Professor John Arnold
Email: John.Arnold@sheffield.ac.ukTelephone: +44 (0) 114 222 3271
Current Roles
Director, Institute of Work Psychology
Professor of Work Psychology
Areas of Expertise
Career development and career management
Leadership
Work motivation
The link between work attitudes and work behaviours
Current Areas of Research
The career management strategies used by research staff
The accuracy and utility of recent models of career and career success
Predictors of voluntary turnover amongst health professionals
Designing jobs that are good for career development
The human impact of employee share ownership schemes
The role of goal orientations in motivation
Transformational leadership and employee absence
The role of “luck” in careers
Qualifications
PhD Psychology (University of Sheffield)
BA (Hons) Psychology (University of Nottingham)
Professional Affiliations
Chartered Occupational Psychologist
Fellow of the British Psychological Society
Registered Psychologist with the Health Professions Council
Member of: Society for Industrial-Organizational Psychology (SIOP); International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP); Academy of Management (AoM); British Academy of Management (BAM); European Association of Work & Organizational Psychology (EAWOP).
Miscellaneous Info
John Arnold joined the Institute of Work Psychology (IWP) as Professor of Work Psychology on 1 May 2011. He is a Fellow and Chartered Psychologist of the British Psychological Society, and a Registered Psychologist with the Health Professions Council. Before joining IWP he worked at Loughborough University School of Business and Economics for 15 years, and Manchester School of Management for 8 years. John is an experienced and successful manager and leader within Business/Management School environments, including top management team roles in two Schools, covering (at various times) undergraduate teaching, research and staff development remits. He is scheduled to take on the role of Director of IWP in succession to Professor Rod Nicolson in 2012.
John’s research, teaching and consultancy involve all areas of careers and their management from both individual and organisational perspectives. Particular interests include career choice, personal development and adjustment, work role identities and transitions (including the transition into working life), career success and failure, mid/late career issues, and the impact of career management interventions such as mentoring, development centres and succession planning. John is also interested in the interfaces between careers and other related topics such as leadership, work design, ageing and life-span development. He is an experienced teacher and facilitator with many different student groups, and is lead author for the first four editions of the successful textbook Work Psychology, now in its 5th edition. Since 1985 he has been Principal or Co-investigator on 19 externally funded research projects and has published 65 articles in refereed academic journals as well as a number of other articles and 80 refereed conference papers.
John’s teaching has always been very well received by all student groups: undergraduate, postgraduate and post-experience. He places an emphasis on starting with concepts and theories, and then using them in practical ways, with a mixture of mini-lectures, case-studies, videos, experiential exercises and applied research mini-projects for students. Some of the examples and case studies are from his own research. Wherever possible he devises student assignments that not only reflect their academic learning but also contribute to their personal and professional development e.g. by requiring them to try out techniques and ideas discussed in class, and report back on the results. John’s involvement in the successful textbook Work Psychology demonstrates his commitment to student learning and to communicating work psychology to student audiences.
The impact of John’s research is considerable. It has led at least five companies to re-design their graduate development schemes. It has informed the content of health employers’ recruitment advertising for allied health professionals, and has been used to inform pay negotiations between allied health professional bodies and government. His evaluation work in a company led it to alter the way it used development centres in the career development of high-flying staff. In another project with a PhD student, several IT companies changed the ways in which they managed the careers of their IT professionals.
John has published extensive experience of academic journal editing and reviewing, including as editor of Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology (JOOP) from 2004 to 2008. He is currently a consulting editor with four leading journals: JOOP, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Human Relations, and Organizational Psychology Review. He was a member of the business and management panel in the UK’s Research Assessment Exercise in 2008, and will be again for the Research Excellence Framework in 2014. He has supervised or co-supervised 14 research students to successful completion, with several more nearing completion. John is committed to the supervision and development of research students and plans to continue his high level of activity in this area.
John is delighted to be back at IWP, having previously been a PhD student at its predecessor, the MRC/ESRC Social and Applied Psychology Unit more years ago than he cares to admit. Suffice to say that the Human League were one of Sheffield’s big musical claims to fame at the time! John intends to play a leading part in the development of IWP as a world-leading centre for work psychology, as well as a key component of the Management School at the University of Sheffield. John believes that work psychology can be both closely connected with business, management and other disciplines, whilst also offering distinctive perspectives and expertise to real-life issues. He values both quantitative and qualitative research, and is accustomed to working with colleagues from other disciplines.
Example Publications
Arnold, J. (2011). 21st century career concepts: Magic, measurement, and career capital. The Psychologist, 24, 106-109.
Loan-Clarke, J., Arnold, J., Coombs, C. R., Hartley, R., and Bosley, S. (2010). Retention, turnover and return – A longitudinal study of Allied Health Professionals in Britain. Human Resource Management Journal. 20, 391-406.
Cheung, R., and Arnold, J. (2010). Antecedents of career exploration amongst Hong Kong Chinese university students: testing contextual and developmental variables. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 76, 25-36.
Coombs, C. R., Arnold, J., Loan-Clarke, J., Bosley, S., and Martin, C. (2010). Allied Health Professionals’ intention to work for the NHS: A study of stayers, leavers and returners. Health Services Management Research. 23, 47-53.
Bosley, S., Arnold, J., and Cohen, L. (2009). How other people shape our careers: a typology drawn from career narratives. Human Relations, 62, 1487-1520.
Khapova, S. N., Vinkenburg, C. J., and Arnold, J. (2009). Careers research in Europe: Identity and contribution. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 82, 709-719.
Loan-Clarke, J., Arnold, J. Coombs, C. R., Bosley, S. and Martin, C. (2009). Why do speech and language therapists stay in, leave and (sometimes) return to the National Health Service (NHS)? International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 44, 883-900.
Arnold, J., and Cohen, L. (2008). The psychology of careers in industrial-organizational settings: A critical but appreciative analysis. In Hodgkinson, G. P, and Ford, J. K. (Eds) International Review of Industrial/Organizational Psychology, Vol. 23, Chichester: Wiley pp. 1-44.
Morrell, K., Loan-Clarke, J., Arnold, J, and Wilkinson, A.J. (2008). A refinement and test of the unfolding model of voluntary turnover in a sellers’ labour market. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 57, 128-150.
Clark, M., and Arnold, J. (2008). The nature, prevalence and correlates of generativity amongst men in middle career. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 73, 473-484.
Coombs, C.R, Arnold, J., Loan-Clarke, J., Wilkinson, A.J, Park, J., and Preston, D. (2007). Improving the recruitment and return of nurses and allied health professionals: A quantitative study. Health Services Management Research, 20, 22-36.
Bosley, S., Arnold, J., and Cohen, L. (2007). The anatomy of credibility: A conceptual framework of valued career helper attributes. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 70, 116-134.
Rothwell, A. T., and Arnold, J. (2007). Self-perceived employability: Development and validation of a scale. Personnel Review, 36, 23-41.
Morrell, K., and Arnold, J. (2007). Look after they leap: Illustrating the value of retrospective self-reports in turnover research. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 18, 1683-1699.
Arnold, J., Loan-Clarke, J., Coombs, C.R, Wilkinson, A.J, Park, J., and Preston, D. (2006). How well can the theory of planned behavior account for occupational intentions? Journal of Vocational Behavior, 69, 374-390.
Cohen, L., Wilkinson, A.J., Arnold, J., and Finn, R. (2005). “Remember I’m the bloody architect!”. Architects, organizations, and discourses of profession. Work, Employment and Society, 19, 775-796.
Rothwell, A. T., and Arnold, J. (2005). How HR professionals rate continuing professional development. Human Resource Management Journal 15 (3) 18-32.
Shah, S., Travers, C., and Arnold, J. (2004). Disabled and successful: Education in the life stories of disabled high achievers. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 4, 122-132.
El-Sawad, A., Arnold, J., and Cohen, L. (2004). ‘Doublethink’: The prevalence and function of contradiction in accounts of organisational life. Human Relations, 57, 1179-1203.
Shah, S., Arnold, J. and Travers, C. (2004). The impact of childhood on disabled professionals. Children and Society, 18, 194-206.
Arnold, J. (2004). The congruence problem in John Holland’s theory of vocational decisions. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology. 77, 95-113.
Park, J. R., Coombs, C. R., Wilkinson, A. J., Loan-Clarke J., Arnold, J, and Preston, D. (2003). The attractiveness of Physiotherapy in the NHS as a career choice: A qualitative study. Physiotherapy 89(10), 575-583.
Coombs, C.R, Park, J.R., Loan-Clarke, J., Arnold, J., Preston, D., and Wilkinson, A.J. (2003). Perceptions of Radiography and the NHS: A qualitative study. Radiography 9 (2), 109-122.
Arnold, J., Coombs, C.R., Wilkinson, A.J., Loan-Clarke, J., Preston, D., and Park, J. (2003). Corporate images of the United Kingdom National Health Service: Implications for the recruitment and retention of nursing and allied health profession staff. Corporate Reputation Review 6(3), 223-238.
Cohen, L., Finn, R., Wilkinson, A.J., and Arnold, J. (2003). Professional work and management. International Studies of Management and Organization 32(2), 3-24.
Arnold, J., Schalk, R., Bosley, S., and Van Overbeek, S. (2002). Graduates’ experiences of work in small organizations in the UK and the Netherlands: Better than expected. International Small Business Journal, 20, 477-497.
Arnold, J. (2002). Tensions between assessment, grading and development in development centres: A case study. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 13, 975-991.
Mackenzie Davey, K., and Arnold, J. (2000). A multi-method study of accounts of personal change by graduates starting work: Self ratings, categories, and women’s discourses, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 73, 461-486.
Arnold, J., and Reicherts, M. (2000). The transition into work - An editorial commentary. Swiss Journal of Psychology, 59, 221-226.