James Smither, Ph.D.

Jim Smither is a Professor in the Management Department at La Salle, where he has won the Christian R. and Mary L. Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching (2010), Beta Gamma Sigma Professor of the Year Award (2010), and the La Salle University Faculty Distinguished Scholar Award (2004).

Professor Smither is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. He is also the recipient of the R. Wayne Pace HRD Book of the Year Award (2010) from the Academy of Human Resource Development for “Performance Management: Putting Research into Action” and the outstanding manuscript published in Volume 11 (2010) of Journal of Behavioral and Applied Management.

He is currently a Consulting Editor at the Journal of Applied Psychology. He also serves on the editorial boards of Leadership Quarterly and the Journal of Business and Psychology.  From 1997 to 2003, he served as Associate Editor of Personnel Psychology. He has published over 55 scholarly articles and chapters; his research has been published in top-tier journals such as Personnel Psychology, Journal of Applied Psychology, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.

Professor Smither has consulted with over 70 firms in human resources and leadership development. He has worked with companies in a variety of industries such as telecommunications, semiconductor, accounting, airline, consumer products, aerospace, financial, packaging, casino, health care, pharmaceutical, education, and government.

Why La Salle?

People here talk about ‘together and by association’ and they mean it.  Stated simply, this place has more good people than I have seen elsewhere.  Relationships are collegial.  Faculty, staff, and students care about each other.  You are a person here, not a number.  People know you and they care.

Areas of Expertise

Leadership development
Human resource management
Managerial decision making

Education

Ph.D., Stevens Institute of Technology
M.A., Montclair State University
M.A., Seton Hall University
B.A., La Salle University

Teaching

MBA 810: Self-Assessment for Leadership
MGT 760: Human Resource Management
MGT 769: Human Resource Development
MGT 775: Irrational Decision Making
MGT 312: Managing Human Resources: A Skills-Based Approach
MGT 355: Power, Motivation, and Leadership

Recent Publications

London, M., & Smither, J.W. (2019). Historical challenges of using 3600 feedback for performance evaluation. In A. H. Church, D. W. Bracken, J. W. Fleenor, & D. S. Rose (Eds.), The handbook of strategic 360-degree feedback. New York: Oxford University Press.

Rotolo, C.T., Church, A.H., Adler, S., Smither, J.W., Colquitt, A.L., Shull, A.C., Paul, K.B., & Foster, G. (2018). Putting an end to bad talent management: A call to action for the field of I-O psychology. Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, 11, 176-219.

Kim, K.Y., Atwater, L.E., Patel, P., & Smither, J.W. (2016). Multisource feedback, human capital, and the financial performance of organizations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 101, 1569-1584.

Flynn, B., Smither, J.W., & Walker, A.G. (2016). Exploring the relationship between leaders’ core self-evaluations and subordinates’ perceptions of servant leadership: A field study. Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 23, 260-271.

Smither, J.W., & Walker, A. G. (2015). The relationship between core self-evaluations, views of god, and intrinsic/extrinsic religious motivation. Psychological Reports, 116, 647-662.

Smither, J.W. (2015). The fate of performance ratings: Don’t write the obituary yet. Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, 8, 77-80.

Walker, A.G., Jones-Farmer, L.A., DeBode, J.D., Smither, J.W., & Smith, R.D. (2014) Using latent profile regression to explore the relationship between religiosity and work-related ethical judgments. Journal of Religion and Business Ethics, 3.

Braddy, P. W., Atwater, L., Strum, R., Smither, J.W., & Fleenor, J. (2013). Validating the Feedback Orientation Scale in a leadership development context. Group and Organization Management, 38, 690-716.

Walker, A.G., Smither, J.W., & DeBode, J. (2012).  The effects of religiosity on ethical judgments. Journal of Business Ethics, 106, 437-452.

Smither, J.W. (2012). Performance management. In S.W.J. Kozlowski (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of organizational psychology. New York: Oxford University Press.

Smither, J.W. (2011). Can psychotherapy research serve as a guide for research about executive coaching? An agenda for the next decade. Journal of Business and Psychology, 26, 135-145.

Fleenor, J.W., Smither, J.W., Atwater, L.E., Braddy, P.W., & Sturm, R.E. (2010). Self-other rating agreement in leadership: A review. Leadership Quarterly, 21, 1005-1034.

Walker, A.G., Smither, J.W., Atwater, L.E., Dominick, P.G., Brett, J.F., & Reilly, R.R. (2010). Personality and multisource feedback improvement: A longitudinal investigation.  Journal of Behavioral and Applied Management, 11(2), 175-204.

Smither, J.W., & London, M. (Editors). (2009). Performance management: Putting research into action. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Smither, J.W., & London, M. (2009). Best practices in performance management. In J.W. Smither & M. London (Eds.), Performance management: Putting research into action (pp. 585-625). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Atwater, L., Wang, M., Smither, J.W., & Fleenor, J.W. (2009). Are cultural characteristics associated with the relationship between self and others’ ratings of leadership? Journal of Applied Psychology, 94, 876-886.

Walker, A.G., Smither, J.W., & Waldman, D. A. (2008). A longitudinal examination of concomitant changes in team leadership and customer satisfaction. Personnel Psychology, 61, 547-577.

Smither, J.W., Brett, J.F., & Atwater, L.E. (2008).  What do leaders recall about their multisource feedback? Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies. 14, 202-218.

Tavana, M., LoPinto, F., & Smither, J.W. (2008).  An examination of the similarity between a new sigmoid function-based consensus ranking method and four commonly-used algorithms. International Journal of Operational Research, 3, 384-398.