The papers in this issue touch upon a wide variety of topics but what is common among them is that they deal with some aspect of human behavior and its determinants that seem to be relevant in the present context of organizational world.

The first paper, “Relationship Between Self-Awareness and Transformational Leadership: A Study in IT Industry” by Vivekananda Suri and V M Prasad, discusses the relationship between self-awareness and transformational leadership. Leadership as a concept and area of research has attracted more research than any other single concept in the domain of organizational behavior. The reason for this fascination could be that there are so many variants of leadership and so many determinants (both individual and contextual) of leadership that it always provides and would continue to provide a fertile ground for more research to be carried out with respect to understanding leaders and their behavior. In this particular paper the authors, based on an empirical investigation on a sample drawn from the IT industry, are able to establish a relationship between self-awareness and transformational leadership. Self-awareness in this paper has been defined as a component of emotional intelligence, which again is quite a favorite among the researchers as well as the practitioners.

The second paper, “Turnover Intentions: Perspectives of IT Professionals in Kerala” by George A P and Joji Alex N, deals with employee turnover which has been a growing concern for many organizations, especially those in the IT and ITES industry. Most studies and research examining employee turnover, tend to examine turnover intentions (employee Intention to Quit (ITQ)) rather than turnover behavior. Examining and understanding the reasons behind employee turnover intentions is particularly important from the organization’s point of view as it can help them in identifying and implementing interventions which, in turn, can help reduce turnover behavior. In this paper, the authors attempt to understand the importance of Internal Career Anchors (ICA) and External Career Opportunities (ECO) when it comes for employees in determining their intention to quit an organization. The findings from the paper indicate interesting results with respect to the relationship between ITQ, ICA and ECO.

The third paper, “Role of Stress and Locus of Control in Job Satisfaction Among Middle Managers” by Ashok Pratap Singh and Ashish Kumar Dubey, discusses the role of stress and locus of control in determining job satisfaction. Lot of research has been carried out and published on the three variables reported in this study: stress, locus of control and job satisfaction. Still the question, what satisfies an employee would continue to attract the attention of researchers and practitioners alike simply because, job satisfaction has serious implications on major individual and organizational level outcomes. The findings from the study indicate that different types of organizational stress, such as role overload, role ambiguity, role conflict and overall stress have statistically significant negative correlations with job satisfaction.

The final paper, “Psychological Wellbeing of Students with Type A and Type B Personalities” by Esha Mahajan and Renu Rastogi, discusses the concept of Psychological Wellbeing (PWB) and tries to examine if there are significant differences between the students with Type A and Type B personalities with respect to their perception of PWB. Though the concept of PWB may be as old as the concept of emotional and rational human beings, but in terms of research, it is still gaining ground. Based on the results of t-test, the findings of the study indicate that there are no statistically significant differences in the perception of PWB among the students with Type A and Type B personalities. Although further analyses on the components of PWB indicate that there are statistically significant variations on two dimensions of PWB, i.e., autonomy and environmental mastery.

-- Vivekanand
Consulting Editor