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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 all degrees from the University of Iowa with a B.A. in mathematics in 1961, and then obtained his MBA in 1962, and Ph.D. in management and social psychology in 1965. Henry Albers and Max Wortman were his major 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, ], Edwin A. Locke, John B. Miner, Victor Vroom, and Bernard Bass).

In the 1980s, Luthans conducted rare observational, qualitative research to answer the questions of "What do managers really do in their day-to-day activities?"; "What do successful managers (those who rise rapidly in their organizations) really do?"; and "What do effective managers (those who have satisfied and committed employees and high quantity and quality outcomes in their units) really do?" This led to his third book Real Managers (1988). His research found that the relatively most frequently observed activity contributing to managers’ success was their social network skills (defined behaviorally from naturalistic observation methodology to be socializing/politicking and interacting with outsiders). Effective managers, on the other hand, were observed to give relatively most frequent attention to communicating and human resource management activities, with networking given the least attention. This finding that managers who were successful exhibited quite different behavioral activities than did their effective counterparts challenged conventional wisdom that promotions are based on doing activities that result in effective outcomes. This research empirically demonstrated the importance of playing the game (networking and politicking) in order to get ahead in organizations.The findings of this Real Managers study are the basis of a new version of the book which will be released by Hogan Assessments in 2018 with a new modern framing 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). Luthans previous work in both behavioral management and managerial activities were tested in other cultures, mainly Asia and Eastern Europe.

In recent years, drawing from the positive psychology movement and his own early research on positive reinforcement and, with former doctoral student Alex Stajkovic, on self-efficacy (their meta-analysis published in 1998 indicating a very strong relationship between self-efficacy and work-related performance is one of the most cited in the entire field), Luthans founded, defined, built theory and conducted basic research on what he terms 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. These four PsyCap components have been determined to best meet his POB inclusion criteria of being theory/research-based, having valid measurement, being state-like/open to development, and having desirable impact. Luthans and colleagues research has demonstrated that this PsyCap is a higher order, core construct. Each of the four dimensions has been found to load onto the overall core factor of PsyCap, which in turn has been more consistently related to both performance and satisfaction than each of the individual components. The key differentiator between PsyCap and most other positive constructs is that it is "state-like" and open to development. Luthans and colleagues (especially former doctoral students James Avey, Suzanne Peterson and Carolyn Youssef-Morgan) research has demonstrated that, compared to randomly assigned control groups, PsyCap can be developed in relatively short (2-3 hour) intervention workshops. Luthans and colleagues utility analysis of investing in and developing psychological capital has to date yielded a very high (270% in one study) what they call return on development (ROD). This work on PsyCap has resulted in Luthans receiving the 2008 Outstanding Research and Creative Activity (ORCA). Award 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, 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. (1988). Successful vs. effective real managers. Academy of Management Executive, 2, 127-132.
• Luthans, F. (2002). The need for and meaning of positive organizational behavior. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 6, 695-706.
• 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., Avolio, B., Avey, J., & Norman, S. (2007).Positive psychological capital: Measurement and relationship with performance and satisfaction. Personnel Psychology, 60, 541-572.
• Luthans, F., & Davis, T. (1980). A social learning approach to organizational behavior. Academy of Management Review, 7, 281-290.
• Luthans, F., & Hodgetts, R.M. (1991). International management. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-338119-5
• Luthans, F., Hodgetts, R.M., & Rosenkrantz, S. (1988). Real managers. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger. ISBN 0-88730-345-5
• Luthans, F., & Kreitner, R. (1975). Organizational behavior modification. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman.
• 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., & Youssef-Morgan (2017). Psychological capital: An evidence-based positive approach. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 4, 17.1-17.28.
• Stajkovic, A., & 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., & Luthans, F. (1998). Self-efficacy and work-related performance: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 124, 240-261.

References

1. http://www.aomonline.org/aom.asp?ID=&page_ID=74
2. http://nebraska.edu/recognition-and-awards/orca.html

External links

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

• People from Clinton, Iowa
• University of Iowa alumni
• United States Army officers
• University of Nebraska–Lincoln faculty
• 1939 births
• Living people