Thomas L. Tang

Thomas Li-Ping Tang was born and raised in Taipei, Taiwan. He earned his BS degree in Psychology from Chung Yuan Christian University in Chungli, Taiwan. After serving the Chinese Army for two years in Taiwan as a second lieutenant, he came to the US in 1973. He studied at University of Detroit for only one year and then transferred to the Industrial and Organizational Psychology (I/O) Program at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his MA and PhD in 1977 and 1981, respectively. At Chung Yuan Christian University, he was the first in his class (the second graduating class) and the first graduate to receive a PhD degree in the Psychology Department.
When he was a graduate student at CWRU, he worked as a Research Assistant at the Psychological Research Services (PRS) providing vocational and educational counseling to students and professionals and conducting research and training related to wage and salary administration in the I/O Psychology Program. In addition to his psychological background, his graduate training also involved many Organizational Behavior (OB) and Human Resource Management (HRM) courses at the Weatherhead School of Management. In particular, he took classes from Professors Neilson (PhD, Harvard University), Brown (Yale University), Salipante (University of Chicago), Berrittoni (University of Minnesota), and Friedlander (Case Western Reserve University). As the first Ph.D. student under the supervision of Roy Baumeister (a social psychologist with a PhD from Princeton University and disciple of Edward E. Jones), Tang finished his dissertation research projects within two years.
After the completion of his Ph.D. degree, he returned back to Taiwan and taught Industrial and Organizational Psychology at National Taiwan University (NTU) in Taipei, Taiwan, for one year, to fulfill his father's dream. His father, Prof. Kuan Ying Tang was one of the four founding fathers of the Department of Psychology at NTU. On January 1, 1983, he started a new career to teach Industrial and Organizational Psychology at Middle Tennessee State University(MTSU). After winning the outstanding research award in Psychology in 1991, he moved from Department of Psychology to Department of Management and Marketing in the College of Business at MTSU. He won the second outstanding research award in 1999. In 2008, he was the eighth person to receive the Outstanding Career Achievement Award at MTSU. Currently, he is a Professor of Management in the Department of Management and Marketing, Jennings A. Jones College of Business, at Middle Tennessee State University.
Tang's research interests are related to work motivation, economic psychology, business ethics, OB, HRM, and cross-cultural issues. He has published over 140 journal articles, abstracts, and book chapters in five languages on many topics. His research has appeared in many top journals in psychology (e.g., Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Intelligence, Applied Psychology: An International Review) and in management (e.g., Journal of Management, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Management and Organization Review, Human Relations, Journal of Business Ethics). He is most known for his research on attitudes toward money--meaning of money, Money Ethic, the Love of Money, and Monetary Intelligence. He has presented papers in many national and international psychology and management conferences. Professor Tang presented seminars and his ideas to graduate students and faculty in China (Beijing, Fuzhou, Hong Kong, Lianyungang, Nanchang, Shanghai, and Qingdao), France (Nantes), Spain (Valencia), Singapore, Taiwan (Chungli, and Taipei), and many other places around the world.
Motivation, Personality, and Performance
In his dissertation research, Tang and Baumeister (1984) challenged the assumption: "turning play into work undermines intrinsic motivation" (Lepper & Greene, 1975). They discovered that in particular, "turning play into work" by means of explicit labels may increase intrinsic motivation among persons who truly value work. This notion is related to research in the areas of creativity (Amabile et al., 1986) and playfulness in using computers at work (Webster & Martocchio, 1992), for example.
One of the possible implications is that when individuals find the purpose of life and feel passionate about it, then, they do it for the enjoyment (fun) of the activity or the love of the games. There is no distinction between work and play in their lives. Adrian Furnham once said that his hobby is work. According to Teresa Amabile, a professor at Harvard Business School, famous for her research on creativity, positive emotions and small success everyday lead to enjoyment, creativity, performance, and success in life.

In addition to personality variables such as Protestant Work Ethic, Leisure Ethic, and Type A Personality examined in his dissertation research, he has explored additional variables, such as self-esteem (Tang, Liu, & Vermillion, 1987), (Tang & Reynolds, 1993) organization-based self-esteem (Tang & Gilbert, 1994), and hardiness (Tang & Hammontree, 1992) on performance, illness, absenteeism, and organizational citizenship behavior (Tang & Ibrahim, 1998). (Tang, Sutarso, Davis, Dolinski, Ibrahim, & Wagner, 2008) Prof. Tang also revealed his interests in trust (Gilbert & Tang, 1998), justice (Tang & Baldwin, 1996), labor union (Singer & Tang, 1996), (Laws & Tang, 1999) Japanese Management Style (Tang, Kim, & O'Donald, 2000), quality circles (Tang, Tollison, & Whiteside, 1987; 1989) , and self-managing teams (Foote & Tang, 2008).
Challenge Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Theory
Although Maslow's hierarchy of needs is well known in the psychology and management literature, very limited empirical literature has tested this theory empirically. There are several important research questions. First, do people have five levels of needs? Do they group these five levels of needs into two major categories? Second, are there cross-cultural differences? Third, do stressful events, such as a war, have an impact on the importance and satisfaction of these needs? Fourth, are there changes from peacetime to war time? Fifth, do people experience the same patterns of changes across cultures?
Tang and his colleagues collected cross-cultural data, challenged Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory regarding the higher-order (self-esteem and self-actualization) and lower-order (physiological, safety, and love) classification of the needs, in particular, explored the levels of needs for importance and satisfaction during peacetime and wartime across cultures (the US vs. the Middle East), and presented findings in three articles. They conducted this research during (1991) and after (1993-1994) the first Persian Gulf War.
First of all, regarding the importance of needs, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) of a 13-item scale showed that there were two levels of needs during real peacetime (1993-94) in the US: survival (physiological and safety) and psychological (love, self-esteem, and self-actualization) needs (Tang & West, 1997, Study 1). The retrospective peacetime measure was established and collected during the Persian Gulf War in 1991 when people in the US were asked to recall the importance of needs one year ago in 1990. Again, only two levels of needs were identified (Tang & West, 1997, Study 2). Therefore, people do have the ability and competence to recall and estimate the importance of needs retrospectively.
In addition, two levels of needs regarding satisfaction during peacetime in the US also emerged (Tang, Ibrahim, & West, 2002). In short, there are two levels of needs regarding importance and satisfaction during peacetime in the US. However, these two levels of needs were different from that of Maslow's model: According to Tang and his associates, social needs are associated with self-esteem and self-actualization (psychological needs)(Tang & West, 1997). According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory, social needs are related to security needs and physiological needs.
Second, for citizens in the Middle East (Egypt and Saudi Arabia), there were three levels of needs during retrospective peacetime (1990) regarding importance and satisfaction (Tang & Ibrahim, 1998). These three levels were completely different from those individuals in the US. For example, due to significant differences in natural resources across countries, during peacetime, water was the lest important need for people in the US, but was the most important need for those in the Middle East (Tang & Ibrahim, 1998). Most people consider Maslow's hierarchy as a pyramid. However, for individuals in the Middle East, their three levels of needs may reflect rings of a circle. The inner most ring is related to all needs except social needs, whereas the outer layer is associated with social needs.
Third, changes regarding the importance and satisfaction of needs from the retrospective peacetime to the wartime due to stress varied significantly across cultures (the US vs. Middle East). For people in the US, there was only one level of needs regarding the importance of needs during the war because due to stress, people considered all needs equally important. For example, the most significant increase regarding the importance of needs from peacetime to wartime was the security and safety of the country because people have taken that (the safety of the country) for granted during peacetime. Regarding satisfaction of needs during the war in the US, there were three levels: (1) physiological needs, (2) safety needs, and (3) the psychological needs (social, self-esteem, self-actualization). The satisfaction of physiological needs and safety needs (combined as one during peacetime) were separated into two independent needs during the war. For people in the Middle East, the satisfaction of needs changed from three levels during peacetime to two levels during the war. It is also interesting to note that self-esteem was the least satisfied needs for people in the US and in the Middle East, a rare, common finding (Tang, Ibrahim, & West, 2002). The importance and satisfaction of people’s needs were different across cultures and the changes of human needs from peacetime to wartime did vary across cultures. Therefore, human needs are unique, dynamic, and changing.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:
Higher-Order Needs (Psychological & Growth): Two Levels: (5) Self-Actualization; (4) Self-Esteem;
Lower-Order Needs (Survival & Deficiency): Three Levels: (3) Social; (2) Safety; (1) Physiological
Tang’s Hierarchy of Needs:
Importance and Satisfaction during peace time in the USA only:
Higher-Order Needs (Psychological & Growth): Three Levels: (5) Self-Actualization; (4) Self-Esteem; (3) Social;
Lower-Order Needs (Survival & Deficiency): Two Levels: (2) Safety; (1) Physiological
How Many Levels of Needs across all eight (8) conditions?
The USA: Peace-time Importance: 2; Peace-time Satisfaction: 2; War-time Importance: 1; Ware-time Satisfaction: 3;
The Middle East: Peace-time Importance: 3; Peace-time Satisfaction: 3; War-time importance: 3; War-time Satisfaction: 2
see also Changes to the hierarchy by circumstance at http://en. .org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs
Research on Teaching and Research
Discussions related to teaching evaluation (Tang, 1997), (Tang & Tang, 1987) teaching technology (Tang & Austin, 2009), the balance between teaching and research in higher institutions (Tang & Chamberlain, 1997), and sabbaticals (Carr & Tang, 2005) also generated a lot of interests among students, scholars, managers, and researchers. He also enjoys very much demonstrating the use of handwriting analysis to detect honest people's lies (Tang, 2012) and hypnosis. Both are related to the art and science of interpersonal communication and the decoding and encoding processes. The secret is that one needs to focus not on what one writes (says), but how one writes (says) it.
Research on the Love of Money, the Meaning of Money, and Money Ethic
Following his interests in compensation (Tang, Luk, & Chiu, 2000) (Chiu, Luk, & Tang, 2001)(Tang, Tang, Tang, & Dozier, 1998) and a well-know ancient wisdom—“Those who want to get rich are falling into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires, which plunge them into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all evils” (The Holy Bible, 1 Timothy 6: 9-10), Professor Tang has focused his research on money-related attitudes for the past two decades. For example, he explored the meaning of money or the psychology of money and investigated the notion of money ethic (Tang, 1992), (Tang, 1993) (Tang, 1995) the love of money (Tang & Chiu, 2003), and the monetary intelligence as related to many other work-related constructs in organizations.
Researchers have tested an ancient proposition—the love of money is the root of all evils—empirically and found that bad apples’ love-of-money motive is related to unethical intentions in Hong Kong (Tang & Chiu, 2003), Macedonia (SardÅ¾oska & Tang, 2012), Malaysia (Wong, 2008), Swaziland (Gbadamosi & Joubert, 2005), Uganda (Nkundabanyanga et al., 2011), and the US (Vitell, Paolillo, & Singh, 2006) and predicts unethical intentions in multiple-panel studies in the US (Tang & Liu, 2012) and actual cheating behavior in China (Chen & Tang, 2013). This construct has been tested empirically in almost three dozen countries around the world. His research on the love of money has been widely cited in journal articles (e.g., Mitchell & Mickel, 1999), including recent meta-analysis review article (e.g., Kish-Gaphart, Harrison, & Treviño, 2010), textbooks (e.g., Colquitt, LePine, & Wesson, 2013; Furnham & Argyle, 1998; McShane & Von Glinow, 2013; Milkovich, Newman, & Gerhart, 2014; Rynes & Gerhart, 2000), and popular books.
Expand Frederick Herzberg's Motivator-Hygiene Theory by Including the Love of Money Construct
In the motivation literature, Professor Frederick Herzberg, best known for his Motivator-Hygiene Theory, was the chair of the Psychology Department at Case Western Reserve University when he published his work entitled: "One more time: How do you motivate employees?" in Harvard Business Review (1968). Two decades later, this article was published the second time (Harvard Business Review, 1987) as the most famous HBR classic and much requested article, with 1.2 million copies of reprint sold, ever published between the covers of Harvard Business Review in 1987 (Herzberg, 1987). Herzberg considered salary (money) as a hygiene factor; whereas others strongly believe that money is a motivator.
Please recall that traditionally, most people consider satisfaction and dissatisfaction as the two opposite ends of one continuum. When individuals have high job satisfaction, then, they have low job dissatisfaction. Herzberg used semi-structured interview to collect critical incidents from 200 accounts and engineers and developed his theory by sorting index cards into different categories. In his motivator-hygiene theory of motivation, Herzberg (1987) was the first to identify job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction as two separate factors (intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, respectively). He considered salary as a hygiene factor for the following reasons: Most people need money continuously to maintain their lives, yet their “aspiration for money” escalates overtime. The frequency of salary (pay) related to job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction was very similar, yet the duration of pay dissatisfaction was about three times longer than pay satisfaction. One major criticism of the Motivator-Hygiene theory is that Herzberg did not incorporate individual differences into his theory.
As a virtual disciple and follower of Herzberg, Prof. Tang (with a Ph.D. in industrial and organizational psychology from Case Western Reserve University) extended Motivator-Hygiene theory, equity theory, and discrepancy theory by including love of money (an individual difference variale) and pay equity comparison into the theoretical model to examine the relationship between income and pay satisfaction (Tang, Luna-Arocas, & Sutarso, 2004; Tang, Luna-Arocas, & Sutarso, 2005; Tang, Tang, & Homaifar, 2006 ).
The relationship between income and pay satisfaction depends on the extent to which one values love of money and how one uses love of money to compare. When both conditions exist, then, income leads to low pay satisfaction. It is also interesting to note that the relationship between income and love of money is positive for underpaid individual (American professors, African-American, and females) (Tang, Tang, & Homaifar, 2006), negative for highly paid Hong Kong executives (Tang & Chiu, 2003), and non-significant for adequately paid employees (Spanish professors, Caucasian, and males)(Tang, Luna-Arocas, & Sutarso, 2005; Tang, Tang, & Homaifar, 2006). When examining pay equity comparison standards were included in the model, the American professors compared themselves with the rich, i.e., others who had significantly higher income than their own; whereas Spanish professors used others who had slightly higher income than theirs. The end results is clear in that the former has low pay satisfaction, whereas the latter does not.
The Love of Money is the Root of All Evils
Tang and his associates investigated the relationship between love of money and self-reported intention to engage in work-related corruption and incorporate pay satisfaction at the micro level (Level 1) and Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) at the macro level (Level 2) as two moderators. They tested a multi-level model using data collected from 6,382 managers in 31 geopolitical entities across six continents. The significant cross-level three-way interaction effect showed that for managers with high pay satisfaction, the intensity (slope) of the love of money to corrupt intent relationship was almost identical in high or low CPI entities, but the former had the lowest magnitude (intercept) of corrupt intent, whereas the latter had the highest. For those with low pay satisfaction, the slope was the steepest in high CPI entities, but was flat in the low CPI entities and the difference between the two was significant.
Pay satisfaction exacerbated (curtailed) the magnitude (i.e., intercept) of the love-of-money-to-corrupt-intent relationship in the most (least) corrupt cultures; pay dissatisfaction, however, amplified (weakened) the intensity (i.e., slope) of the love-of-money-to-corrupt-intent relationship in the least (most) corrupt countries (Tang et al., 2011).
It should be noted that the love-of-money motive (the affective motive component of Monetary Intelligence, discussed below) not only is significantly related to the propensity to engage in unethical behavior (PUB) in many cross-sectional studies but also predicts unethical intentions in multiple panel studies and actual cheating behavior in laboratory experiments among Chinese students .
Monetary Intelligence
Following the notion of emotional intelligence (EI), cultural intelligence (CI), self-reported intelligence, and estimates intelligence of themselves, others, and famous people (Furnham, Hose, Tang, 2002), these cognitive and trait measures meet the criteria of a standard intelligence. Monetary Intelligence (MI) is a multi-dimensional individual difference variable that involves the ability to process, perceive, and appraise monetary motive (affective—Factors Rich, Motivator, and Importance), prioritize and reason its cognitive importance (cognitive—Factors Happiness, Respect, Achievement and Power), and regulate money-related intentions or behaviors (behavioral—Factors Make, Budget, Donate, and Contribute)) to promote personal growth, happiness, or subjective well-being. In a large cross-cultural study involving 6,586 managers in 32 countries across six continents, Prof. Tang and his 46 associates found that high stewardship (behavioral), high meaning (cognitive), but low motive (affective) of money defined Monetary Intelligence that in turn, is related to higher pay satisfaction than life satisfaction. The formation and consequence of Monetary Intelligence varied across age, gender, and economic development, providing intra-personal, inter-personal, and cross-cultural differences in people’s abilities to process information and take action in pursue of meaning, purpose, and happiness (Tang et al., 2013).
Obviously, the love-of-money construct is also related to numerous work-related constructs, such as commitment (Tang et al., 2012), job satisfaction, pay satisfaction (Tang et al., 2004), life satisfaction, or quality of life (Tang, 2007), turnover (Tang, Kim, & Tang, 2000), motives of organizational citizenship behavior (Tang et al., 2008), organizational instrumentality (Tang, Singer, & Roberts, 2000). spirituality (Tang, 2010), business ethics (Tang & Chen, 2008), (Tang & Tang, 2010) leadership (ASPIRE) (Tang & Liu, 2012), corrupt intent, Machiavellianism, materialism (Tang et al., 2013),, temptation (Tang & Sutarso, 2013),and measurement and cross-cultural issues (Sardzoska & Tang, 2009, 2012). (Tang et al., 2006)
Development of New Measurement Scales
For the last three decades, Dr. Tang has developed many scales, including Money Ethic Scale, Propensity to Engage in Unethical Behavior Scale, Temptation Scale, Organizational Instrumentality Scale, Distributive and Procedural Justice, Motives for OCB, ASPIRE (authentic supervisor’s personal integrity and character), and many others.
Professor Tang has collaborated with researchers in 38 countries around the world, published more than 130 journal articles and abstracts in top psychology and management journals in 5 languages, and presented numerous papers in professional conferences around the world.
His research on the meaning of money, the Money Ethic Scale, love of money, unethical behavior, corruption, and motivation has been cited several thousand times in many empirical research articles (Gbadamosi & Joubert, 2005; Nkundabanyanga et al., 2011) (Lim & Teo, 1997) review articles, and numerous books on compensation, organizational behavior, human resource management, management, industrial and organizational psychology, leadership, motivation, psychology of money, measurement culture, engineering management, statistics, and many popular topics for a general audience.
Service on Editorial Boards of Scholarly Publications
Dr. Tang is an Associate Editor for Applied Psychology: An International Review, Guest Associate Editor for European Journal of Information Systems, and serves on the editorial boards of several journals, including: Journal of Business Ethics, Asian Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Chinese Human Resource Management , International Journal of Organization Theory and Behavior, International Journal of Management Theory and Practices, Human Resource Development Quarterly (1996-2000), Journal of Academy of Business Education (2000-2003), Public Personnel Management (1998), and Psihologia Resurselor Umane/Human Resources Psychology, Romanian (2007-Present). He serves as an ad hoc reviewers for 53 journals around the world.
Professional Membership
He is a member of several professional associations, e.g., Academy of Management (AoM), American Psychological Association (APA), Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP, Division 14 of APA), International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP), International Association for Chinese Management Research (IACMR), and many others and will engage in the pursuit of becoming a Fellow of International Association of Applied Psychology (IAPP). The next International Congress of Applied Psychology will be held in Paris, France, 2014.
Honors and Awards
He was the winner of two Outstanding Research Awards (1991, 1999), Distinguished International Service Award (1999), Outstanding Faculty Member of the Jones College of Business (2008), and Outstanding Career Achievement Award (2008) at Middle Tennessee State University. He also received four Best Reviewer Awards from two Divisions of the Academy of Management: International Management Division (2003, 2007, and 2009) and Social Issues in Management (2011).
Dr. Tang and his wife, Theresa, have a daughter and a son, both graduated from Harvard University. They have three grandchildren.

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