Dr. Jeffrey Vancouver
Dr. Jeffrey B. Vancouver, Professor and Byham Chair in Industrial/Organizational Psychology, co-authored an article on “Using a Computational Model to Understand Possible Sources of Skews in Distribution of Job Performance” in Personnel Psychology.
His co-authors are Xiaofei Li, graduate student at Ohio University; Justin M. Weinhardt ’11M, ’13Ph.D., an Ohio University alum who is now an assistant professor at the University of Calgary; Piers Steel, a professor at the University of Calgary; and Justin D. Purl, a graduate student at Ohio University.
Abstract: The typical assumption that performance is distributed normally has come under question in recent years (e.g., O’Boyle & Aguinis, 2012). This paper uses a dynamic, computational model of performance-as-results to examine possible sources of such distributions. That is, building off the classic model of job performance (Campbell & Pritchard, 1976), components of a dynamic model are examined in four separate experiments using Monte Carlo simulations. The experiments indicate that positively skewed distributions can arise from pure luck, multiplicative combinations of factors where one of those factors has a zero origin, Matthew effects associated with learning, and feedback effects of performance on resource allocation policies by external agents. The results are discussed in terms of explanations for positively skewed performance distributions and the use and expansion of the computational model for examining dynamic performance more generally.
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