Satoris Howes

Faculty

Satoris Howes

Toomey Faculty Fellow and Professor of Management

Management

541-706-2276

satoris.howes@osucascades.edu

Faculty

Satoris Howes

Overview

Background

Publications

Overview

Biography

Research areas: Human Resource Management; Organizational Behavior.

Research interests: Work-family dynamics; employment interviews; judgment and decision making at work; meta-analysis.

Dr. Howes's research spans several areas, including occupational health, employment selection, performance management, and judgment and decision making. Her work has appeared in such journals as the Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Human Relations, and Journal of Vocational Behavior. In addition, Dr. Howes is the coauthor (with Paul M. Muchinsky) of the best-selling I-O psychology textbook, Psychology Applied to Work. She has received several institutional teaching and research awards, and is the 2016 recipient of the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology’s prestigious Distinguished Teaching Contributions Award. She is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Society for Industrial Organizational Psychology. She is the incoming Editor for Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice.

In her spare time, she enjoys running, golfing, playing board games and traveling with her family, and learning new things, which currently include picking locks and crocheting. Along with her husband, John, she moonlights as a chauffeur, maid, personal chef, life coach, tutor, and counselor to their four kids, as a caretaker to their two dogs, and as a servant to their cat.

Career Interests

Satoris S. Howes is a Toomey Faculty Fell and Professor of Management at ��. Prior to joining OSU, Dr. Howes earned her bachelor's degree in Psychology and Public Relations from the University of Central Missouri, her master's degree in Industrial and Organizational (I-O) Psychology from Missouri State University, and her Ph.D. in I-O psychology from Texas A&M University. At the end of her graduate studies, she worked as a consultant in a Chicago branch of a global leadership solutions consulting firm. She then transitioned back into academia, working for a year at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls before joining the faculty in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Kansas State University, where she was awarded the College of Arts and Sciences William L. Stamey Teaching Award in 2012. She later moved to the Department of Management in the College of Business Administration at Kansas State University, where she was awarded the Ralph E. Reitz Outstanding Teaching Award in 2015 and the Outstanding Contributions in Research Award in 2015.

Dr. Howes is a regular contributor in the fields of management and I-O psychology. On the human resources/industrial psychology side, she has engaged in a great deal of work around performance management and feedback as well as with employment selection (with an emphasis on employment interviews). On the organizational behavior/organizational psychology side, her interests have included occupational health (with a concentration on work-life conflict and facilitation and workplace stress and well-being) and motivation (to include more specifically engagement, goal orientation, and flow). Recently, she has ventured into the area of judgment and decision making. Within these areas, she has authored and, along with undergraduate and graduate students, coauthored numerous journal articles and chapters in edited volumes. Her work has appeared in such journals as the Journal of Applied Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Human Relations, and Journal of Vocational Behavior. In addition, Dr. Howes is the coauthor (with Paul M. Muchinsky) of the best-selling I-O psychology textbook, Psychology Applied to Work.

Dr. Howes is an active member of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, the Academy of Management, the American Psychological Association, and the Society for the Teaching of Psychology. She was the 2016 recipient of the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology’s prestigious Distinguished Teaching Contributions Award.

Background

Education

Ph.D. – Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Texas A&M University

M.S. – Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Missouri State University

B.S. – Psychology/Public Relations, University of Central Missouri

Honors & Awards

Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology Distinguished Contributions in Teaching Award (2016)
Outstanding Contributions in Research Award, College of Business Administration, Kansas State University (2015)
Ralph Reitz Outstanding Teaching Award, College of Business Administration, Kansas State University (2015)
University of Central Missouri Department of Psychological Science Outstanding Alumnus Award (2013)
William L. Stamey Teaching Award, College of Arts & Sciences, Kansas State University (2012)
Outstanding Reviewer Award, Academy of Management (2008, 2009)

Publications

Academic Journal

Management

“A commentary on Thomas et al. (2024): How high achievers and hypercompetitive cultures may be inadvertently dissuading mental health offering usage”

Thomas et al. (2024) contribute to research and practice by providing a standardized taxonomy of workplace mental health (MH) resources, a much-needed step toward systematically addressing employee well-being in modern organizations. Yet, its effectiveness hinges on understanding the barriers that prevent certain employees from utilizing these resources. In line with Thomas et al.’s call for research to identify the “factors that (1) limit workers’ using and (2) foster workers’ using the MH offerings in their workplaces” (p. 24), we draw attention to a critical segment of the workforce that often goes overlooked in conversations surrounding MH: high achievers. Specifically, we argue that high-achieving employees have unique considerations, needs, and challenges surrounding their MH that can impede MH support utilization. Moreover, given these individuals’ impactful role in organizations’ success and cultures, attending to the unique considerations of this population is of paramount concern. We elaborate on how organizations and leaders may be exacerbating high achievers’ MH challenges and thwarting support utilization, as well as how high achievers themselves may perpetuate this damage. We also discuss the MH offerings from Thomas et al.’s taxonomy that are likely to be most beneficial to high achievers and, thus, hopefully attenuate the potential damage done to themselves and others.

Details

Academic Journal

Management

“A commentary on Thomas et al. (2024): What employees, HR professionals, and business leaders really need”

We extended Thomas et al.’s (2024) organizing framework of mental health benefits to include dimensions specific to each stakeholder group. We also introduce the need for a compassionate communication platform in which the formal leadership-level taxonomy is expressed to employees using a person-centered approach. Together, group-specific dimensions and a compassionate communication platform will improve literacy of mental health benefits for employees, HR professionals, and business leaders, and more importantly, usage of mental health benefits for employees.

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Academic Journal

Management

“A Commentary on Thomas et al. (2024): Zooming In and Out to Enhance Employee Well-being”

Thomas et al. (2024) address a crucial and timely objective in today’s workplace: the growing and unprecedented need for employees to have access to, and to use, mental health resources. Their goal with creating a taxonomy of mental health offerings was to “increase the chances these offerings make impacts in people’s lives” (p. 3). We argue, however, that to truly impact employees’ lives, we must do what Kanter (2011) suggested leaders do in order to make effective strategic decisions, namely, to zoom in and to zoom out. First, we need to zoom out. Rather than focus exclusively on mental health, we must expand the focus to reflect a broader view of health. Second, we must zoom in. We need to focus on a very important benefit that individuals both want and need – flexible sick/wellness leave. In our commentary, we expand on Thomas et al.’s (2024) suggestions on how to improve the (mental health) needs of employees by zooming out and zooming in. To make our case, we focus on the experience of grief. Grief illustrates the complexities associated with health needs of employees and highlights (a) challenges associated with focusing exclusively on mental health (to the exclusion of physical health) and (b) the importance of flexible leave time in addressing employee health needs.

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Academic Journal

Management

“Time after Time: A daily diary examination of leadership’s sequential impact on flow experiences”

We examine the nexus of leadership and flow through the lens of two inherently positive psychological leadership approaches. In so doing, we examine how leaders can craft conditions to make work more conducive to followers’ flow, and the beneficial effects this has on well-being and performance. Data were collected from 40 employees who completed an initial survey and subsequent daily surveys over two weeks (273 data points). Results from hierarchical linear modeling (level-1 days; level-2 persons) suggest that transformational leaders and leader-member exchange (LMX) relationships impact employees’ work characteristics, subsequently impacting daily flow. In turn, followers’ daily flow predicted daily psychological well-being and performance on subsequent days, further evidencing the downstream importance of flow-facilitative leader behaviors. Both transformational leadership and LMX were also found to predict psychological well-being through leaders’ impact on flow preconditions and flow itself in a full multi-stage mediation model.

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Academic Journal

Management

“Enhancing consistency of maximal responding in behavior description interviews: An exploration of priming and response length.”

In a Behavior Description Interview (BDI), candidates are asked to describe past experiences that demonstrate skills and abilities important for the position (Janz, 1982). A recent study by Huffcutt et al. (2020) found that only around half of participants (48.1 percent) describe an experience reflecting maximal performance capability. Random mixing of maximal capability with day-to-day typical performance tendencies is problematic psychometrically because candidates are not all providing comparable information and top candidates could be overlooked. Given notable methodological concerns with Huffcutt et al.’s approach, our first purpose was to provide empirical confirmation that maximal responding in BDIs is, in fact, inconsistent. Our estimate of the proportion of maximal responding was even lower (41.3 percent), further amplifying concerns when assessment of maximal performance capability is desired (e.g., for many professional positions). The second purpose was to investigate two factors that could increase the consistency of maximal responding: rewording the main BDI question to focus directly on absolute top-end experiences (i.e., priming) and longer response length. Both were found to have significant effects. A number of directions for future research were identified, which, along with these findings, could help researchers move closer to the long-term goal of uniform description of experiences that reflect each candidate’s maximal capability (or typical tendencies if so desired).

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Academic Journal

Management

“Using focus groups for knowledge sharing: Tracking emerging pandemic impacts on USFS wildland fire operations”

In early 2020 the US Forest Service (USFS) recognized the need to gather real-time information from its wildland fire management personnel about their challenges and adaptations during the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic. The USFS conducted 194 virtual focus groups to address these concerns, over 32 weeks from March 2020 to October 2020. This management effort provided an opportunity for an innovative practice-based research study. Here, we outline a novel methodological approach (weekly, iterative focus groups, with two-way communication between USFS staff and leadership), which culminated in a model for focus group coordination during extended crises. We also document the substantive challenges USFS wildfire employees discussed, including: conflicting policies and procedures; poor communication; ill-defined decision space; barriers to multi-jurisdictional resources; negative impacts on work-life balance; and disruption of pre-season training. USFS focus groups were effective for knowledge sharing among employees and elevating issues to top levels of the USFS management structure.

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Academic Journal

Management

“Emotional intelligence in autistic adults: A review with considerations for employers.”

Emotional intelligence is important within the workplace, as indicated by the multitude of positive workplace outcomes associated with heightened emotional intelligence. Research has demonstrated that many autistic individuals exhibit lower levels of trait emotional intelligence, potentially putting them at a disadvantage within the workplace. Emotional intelligence, however, is multifaceted, yet research on how autistic adults fare in these facets separately has remained siloed. All four facets are important and should be considered alongside one another to allow for a complete understanding of emotional intelligence and autism. The purpose of this paper is to review existing research with respect to how autistic individuals fare for each of the four facets of emotional intelligence, namely, perceiving emotions, using emotions to facilitate thought, understanding emotions, and managing emotions. This review is primarily intended to be descriptive and not prescriptive, though areas for consideration within the workplace—particularly regarding how autistic individuals may experience difficulties in meeting the necessary demands for sustainable career success—based on the reported findings are provided. Given this and the recognition that neurodiversity is an important component of organizational diversity, this paper is important for both individual employment sustainability efforts and organizational sustainable competitive advantage efforts.

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Academic Journal

Management

“Yes, and ...: Taming the wicked problem and navigating the empathy-efficiency paradox.”

Commentary in response to a focal article A call to action: Taking the untenable out of women professors’ pregnancy, postpartum, and caregiving demands. Commentary focused on the efficiency-empathy paradox.

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