Peter A. Heslin Ph.D.

Recipient of the 2006 C. Jackson Grayson Endowed Faculty Innovation Award, for excellence and creativity in teaching

Recipient of the 2007 Best Reviewer Award from the Careers Division of the Academy of Management

Representative at Large of the Academy of Management Careers Division (2008-2011)

Teaching Webpage

Education
Ph.D. (OB & HRM), University of Toronto
M.S. (Applied Psych), University of New South Wales
B.A. (Hons), University of New South Wales

Areas of Expertise
Career Management
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
Leading Organizational Change
Managing Across Cultures
Motivation
Organizational Behavior

Editorial Boards
Applied Psychology: An International Review
Journal of Business and Psychology
Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies
Journal of Occupational and Organizational Behavior
Journal of Organizational Behavior

Courses Taught
Leading Organizational Change
Managing Across Cultures
Organizational Behavior

Consulting Engagements
Bristol Myers Squibb
Citibank
IBM
KPMG
Oracle
Proctor & Gamble
Royal Bank of Canada (RBC)
Vanuatu Department of Health
Zurich Financial Services

CURRENT RESEARCH

My two primary streams of research address managerial cognition and performance, and also the nature of career success.

Managerial Cognition and Performance

Managers' assumptions affect how they perform their managerial role. I investigate implications of managers' implicit person theories (IPTs) about the rigidity of the personal attributes that guide human behavior. My research (with Gary Latham & Don VandeWalle) has addressed the role of managers' IPTs in answering three perennial questions about personnel management. First, why do some managers provide performance appraisals that are so heavily biased by their initial impressions of their employees (Heslin et al., 2005)? Second, given that coaching can facilitate employee development and performance, why are some managers so disinclined to coach their subordinates (Heslin et al., 2006)? Third, what leads some managers to be more disposed than others to treat their employees fairly, thereby fostering employee commitment and willingness to go the extra mile (Heslin & VandeWalle, in press)?

Ongoing projects address the role of IPTs in employee engagement (Heslin, under revision), feedback seeking (VandeWalle, Heslin, & Anseel, in preparation), role transitions (Sue-Chan, Wood, Heslin & Higgs, under revision), supportive feedback environments (Anseel, VandeWalle, & Heslin, in preparation), trust (VandeWalle, Dirks, Ferrin, Heslin, Cooper, & Kim, in preparation), and talent management (Heslin & Dweck, in preparation).

Although IPTs are fairly stable, they can also be altered in a relatively permanent manner using an intensive self persuasion-based intervention (Heslin et al., 2005, 2006). Building on this intervention, I plan to conduct collaborative field research to investigate a range of important basic and applied issues including:

1. Mechanisms whereby IPTs are developed and sustained within organizations;

2. How IPTs function in conjunction with other self-regulatory and contextual factors to affect employee and managerial performance;

3. How IPT research might be harnessed to improve talent management and organizational change initiatives.

Career Success

Few people would turn down a promotion or pay raise, but does everyone who excels in these areas feel that their career is a success? Do people without stellar pay and position necessarily feel unsuccessful? In light of how people answer such questions, I have systematically questioned the adequacy of the relatively narrow ways in which scholars typically assess career success (Heslin, 2005a).

My research has highlighted that people define their career success in terms of factors such as pride in a job well done, social contribution, career context (Heslin, 2005a), and the respect of valued others (Heslin, 2003). In doing so, I have sought to increase the ecological validity of careers theory and research (Gunz & Heslin, 2005), as well as ultimately facilitate people's experience of career success (Heslin, 2005b). I consider this later objective especially important in light of the currently high rates of job loss, insecurity, and involuntary career change. Going forward I am working to open up three new avenues of career success research that address the:

1. Role of moral disengagement in career demise (Heslin & Skripkin, in preparation);

2. Career aspirations and experiences of understudied populations (e.g., people with disabilities, migrants, religious minorities etc; Heslin & Bell, planning stage); and the

3. Emerging interface between careers and corporate social responsibility (Heslin, in preparation).

Downloadable Publications

Heslin, P. A. (in press). Mindsets and employee engagement: Theoretical linkages and practical interventions. In S. Albrecht (Ed.), The Handbook of Employee Engagement. Cheltenham, UK: Edwin Elgar.

Heslin, P. A., & VandeWalle, D. (in press). Performance appraisal procedural justice: The role of manager's implicit person theory. Journal of Management.

Heslin, P. A. (2009). "Potential" in the eye of the beholder: The role of managers who spot rising stars. Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, 2, 420-424.

Heslin, P. A., VandeWalle, D., & Carson, J. B. (2009). Practical applications of goal setting theory to performance management. In J. W. Smither (Ed.), Performance management: Putting research into practice (pp.89-114). New York: NY: Jossey-Bass.

Heslin, P. A. (2009). Better than brainstorming? Potential contextual boundary conditions to brainwriting for idea generation in organizations. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 82, 129-145.

Heslin, P. A., & VandeWalle, D. (2008). Managers' implicit assumptions about personnel. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17, 219-223.

Heslin, P. A., & Ochoa, J. D. (2008). Understanding and developing strategic corporate social responsibility. Organizational Dynamics, 37, 125-144.

Heslin, P. A., VandeWalle, D., & Latham, G. P. (2006). Keen to help? Managers' implicit person theories and their subsequent employee coaching. Personnel Psychology, 59, 871-902.

Heslin, P. A., & Klehe, U. C. (2006). Self-efficacy. In S. G. Rogelberg (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Industrial / Organizational Psychology (Vol. 2, pp.705-708). Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Heslin, P. A., Latham, G. P., & VandeWalle, D. (2005). The effect of implicit person theory on performance appraisals. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90, 842-856.

Heslin, P. A. (2005). Conceptualizing and evaluating career success. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26, 113-136.

Gunz, H. P., & Heslin, P. A. (2005). Reconceptualizing career success. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26, 105-111

Heslin, P. A. (2005). Experiencing career success. Organizational Dynamics, 34, 376-390.

Heslin, P. A., & Latham, G. P. (2004). The effect of upward feedback on managerial behavior. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 53, 23-37.

Heslin, P. A. (2003). Self- and other-referent criteria of career success. Journal of Career Assessment, 11, 262-286.

Latham, G. P., & Heslin, P. A. (2003). Training the trainee as well as the trainer: Lessons to be learned from clinical psychology. Canadian Psychology, 44, 218-231.

Heslin, P. A., & Donaldson, L. (1999). An organizational portfolio theory of board composition. Corporate Governance: An International Review, 7, 81-88.

WORK IN PROGRESS

Implicit Person Theory

Anseel, F., VandeWalle, D., & Heslin, P.A. Supportive feedback environments: The role of supervisors' implicit person theories.

Heslin, P. A. Implicit person theories and employee engagement: Theory and intervention opportunities for managers and employees. In S. Albrecht (Ed.), The Handbook of Employee Engagement. Cheltenham, UK: Edwin Elgar

Heslin, P. A. & Dweck, C. S. (in preparation). Implicit person theory and talent management.

Heslin, P. A., Vandewalle, D., & Kuenzi, M. ...And justice from all? The role of managers' personality and implicit person theories in their procedural and interactional justice.

Sue-Chan, C., Wood, R. E., Heslin, P. A., & Higgs. M. D. Individual adaptability in work role transitions.

VandeWalle, D., Dirks, K. T., Ferrin, D. L. Heslin, P. A. Cooper, C. D., & Kim, P. H. Willing to forgive? The role of implicit theories in the trust repair process.

Vandewalle, D., Heslin, P. A. & Anseel, F. Self-regulation derailed: Implicit person theories and feedback-seeking.

Careers

Heslin, P. A. Careers and corporate social responsibility.

Heslin, P. A., & Fugate, M. Potential insights from regulatory focus theory for pursuing and attaining "career success".

Heslin, P. A. & Skripkin, V. Moral disengagement and career demise.

Other Topics

Anseel, F., Heslin, P.A., & Baeten, X. A goal orientation perspective on relative deprivation theory.

Klehe, U.-C., Kleinmann, M., Richter, G. M., Melchers, K. G., König, C. J., & Heslin, P. A. The role of candidates' ability to identify criteria in responding to personality assessments.