My program of research spans three general areas:

(1) organizational justice

(2) cross cultural application to the study of organization behavior

(3) organization change and development.

The study of organizational justice, or fairness perceptions in the workplace, is incorporated in most of my research. I have examined justice in relation to a broad set of variables including counterproductive work behaviors, organizational citizenship behaviors, performance evaluations, selection systems, injustice as a stressor and perceptions of workplace control and coping strategies, and group-level innovation implementation. Because organizational justice varies across cultures (see Leung, 2005), I have also examined measurement of justice and fairness perceptions in China and France.

My research also includes the examination of organizational development and change with specific foci in education and manufacturing. At Old Dominion University (ODU), I have worked on two large scale instructional change intervention programs which required cross-discipline collaboration of psychology, computer sciences, and education departments. In the manufacturing setting, my research includes examination of a large paper manufacturer’s quality intervention and employee involvement programs at the group-level of analysis and preparation of an organizational diagnosis, intervention, and evaluation plan for clothing manufacturing company that was shifting to a sustainable business model. In the following sections I explain the content of these areas in more detail and specify my plans for future research.

China - Dissertation Research
           
Last summer, I conducted research in China with collaborators from Peking University (host professor Zhi-xue Zhang), Beijing Normal University (host professor Yan Gonguu), and Renmin University (host professor Ying Liu) in order to develop an indigenous Chinese measure of organizational justice. For this research proposal I was a top alternate for the National Science Foundation’s East Asian Pacific Summer Institute and received full funding in awards from ODU’s Dragus International Center and the College of Sciences.

We analyzed descriptions of critical incidents involving unfair decisions from 80 Chinese participants. I developed a coding system based on Leung and Tong’s (2004) framework for analyzing justice across cultures and worked with Chinese graduate students to code participant responses. Results from the qualitative phase were presented at the Academy of Management and United Nation’s conference (“Business as an Agent of World Benefit: Management Knowledge Leading Positive Change”) in Cleveland, Ohio (October 2006) and the American Psychological Association Conference in San Francisco, CA (August 2007). Based on these results I have drafted quantitative items and will be validating them on both student and employee samples for my dissertation. In order to establish construct validity I will examine Chinese employees’ justice perceptions influence on affective organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behaviors, and supervisory and pay satisfaction.

Katy at Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management	Hiking the Great Wall with friends

France and America - Master's Thesis Research

I examined French and American employees’ procedural justice perceptions for their performance evaluations. This research was conducted on a Fulbright scholarship at the University of Nice, Sophia Antipolis. I was fortunate to have as my host professor Dirk Steiner who is a foremost scholar in the cross-cultural study of organizational justice. I recently reexamined this data in relation to a model surrounding instrumental and non-instrumental voice in procedural justice perceptions (Shapiro & Brett, 2005; Shapiro, 1993). The resulting paper (Fodchuk & Sherman, IN PRESS) has been recently accepted at Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal for publication.

Justice and Extra-Role Behaviors

Past research has identified both employee characteristics and aspects of the work environment that can serve as antecedents to positive and negative workplace behavior. My article (Fodchuk, 2006), published in The Psychologist-Manager Journal, reviews research identifying the major factors that prompt both counterproductive work behaviors (CWB) and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB). The dynamics of these relationships were discussed and workplace diagnosis and interventions designed to negate CWB and foster OCB were offered. A special focus on the implications of and possible interventions incorporating organizational justice were also presented.

Fodchuk, K. M. (2007). Work Environments that Negate Counterproductive Behaviors and Foster Organizational Citizenship: Research-Based Recommendations for Managers. The Psychologist-Manager Journal, 10, 27 - 46.

Justice and Selection

My interest surrounding justice and selection began while consulting in EEO litigation support at Biddle & Associates, Inc. and in my position at the California State Personnel Board’s Test Validation and Construction unit where I developed selection processes for a diverse set of state positions. In collaboration with an employment lawyer, Eric Sidebotham, we examined the procedural justice literature in relation to a case that challenged the job-relatedness of a large selection process and discussed methods for incorporating procedural justice in selection. This work was published in The Psychologist-Manager Journal (Fodchuk & Sidebotham, 2005).

Fodchuk, K. M. & Sidebotham, E. J. (2005). Procedural justice in the selection process: A review of research and suggestions for practical applications. The Psychologist-Manager Journal, 8, 105 - 120.

Manufacturing Settings

My research in organizational change and development includes an examination of the impact of supervisor fairness (interactional justice) and support for innovation implementation on successful innovation implementation of a quality intervention at the group-level of analysis. This research has been presented at the Society for Industrial/Organizational Psychology Conference (SIOP) (Dallas, TX, May 2006) and is currently under a “revise and resubmit” designation at Group and Organization Management: An International Journal.
 
For a research project in our organization development and change course at ODU, I conducted an organizational diagnosis and developed a customized intervention and evaluation plan for a North Carolina-based clothing manufacturer. In the past ten years, much of the American clothes manufacturing business have been exported to developing nations where labor and costs are cheaper. Several years ago this company adapted to this loss of business by downsizing and refocusing to a sustainable business model whereby all clothing is organic, dye is non-toxic, and integrated an eco-friendly manufacturing process. My diagnosis included a systems analysis of their manufacturing process and suggested revisions included shifting from a manual tracking system to computer aided manufacturing and computerized integration of their information network  (i.e., accounting, purchasing, marketing, inventory, production, etc.).

Educational Settings

My current research assistantship is with PREPS (Programs for Research and Evaluation in Public Schools), a research group within ODU’s Darden School of Education. We are working on the implementation of a large-scale change effort targeting teacher instructional strategies and professional development in a network of four public schools. We have organized teachers into learning teams and I have facilitated training on group problem solving and decision making (using process consultation, Schein, 1988). We are also evaluating this work by examining the influence of teacher participation and commitment to the change initiative on behavior support for change. We currently have a symposium proposal under review at the American Educational Research Association that presents this research (see vitae for Fodchuk, Myran, & Robinson).

During my first year and a half at Old Dominion I participated in the development of INSITE (Increasing Success in Information Technology Education). INSITE is a collaborative effort between at Old Dominion and Norfolk State University. It is an organizational intervention designed to increase female and under served minority retention in computer sciences via the introduction of “paired programming,” mentoring programs, realistic job preview, and stress and coping training for students. Our model for this project was published as a chapter in the Encyclopedia of Gender and Information Technology (Davis, Major, Sanchez-Hucles, DeLoatch, Selgrade, Meert, Jackson, Downey, & Fodchuk, 2006).