Fred Luthans

Fred Luthans
Born	June 28, 1939 Clinton, Iowa, U.S.
Alma mater	University of Iowa
Occupation	Academic
Employer	University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Fred Luthans (born June 28, 1939 in Clinton, Iowa) is a management professor specializing in organizational behavior. He is the emeritus University and George Holmes Distinguished Professor of Management at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

Education

Luthans graduated with degrees from the University of Iowa: B.A. in Mathematics,1961; MBA, 1962; and Ph.D. in Management and social psychology, 1965. Henry Albers and Max Wortman were his academic advisers at Iowa. He also took post-doctoral seminars in management at Columbia University while serving in the United States Army stationed at United States Military Academy, West Point, N.Y,.

Academic career

After service as an Army Captain teaching psychology and leadership at the United States Military Academy at West Point, NY from 1965–1967, Luthans joined the faculty of the Department of Management at the University of Nebraska where he has remained to pursue his entire academic career. In 1986 the Academy of Management elected him to its presidency and in 1997 he received the Distinguished Management Educator Award and in 2017 the Organizational Behavior Lifetime Achievement Award.

Research

Luthans was one of the first management scholars to apply behavioral science to better understanding and effectively manage human behavior in organizations. This evolved into the now widely recognized discipline of organizational behavior, by far the largest division in the Academy of Management. His book Organizational Behavior (now in its 13th edition), is generally recognized as the first mainline text (1973) in this field.

Drawing from his University of Iowa behavioral psychology education, Luthans’ first research stream applied positive reinforcement theory and techniques to improve employee performance. This led to his second seminal book on Organizational Behavior Modification (co-authored with one of his former doctoral students Robert Kreitner in 1975). A meta-analysis mainly consisting of his studies indicated a strong relationship between his "O.B. Mod." approach and improved employee performance in both manufacturing and service organizations. A quantitative analysis published in the Academy of Management Learning and Education Journal on the importance, scientific validity, and practical usefulness of all theories in the field found Luthans’ Organizational Behavior Modification Theory among the eight highest rated (along with those by Kurt Lewin, David McClelland, [(Richard Hackman]], Edwin A. Locke, John B. Miner, Victor Vroom, and Bernard Bass).

In the 1980s, Luthans conducted observational, qualitative research to answer the following questions: "What do managers really do in their day-to-day activities?" , "What do successful managers really do?" and "What do effective managers really do?" This led to his third book, "Real Managers" (1988). He found the most frequently observed activity contributing to success was their social network skills. Effective managers, on the other hand, gave relatively moreattention to communicating and human resource management, with networking receiving the least attention. This research empirically demonstrated the importance of networking and politicking in order to be successful. The findings of this study were the basis of a new version of the book that will be released by Hogan Assessments in 2018, with a new chapter by Robert Hogan.

In the 1990s, with globalization taking the forefront in the management field, Luthans’ research took on an international focus and resulted in his next major book (co-authored with now deceased Richard Hodgetts and now Jonathan Doh) International Management (1991, now in its eighth edition).

Former doctoral student Alex Stajkovic, and Luthans conducted a meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin that indicated a strong relationship between self-efficacy and work-related performance. After this article, drawing from the positive psychology movement, his own early research on positive reinforcement, and Stajkovic's work on Core Confidence, Luthans founded, conceptualized, and conducted basic research on what he termed positive organizational behavior or simply POB. With former doctoral student Carolyn Youssef-Morgan and colleague Bruce Avolio, this work resulted in the Oxford University Press book Psychological Capital (2007) and the expanded/updated Psychological Capital and Beyond.

This positive psychological capital or simply PsyCap is made up of positive psychological resources of Hope, Efficacy, Resiliency, and Optimism, or the HERO within. The key differentiator between PsyCap, Core Confidence, Core Self-evaluations, and other related constructs is that it is "state-like," meaning it is not a stable trait and is malleable to environmental influences. The benefit of this is that PsyCap can be developed in relatively short (2-3 hour) intervention workshops. This work on PsyCap has resulted in Luthans receiving the 2008 Outstanding Research and Creative Activity (ORCA), awards from the University of Nebraska system, and numerous citations (e.g., in 2017 made Top 1% Web of Science Citation List of all researchers and recently Google Scholar profile indicted about 55,000 citations, H-index of 90 and i-10 index of 214).

Selected bibliography

• Luthans, F. (1973). Organizational behavior. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-125930-9
• Luthans, F., & Kreitner, R. (1975). Organizational behavior modification. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman.
• Luthans, Fred and Todd I. Stewart (July 1978). "The Reality or Illusion of a General Contingency Theory of Management: A Response to the Longenecker and Pringle Critique". The Academy of Management Review. 3 (3). Academy of Management: 683–687. doi:10.2307/257560. JSTOR 257560.
• Luthans, F., & Davis, T. (1980). A social learning approach to organizational behavior. Academy of Management Review, 7, 281-290.
• Luthans, F. (1988). Successful vs. effective real managers. Academy of Management Executive, 2, 127-132.
• Luthans, F., Hodgetts, R.M., & Rosenkrantz, S. (1988). Real managers. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger. ISBN 0-88730-345-5
• Luthans, F., & Hodgetts, R.M. (1991). International management. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-338119-5
• Stajkovic, A.D., & Luthans, F. (1997). A meta-analysis of the effects of organizational behavior modification on task performance. Academy of Management Journal, 40, 1122-1149.
• Stajkovic, A.D., & Luthans, F. (1998). Self-efficacy and work-related performance: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 124, 240-261.
• Stajkovic, A.D., & Luthans, F. (2001). Differential effects of incentive motivators on work performance, Academy of Management Journal, 4, 580-590.
• Luthans, F. (2002). The need for and meaning of positive organizational behavior. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 6, 695-706.
• Stajkovic, A.D., & Luthans, F. (2003) Behavioral management and task performance in organizations: conceptual background, meta-analysis, and test of alternative models, Personnel Psychology, 56, 155-194
• Luthans, F., Avolio, B., Avey, J., & Norman, S. (2007).Positive psychological capital: Measurement and relationship with performance and satisfaction. Personnel Psychology, 60, 541-572.
• Luthans, F., & Youssef, C.M. (2007). Emerging positive organizational behavior. Journal of Management, 33, 321-349.
• Luthans, F., Youssef, C.M., & Avolio, B.J. (2007, 2015). Psychological capital. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-518752-0
• Luthans, F., Avey, J., Avolio, B., & Peterson, S. (2010). The development and resulting performance impact of positive psychological capital. Human resource Development Quarterly, 21, 41-67.
• Luthans, F., & Youssef-Morgan (2017). Psychological capital: An evidence-based positive approach. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 4, 17.1-17.28.

External links

• Fred Luthans Web Site
• University of Nebraska The Institute for Innovative Leadership