Stefanie K Johnson

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at University of Colorado Boulder

Despite significant progress in understanding how situational factors influence safety compliance, the effects of team diversity—particularly language diversity—on safety outcomes remain underexplored. This is particularly concerning given the prevalence of language diversity in teams operating in hazardous environments and the disparities in accid...

The sudden proliferation of virtual work and isolation during the COVID‐19 pandemic has resulted in mental health concerns and increased workplace exits, particularly for women. We examine how inclusive organizational behavior in the form of a positive diversity climate impacts stereotype threat, anxiety, and turnover intentions. Across two studies...

There is growing evidence that human biology and behavior are influenced by infectious microorganisms. One such microorganism is the protozoan Toxoplasma gondii ( TG). Using longitudinal data covering the female population of Denmark, we extend research on the relationship between TG infection and entrepreneurial activity and outcomes. Results indi...

Humans, wildlife, and domestic animals are intimately linked through shared infections. Many parasites and pathogens use multiple host species, either opportunistically or sequentially, such that managing disease risk frequently requires a broader understanding of the ecological community. The coccidian protozoan Toxoplasma gondii infects more than...

Introduction: The majority of construction companies are small businesses and small business often lack the resources needed to ensure that their supervisors have the safety leadership skills to build and maintain a strong jobsite safety climate. The Foundations for Safety Leadership (FSL) training program was designed to provide frontline leaders...

Using archival data, we examine the effects of the Hubble Space Telescope Time Allocation Committee ( HST TAC)'s decision to adopt a dual- rather than single-anonymous review process. The change involved removing, to varying degrees, information about the Principal Investigator (PI) with the goal of reducing bias against women. Proposals led by fem...

There is growing evidence that human biology and behavior is influenced by infectious microorganisms. One such microorganism is the protozoan Toxoplasma gondii (TG). Using longitudinal data covering the female population of Denmark, we extend research on the relationship between TG infection and entrepreneurial activity and outcomes. Results indica...

In what we label the “femme fatale” effect, we proposed and found support for the notion that attractive businesswomen are judged as being less truthful than less attractive women for reasons rooted in sexual insecurity. In Study 1 (n = 198; U.S. participants), attractiveness predicted less perceived truthfulness for female, but not male, leaders d...

This research examines bias against attractive women applying for masculine jobs—a phenomenon called the “beauty is beastly” effect. We show this effect in multiple studies and examine one way to mitigate the bias. Specifically, when we included more than one attractive applicant on the finalist slate, the beauty is beastly effect was eliminated. T...

It’s been nearly two years since the #MeToo movement took on wide momentum, and some big questions remain: What has changed? Do we know if reports of sexual harassment in organizations have decreased? What has happened to the women who have spoken up?

Over the last two years, awareness about the sexual mistreatment of women has stunned the world. According to analysis by the New York Times, the defeat of Hilary Clinton and election of Donald Trump spurred a women’s movement in the US that began in November of 2016 and resulted in protests across the country, including the largest single-day prot...

Introduction: The 2.5 h Foundations for Safety Leadership (FSL) training program teaches construction supervisors the leadership skills they need to strengthen jobsite safety climate and reduce adverse safety-related outcomes. Methods: Using a quasi-experimental prospective switching replications study design, we examined (1) if FSL-trained jobs...

Introduction: Construction foremen may lack the leadership skills needed to create a strong jobsite safety climate. Many construction companies address this by sending their lead workers to the OSHA 30-h course; however the course does not include a leadership training module. This article describes the development and pilot testing of such a modu...

Disciplines such as business and economics often rely on the assumption of rationality when explaining complex human behaviours. However, growing evidence suggests that behaviour may concurrently be influenced by infectious microorganisms. The protozoan Toxoplasma gondii infects an estimated 2 billion people worldwide and has been linked to behavio...

Attractiveness is generally perceived to be beneficial to women in the workplace. However, a rapidly growing body of literature suggests that there are hidden costs of attractiveness that can negatively influence career trajectories of professional women. In this chapter, the authors employ Super’s (1957) model of career development as a framework...

Words are very important to share ideas, but less is known regarding the way the message is communicated in the leadership process. The present study explored how nonverbal delivery factors might impact leaders’ charisma, followers’ mood, and followers’ performance. The research specifically focused on how immediacy and dominance impacted the relat...

Leader efficacy is a key outcome of leader development, but little is known about if and when developmental leader experiences, such as engaging in training, relate to gains in leader efficacy. We present a theoretical model of the effects of mastery goal orientation and performance during development as determinants of leader efficacy. We argue th...

After conducting a qualitative study of 31 women in predominantly masculine industries, we also saw that sexual harassment continues to be a problem for women. Although our study focused on the effects of attractiveness and not explicitly on sexual harassment, 75% of the women we interviewed mentioned they had been sexually harassed at work. They c...

Although women often experience benefits of attractiveness in the workplace, there are downsides in particular situations and contexts. Using qualitative interviews, this study seeks to uncover the under-emphasized costs of attractiveness in the workplace. The results indicate several experienced costs such as questions of competence, competition w...

Leader developmental efficacy, or one’s belief in his/her ability to develop leadership knowledge or skills, is theorized to predict engagement and success in leader development. Conducting the first empirical studies on this construct using cross-sectional and quasi-longitudinal surveys across three samples consisting of 73, 94, and 49 leaders, re...

There are more CEOs of large U.S. companies who are named David (4.5%) than there are CEOs who are women (4.1%) — and David isn't even the most common first name among CEOs. (That would be John, at 5.3%.) Despite the ever-growing business case for diversity, roughly 85% of board members and executives are white men. This doesn't mean that companies...

We seek to help solve the puzzle of why top-level leaders are disproportionately white men. We suggest that this race-and sex-based status and power gap persists, in part, because ethnic minority and women leaders are discouraged from engaging in diversity-valuing behavior. We hypothesize and test in both field and laboratory samples that ethnic mi...

This chapter describes the role of two types of self-efficacy-leader self-efficacy and leader developmental efficacy-for enhancing leadership development. Practical implications for designing and developing leadership programs that take into account these two types of self-efficacy are discussed.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the main and interactive effects of general and safety-specific leader justice (SSLJ) (i.e. fair treatment) and leader support for safety (LSS) on safety performance. Design/methodology/approach – Two independent samples of construction workers rate their leaders with regards to fair treatment and...

Instructors often rely on seductive details, such as jokes, stories, and video clips, to keep trainees entertained. However, this extraneous information may inadvertently detract from the course content, and the between-person nature of past research precludes understanding the dynamic process by which seductive details influence learning. Using a...

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to investigate how employee need relates to rewards and employee perceptions of fairness within an organization in the USA using a pay-for-performance system. Design/methodology/approach – To evaluate the presence of a relationship between employee need and reward allocation in a pay-for-performance system, a...

Departing from the static perspective of leader charisma that prevails in the literature, we propose a dynamic perspective of charismatic leadership in which group perceptions of leader charisma influence and are influenced by group mood. Based on a longitudinal experimental study conducted for 3 weeks involving 116 intact, self-managing student gr...

The present study sought to assess when and how actual job applicants change their responses when filling out an unproctored personality selection assessment for a second time. It was predicted feedback would be a key contextual motivator associated with how much applicants change their answers during the second administration. Mediation results sh...

• In this chapter, we review the research on interviewing as used to assess applicants for employment. We start by examining the evaluation of how interviewer judgments perform as a tool of assessment in employee selection. Next, we examine the interview as a multiphase process that starts with the interviewer’s and applicant’s first encounter in t...

We examine the relationship between goal setting and transfer of training as measured on a 360-degree survey collected 3 months after a 5-day leadership development program. Leaders set personal goals for behavior change during the program. For two of the three competencies measured (developing others, building and maintaining relationships), leade...

Planning plays an instrumental role in prominent self-regulation theories (e.g., action regulation, control, goal setting), yet as a scientific community we know little about how people carry out their learning plans. Using an experimental field study, we implemented a repeated-measures intervention requiring trainees to create a plan for when, whe...

Two studies were conducted to examine the implications of inaccurate self-appraisals in online training. Self-assessment of knowledge moderated the effects of trainees’ performance on subsequent performance and attrition. Performance was highest after uniformly positive ratings (i.e., high self-assessment and high performance), followed by underest...

Today's organizational leaders, whether in the for-profit or not-for-profit world, are under increased pressure from various constituents to perform well. Direct pressure emanates from shareholders, boards of directors, customers, government regulators and the courts. Indirectly, business magazines put pressure on CEOs whose successes are celebrate...

Although research has identified techniques for leader development, most of the extant research has focused on development in adulthood, ignoring development at an early age. A recent resurgence in interest in the genetic or other early development factors, such as attachment, points to the benefits of understanding the developmental trajectories (...

Leader self-development enables leaders to adapt to the continually changing environment both within and outside of the organization. The purpose of this paper is to describe the construct of leader self-development and the processes by which it can serve as an organizational leadership development strategy. We framed the paper around a multi-level...

The individual and combined impact of blatant stereotype activation and solo status or mixed-sex groups on the self-appraisals, performance, and anxiety of female leaders was examined across three laboratory studies. The first study utilized a two-condition, two-stage design in which female leaders were exposed to a blatant stereotype threat or con...

The "what is beautiful is good" heuristic suggests that physically attractive persons benefit from their attractiveness in a large range of situations, including perceptions of employment suitability. Conversely, the "beauty is beastly" effect suggests that attractiveness can be detrimental to women in certain employment contexts, although these fi...

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine employees’ reactions to the use of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) in performance evaluations. In addition, gender differences in such reactions were examined. Design/methodology/approach Data were obtained from a sample of working adults (n = 78) and a sample of students (n = 249). In the...

Many organizations are using computer-mediated communication to facilitate group work among virtual teams. However, little is known about the effects of using computer-mediated communication on team member outcomes. Examining use of computer-mediated communication as a continuum, the authors found that team members who used computer-mediated commun...

This research examines the role of mood and mood contagion in a leadership situation. In phase 1 of the study participants received a positive or negative mood induction and completed a leadership speech describing how to complete a hiring task. In phase 2, participants watched one of the speeches from phase 1, completed ratings, and performed the...

The influence of affect has become a hot topic in organizational research. This chapter seeks to expand the conceptualization of affect at work to include the role of unconscious affect. In this chapter, we review current research and theory on unconscious affect and extend those findings to organizationally relevant situations. We propose several...

The disparity between the success of male and female leaders may result from the incongruity between the female sex role and the leadership role. We provide an in-depth test of role congruity theory [Eagly, A. H., & Karau, S. J. (2002). Role congruity theory of prejudice toward female leaders. Psychological Review, 109, 573–598] through a mix of qu...

While affect and emotion have been theoretically linked to leadership for decades, only recently has this relationship come under empirical scrutiny. The current research examines the effects of emotional contagion on follower affect at work and examines the outcomes of follower affect at work in a field setting. Leader positive and negative affect...

The current study examined the moderating effect of task type on the effectiveness of charismatic leadership. Using a laboratory study, the content (visionary, nonvisionary) and delivery (expressive, unexpressive) of a leadership speech were manipulated, along with the charisma conduciveness of performance tasks. Based on the propositions asserted...

Charismatic leaders are often thought to emerge in times of crisis. This study examined the effects of evaluation stress and situational crisis on task performance and ratings of charismatic behavior, as assessed by outside coders on Conger and Kanungo’s C-K Scale. Fiftyfive three-member groups were randomly assigned a leader and asked to complete...

As charismatic and transformational leadership theories have broadened their perspective to include situational factors (i.e., crisis), it is important to understand how specific leader behaviors might interact with such situations. Recently, Choi and Mai-Dalton [Leadersh. Q. 10 (1999) 397; Leadersh. Q. 9 (1998) 475] have given both empirical and t...

A model of leadership effectiveness including leadership efficacy, anxiety, and self- and collective efficacy for the task was hypothesized and tested in 2 laboratory studies. Groups of 3 people, 1 designated as leader, performed distinct employee hiring tasks in both studies. The empirical model from the combined samples indicates that leaders hig...