology, Special Issue: The Emotions of Managing

The Journal of Managerial Psychology invites submissions to a special issue that examines the role of emotions in the managerial process. The past decade has seen a growing appreciation that emotions are embedded in organizational life. Our knowledge of the influence of emotions in organizational processes and the experiences of workers and their clients has grown considerably. With this special issue, we are turning the spotlight on managers. More specifically, we are soliciting conceptual and empirical papers (that employ quantitative or qualitative analyses) that consider the role of emotions in managerial work. Please electronically submit your manuscript by October 15, 2006 to one of the guest editors: Celeste M. Brotheridge or Raymond T. Lee.

Encourage use of skills on the job

Supervisors, peers, and subordinates should reinforce and reward learners for using their new skills on the job. Coaches and mentors also can serve this function. Also, provide prompts and cues, such as through periodic follow-ups. Change also is more likely to endure when high status persons, such as supervisors and upper-level management model it.

To develop an encouraging environment for the Interaction Management Program, managers of the supervisors to be trained attend a workshop that lasts a day and a half. At the workshop they learn many of the essential skills, techniques, and modules that their subordinates will experience during the training. They watch a film, which describes the purpose of the program, and they participate in similar skill modules and skill- practice exercises. "They also are trained in how to work with their subordinate supervisors in diagnosing supervisory problems, in determining the most appropriate interaction skills to use, and in gaining agreements on the desired outcome of the problem situations" (Pesuric and Byham 1996). The workshops also teach the managers how to reinforce their supervisor subordinates when they use the skills on the job.

In another version of this approach, a more supportive culture for learning is created by having line managers serve as workshop leaders. "By using line managers as workshop leaders, the organization built into its reward system a mechanism for communicating to its supervisors that use of the skills was desirable and expected behavior" (Porras and Anderson 1981). In addition, further organizational support was elicited by "introducing top company management to a version of the program." In fact, every manager in the manufacturing division (where the program was implemented) was exposed to "the design's content and process" (Porras and Anderson 1981).