Our Faculty
James W. Smither, Ph.D.
Chair of the Management and Leadership Department
Professor of Management
Contact Information
Office: College Hall 424
Phone: 215.951.1797
Email: smither@lasalle.edu
Profile
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. 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 55 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.
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 786: Irrational Decision Making
- MGT 312: Managing Human Resources: A Skills-Based Approach
- MGT 355: Power, Motivation, and Leadership
Publications
Fleenor, J.W., Smither, J.W., Atwater, L.E., Braddy, P.W., & Sturm, R.E. (forthcoming). Self-other rating agreement in leadership: A review. Leadership Quarterly.
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.
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.
Books
Smither, J.W., & London, M. (Editors). (2009). Performance management: Putting research into action. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Smither, J.W. (Editor). (1998). Performance appraisal: State-of-the-art in practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Chapters
Smither, J.W. (forthcoming). Performance management. In S.W.J. Kozlowski (Ed.), Oxford handbook of industrial and organizational psychology. Oxford University Press.
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.
London, M., Smither, J.W., & Diamante, T. (2007). Best practices in leadership assessment. In J.A. Conger & R.E. Riggio (Eds.), The practice of leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Smither, J.W., & London, M. (2007). Leadership development. In S. Rogelberg (Ed.), Encyclopedia of industrial and organizational psychology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Smither, J.W., & Reilly, S.P. (2001). Coaching in organizations: A social psychological perspective. In M. London (Ed.), How people evaluate others in organizations: Person perception and interpersonal judgment in I/O psychology. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Presentations
Atwater, L, Wang, M., Smither, J.W., & Fleenor, J.W (2008, August). Do cultural characteristics affect the relationship between self and others' ratings of leadership? Paper presented at the Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Anaheim, CA.
Smither, J.W., Walker, A.G., & Waldman, D.A. (2007, May). Improvements in upward feedback ratings of team leadership are related to improvements in unit-level customer satisfaction. Paper presented at the 19th Annual Convention of the Association for Psychological Science. Washington, D.C.
Seltzer, J, & Smither, J.W. (2007, May). "Where there is a will…": A new exercise to explore distributive and integrative conflict management. Paper presented at the 44th Annual Meeting of the Eastern Academy of Management, New Brunswick, NJ.
Smither, J.W., Brett, J.F., & Atwater, L.E., (2007, April). What do leaders recall about their multisource feedback? Paper presented at the Twenty-Second Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, NY.
Tavana, M., LoPinto, F., & Smither, J.W. (2007, March). An examination of the similarity between a new sigmoid function-based consensus ranking method and four commonly-used algorithms. Paper presented at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Northeast Decision Sciences Institute. Baltimore, MD. (Note: Awarded “Best Theory Paper Finalist”)
