Walter Davis
Assistant Professor of Management

In the rapidly changing workplace, many employees now work in project teams, product development teams, and even in leaderless production teams — groups that make their own decisions, such as hiring, firing, scheduling, and ordering inventory.

Managers — who traditionally have provided direction and specific feedback, while holding employees accountable for outcomes — are being called upon to adapt and provide a different style of leadership. Instead of telling employees how to do their jobs, modern-day supervisors need to guide employees to learn and manage for themselves.

To help professionals in business and industry respond to the evolving work environment, Dr. Walter Davis, assistant professor of management in the University of Mississippi School of Business Administration, researches how individuals operate effectively in contemporary types of environments and organizations.

“As roles change in the workplace, we need a better understanding of how the relationships between supervisors and subordinates and between supervisors and their own co-workers are changing over time,” says Davis, a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources. “People certainly need different skill sets today than they did 20 to 30 years ago. Employees are working without direct supervision. To some extent they must invent their own jobs, manage themselves, and determine what contributions they can make to an organization’s success. So the question becomes — given that traditional management techniques just might not work any more — what do individuals need to have in terms of skills and abilities in order to work well in these environments?

“More and more being effective in the workplace is going to be about not only developing technical skills but also learning how to build relationships inside and outside the organization,” the UM professor says.

To prepare his students for changing workplace roles and to provide guidance to business and industry, Davis focuses his research on two areas: how people seek and react to feedback in these new structures, and how people develop and use learning orientation to do a better job. In research published in the Journal of Management, Davis and co-authors reflect on understanding employees’ reaction to feedback.

“The main conclusion is people tend not to respond well to supervisors who use coercion, or in some cases, even rewards to influence people,” he says. “People respond better to supervisors who have referent power. Some managers have power because they can either punish or reward employees. Other supervisors have this referent power because they are respected, liked, and trusted.

“We found that feedback — especially negative feedback — is much more effective when it comes from someone with this referent power,” says the UM professor, who is helping business students understand the changing role of management, so they are better equipped to go out into the workforce and make a positive impact.

Recognizing that many organizations have started developing performance appraisal and feedback systems where employees get feedback from both their supervisors and peers, Davis also is providing insights on these systems, with his conclusions published in Group and Organizational Management Journal.

“One important finding is employees are not going to view a peer review system as being credible — they are not going to feel comfortable with the system — unless they receive a considerable amount of training on how to use the system. Individuals need training on how to give feedback and how to respond appropriately to feedback. People who don’t feel they’ve been given this training tend to distrust the system and discount the feedback.

Davis, who utilizes the business school’s behavioral research laboratory to create management simulations, also says his research indicates that, in some cases, giving employees less feedback and less stringent accountability standards can lead to greater interest in the task, greater self-confidence in performing the task, and greater performance on the task.

“When people have more flexibility, creativity and innovation follows, and that’s crucial in today’s work environment — allowing employees an opportunity to draw on their own skills, talents, and insights,” Davis says.