ABSTRACT
Attribution theory has long been a part of social psychology. It has had many contributors and versions. The attribution theory as applied to managerial perceptions (Green and Mitchell 1979; Mitchell and Wood 1980) is more indigenous to organizational behavior than other attribution theories. This theory appears to be best classified as focused on unconscious considerations; although the road to this position has been somewhat long and winding, a number of points of interest have arisen along the way. Conscious considerations are often intertwined as well. This attribution theory rates four stars on estimated validity; its importance rating at the hands of organizational behavior specialists is 4.18 (see Miner 2005, Chapter 11). As far as practical usefulness is concerned, it has proved to be rather deficient, and the theory has not turned out to be particularly amenable to meta-analysis. Yet there have been a number of positive reviews, particularly by Martinko and his collaborators (see Martinko, Douglas, and Harvey 2006; Martinko, Harvey, and Douglas 2007). Power motivation, in particular, has not proved to operate as hypothesized by the extended theory (Ferrier, Smith, Rediker, and Mitchell 1995).
