Awarded by: Academy of Management (HR division)
Professor Jing Zhu in Management has won a prestigious international award in her field for a study that looked at how unemployed individuals went about their job search on a daily basis and how perceived progress, emotions and belief in finding a job on a given day affected their search efforts on the next day.
She received the Scholarly Achievement Award for 2011 from the Academy of Management (HR division), which is the leading professional association for scholars of management and organizations, for the paper "The job-search grind: Perceived progress, self reactions, and self-regulation of search effort" that she has co-authored with Connie R. Wanberg and Edwin A.J. Van Hooft.
The paper was an insightful departure from the usual macro perspective on unemployment.Prof. Zhu and the co-authors followed 233 unemployed people for three weeks, taking daily measurements of their state of mind, their assessment of their progress and their job-search efforts that day to show how the job search was experienced. They also factored in the importance of a job to the individual since some had greater financial hardship or attached a greater sense of identity to their job, as well as the individual's ability to detach from feelings that may interfere with achieving a goal, especially after a bad day.
The findings offered insights on how to help job-seekers make the most of their efforts.