Dr. Brian Blake

Previously a Professor at Purdue University, Dr. Blake joined CSU in 1981. Specializing in consumer psychology, he has contributed over 140 journal articles, book chapters, technical reports, and conference presentations. He co-founded CSU's graduate Consumer-Industrial Research Program (CIRP).

Dr. Blake has over 30 years of professional experience in marketing and public opinion research. He was a founder and partner in Tactical Decisions Group (later merged to form Triad Research), a market research firm that became one of the larger Ohio based market research companies and enjoyed multimillion-dollar revenues. His clients have been both national and locally based companies (e.g., Merck & Company, Pfizer, American Greetings, Land O' Lakes, Progressive, Rubbermaid, MetroHealth Systems, Dupont Chemical, and Broakw).

In CIRP, he enthusiastically shares the lessons of his extensive professional experience with his students. Currently an independent consultant on selected projects, he is focusing upon making CSU a major center of consumer psychology research.

Research Interests

Since 2002, in collaboration with Drs. Kimberly Neuendorf (CSU, School of Communication) and Dr. Michael Allen (University of Sydney, Marketing), Dr. Blake has conducted a multinational study of internet usage and online shopping. To date, data have been collected from samples in the USA, Canada, Austria, Iran, Taiwan, the People's Republic of China, Romania, Poland, Australia, and India.

The questions addressed in this project include:

• What types of people shop the Internet and how does this vary over nations?
• How do consumers' preferences for website features differ from nation to nation?
• What factors drive adoption of online shopping (e.g., innovativeness, trust in vendors, personal values)?
• How can websites be configured to appeal to specific subpopulations?
• In research on these issues, how can various methodological pitfalls be addressed (e.g., social desirability bias in self reports)?
• What new and better conceptual models can be devised for cross-national comparison of preference hierarchies and for identifying the structure of innovation features?

Teaching Interests

• Psy 519: Consumer psychology (psychological and social processes underlying an individual's behavior as a consumer)
• Psy 512: Survey methodology (questionnaire construction, sampling, overcoming methodological obstacles, enhancing "actionability" of study data)
• Psy 620: Advanced consumer research (applications of multivariate statistical techniques to consumer behavior research). Particular attention to segmentation, brand image, positioning, feature determinance, and predictive modeling.
• Psy 311: Behavioral Science Statistics
• Psy 339: Social Psychology

For more information, including a list of publications and courses taught, please visit the following web address:

Dr. Chieh-Chen Bowen

Dr. Bowen is an Industrial and Organizational (I-O does not mean Input-Output) Psychologist who earned her Ph.D. from Penn State in 1993. She enjoys applying psychological principles in the workplace to improve organizational efficiency without sacrificing employees' well-being.

Dr. Bowen enjoys teaching such graduate courses in I-O such as PSY 531 Computer Applications of Advanced Statistics, PSY 518 Personnel Psychology, and PSY 631 Job Analysis and Performance Management, and such undergraduate courses as PSY 411 Computer Software Package for Statistics and PSY 255 Psychology of Women. Dr. Bowen feels that she was lucky to encounter some great professors during her years of graduate study. Having been inspired and motivated by them, she now tries to motivate and encourage her students the same way. She is delighted to see the progress in her students as they from develop from being confused and struggling to mastering material in class.

Dr. Bowen's research interests include women's issues in the workplace, cross-cultural issues encountered by multi-national corporations seeking to establish themselves in foreign countries, performance management, employee/customer satisfaction surveys, selection, job analysis, and application of psychometric techniques to validate tests or questionnaires as well as application of meta-analysis in human resource management.

One of her publications examined attitudes toward women as managers in China (Bowen, Wu, Hwang, Scherer, 2007) and another examined sex discrimination in selection and compensation in Taiwan (Bowen, 2003). Several recent publication related to research methods and statistics were in content analysis (Bowen & Bowen, in press), meta-analysis (Bowen, in press) and normative versus ipsative measures (Encyclopedia of Industrial and Organizational Psychology , 2007), Two of her publications examined 'How effective are people at faking on occupational personality questionnaires?' (Martin, Bowen & Hunt, 2002) and 'A comparison of ipsative and normative approaches for ability to control faking in personality questionnaires' (Bowen, Martin, & Hunt, 2002).

Dr. Bowen was also in charge of developing and administrating an ongoing university-wide Quality of Service Survey that investigated students' perception of the quality of service they received on CSU campus. The results of the annual survey were used for campus improvement interventions.

According to the Society for Industrial-Organizational Psychology web site (www.siop.org), in 2001, the median salary for SIOP members with a Ph. D. was $90,000, and the median salary for members with M.A./M.S. was $60,000. If you are curious about I-O Psychology, Dr. Bowen will be happy to talk with you.

For more information, including a list of publications and courses taught, please visit the following web address:

http://facultyprofile.csuohio.edu/csufacultyprofile/detail.cfm?FacultyID=C_C_BOWEN

Dr. Michael Horvath

Dr. Horvath received his undergraduate degree in psychology from Bowling Green State University, followed by his masters and PhD in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from Michigan State University. After completing his education, he worked for several years at Clemson University before returning to Ohio in 2007 to join the psychology department at Cleveland State.

As a member of the Consumer and Industrial Research (CIRP) group at Cleveland State, Dr. Horvath researches and applies psychological principles in the work world. His primary interest is in different types of employee attitudes and motivation (such as the motivation of job applicants or trainees). In collaboration with his mentors, colleagues, and graduate students, Dr. Horvath has applied his skills to address real-world issues for such organizations such as Michelin, Torrington, Microsoft, Ford, and the City of Columbus, Ohio.

Dr. Horvath participates actively in his professional community. As a member of the Education and Training Committee of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, he leads a team that runs a web-based resource for instructors of I-O psychology, where they can find (and post) syllabi, exercises, and other information. He is also an active reviewer for professional journals and conferences.

Research Interests

Dr. Horvath's research interests can be described generally as the study of work-related motivation and attitudes. More specifically, his research tends to fall into three categories (see the sample research questions below):

1) Recruitment/Job Applicant Motivation and Attitudes: What can organizations do to  make their recruitment more efficient? What attracts potential employees -- what motivates them to apply to a company and accept job offers from a company? Which characteristics of organizations are most important to applicants? How do an organization's recruitment and selection policies affect applicant attraction? How does the type of recruitment medium (such as newspaper ads vs. Internet websites vs. personal networking) affect applicant quality, attitudes, and behavior?

2) Motivation in Training or Back on the Job: In a work world that is changing at an increasing pace, how can organizations motivate their employees to want to learn? What organizational policies and cultures enhance or inhibit learning motivation? What can trainers do before, during, and after training to maximize trainee motivation? What can managers to after training to encourage trainees to continue to develop their new skills back on the job? How do the personalities of individual trainees interact with assigned training or performance goals to influence trainee goals and motivation?

3) Reactions to Fair (and Unfair) Treatment: What can organizations do to make sure that their employees feel valued and fairly treated? What types of policies and procedures are seen as most fair? How can companies best communicate their policies and decisions? How can we predict when (and towards whom) an employee will retaliate because of a perception of unfair treatment?

Teaching Interests

PSY 311: Behavioral Science Statistics
PSY 331: Industrial-Organizational Psychology
PSY 611: Advanced Data Analysis with Computer Applications

For more information, including a list of publications and courses taught, please visit the following web address:

http://facultyprofile.csuohio.edu/csufacultyprofile/detail.cfm?FacultyID=M_HORVATH59

Dr. Brenda Johnson

Brenda K. Johnson earned her Ph. D. in Social-Organizational Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research interests are bias and discrimination in the workplace, and her teaching interests include multicultural psychology, organizational dynamics, social and organizational psychology, and group dynamics. Her dissertation research examined the impact of beliefs on Whites’ reactions to interracial work situations. She has presented her empirical and theoretical work at the Academy of Management, the American Psychological Association and the International Critical Management Studies Conference. Brenda is also a certified small group consultant in the A.K. Rice Institute for the Study of Social Systems. Her research in organizations, as a research associate at the J.M. Huber Institute for Learning in Organizations, included studying communities of practice in the US Army, and networks in a global manufacturing organization.

http://facultyprofile.csuohio.edu/csufacultyprofile/detail.cfm?FacultyID=B_K_JOHNSON74