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DSS works with independent consultants
and other organizations in carrying out major projects. This list
of "people and partners" identifies all individuals
who have worked on or who are working on projects with or through
DSS. Please note that employment and contact information is noted
in each individual's biographical sketch or vita.
DSS
employees and associates use their collective expertise in I/O
psychology, organizational behavior, and related disciplines to
design and conduct applied research studies and to carry out consulting
projects. DSS has a small core of full time employees and consultants
who collaborate with a network of consultants in Ohio, many of
whom are affiliated with The Ohio State University, to plan and
complete projects.
Most
DSS staff, consultants, and project team members have advanced
degrees (i.e., Master or Ph.D). Many have or maintain formal affiliations
with colleges and universities and work as full-time professors,
visiting professors, instructors, and/or engage in ongoing graduate-level
training. These individuals are active members of professional
associations, regularly present scholarly papers at academic and
professional conferences, and publish in peer-reviewed professional
journals. In addition, these individuals have impressive amounts
of applied research and consulting experience.
Phyllis
C. Panzano, Ph.D., President
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Phyllis C. Panzano
is the founder and president of Decision Support Services,
Inc. (DSS), an Ohio-based firm specializing in applying
industrial/organizational psychology knowledge to the
opportunities and challenges facing individuals, groups
and organizations. Phyllis has 20 years experience conceptualizing,
implementing and managing applied research and consulting
projects in the public and private sectors. Much of DSS's
recent work reflects Phyllis' expertise and long term
interests in top management team decision making and strategic
planning processes. DSS often works closely with experts
associated with the Ohio State University's Industrial/Organizational
Psychology Program and the College
of Business in the course of carrying out this work.
Phyllis
also has served for the past ten years as a Visiting Assistant
Professor in The Ohio
State University's Industrial/Organizational Psychology
program and she is on the faculty of the the university
Honors Program. Her duties include: teaching a wide range
of undergraduate and graduate courses and special topics
seminars; mentoring undergraduate students, advising graduate
students; serving on thesis and dissertation committees;
grant writing; and directing a series of research grants
examining decision making processes within top management
teams.
Phyllis
has a wide range of research and consulting experience
in the private sector. She has developed employee selection
and appraisal systems, facilitated strategic planning
and plan implementation processes, provided human resource
planning consultation, and designed and conducted market
research. For example, with Robert Vance, she developed
oral and written entrance examinations for all classifications
of auto mechanics employed by American
Electric Power, Inc., and its eight member companies.
She has conducted market research employing techniques
ranging from focus groups, to mail surveys, to commercial-pretesting
for companies including Rubbermaid,
Inc., Anchor
Hocking, Inc., and Cross
Country Inns. She has served as a project planning
consultant for Limited
Brands. and as a facilitator and consultant for strategic
planning processes in a variety of central Ohio firms.
Phyllis'
public sector work over the past twenty years has primarily
been conducted in the health care and mental health care
domains. Past work has dealt with the impact of legislative
and policy changes on consumer behavior, and how top management
teams diagnose and take action on strategic issues. Current
projects deal with the development of preferred service
protocols for meaningful subgroups of adult mental health
consumers, motivational job design, needs assessment for
healthcare organizations, and the diffusion and adoption
of healthcare innovations.
Phyllis
received a B.S. and a M.S. in Quantitative Psychology
from the University of Tennessee
and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Industrial/ Organizational Psychology
from The Ohio State
University.
vita
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Beverly
A. Seffrin, Ph.D., Senior Research Consultant
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Beverly
A. Seffrin began her graduate work in Industrial/Organizational
(I/O) Psychology at the Ohio
State University with a solid foundation of related
work experience. She had served as the Director of Human
Resources for a large home healthcare agency in Florida
where she specialized in employee relations and had responsibility
for thirty-five agencies and two-thousand employees.
Bev
earned her M.A. in I/O Psychology in1999 and her Ph.D.
in 2002. She received a grant from the Ohio
Department of Mental Health to conduct her dissertation
research. Emotional labor in care giving organizations
is the subject matter of that project.
In
addition to her academic work, Dr..Seffrin served for
two years as a graduate research associate and graduate
teaching assistant in the Department
of Psychology at Ohio State. She then worked for over
three years as a graduate administrative assistant for
OSU's Office
of Business Operations where she was the recipient
of the Quality Information Award. During that time, Bev
was hired as an independent consultant by the University
Architect's Office to conduct a customer satisfaction
survey.
Dr.
Seffrin currently serves as a Senior Research Consultant
to Decision Support Services, Inc., Columbus, Ohio. She
has key project management and development activities
for two major grants. The first project, funded by the
MacArthur Foundation
and the Ohio Department
of Mental Health, is examining factors and processes
related to the uptake and implementation of evidence-based
practices by healthcare organizations. The second project
is funded by the Social Security
Administration and the Ohio Department of Mental Health.
This research is examining the applied value of a widely
studied motivational job design framework to the population
of adults with severe mental disabilities and to other
adult members of disadvantaged populations.
resume
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Robert
S. Billings, Ph.D.,
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Robert
Billings is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Coordinator
of the Industrial/Organizational Psychology Program at
The Ohio State University.
He received his A.B. and M.B.A. degrees from Washington
University in St. Louis, and his Ph.D. from Cornell
University.
In
his faculty position at Ohio State, Robert has taught
numerous courses at both the undergraduate and graduate
levels, including survey courses in Organizational Psychology
and Personnel Psychology, and graduate seminars on Motivation
and Job Attitudes, Decision Making in Organizations, Research
Methods, and Group Processes in Organizations. He has
directed twenty-six Master's Theses and twenty Doctoral
Dissertations, and currently advises six Ph.D. students.
His administrative responsibilities have included chairing
a major departmental committee and serving as the Director
of the Behavioral Science Laboratory. Outside of the university,
he served on the editorial board of Personnel
Psychology for sixteen years and on the editorial
board of The
Journal of Applied Psychology for twelve years.
Together
with several colleagues, Robert has received twelve research
grants from federal, state and private funding agencies.
The total awarded by these grants exceeds two million
dollars. The topics of these grants has included the management
of organizational culture in a changing work environment,
strategic issue diagnosis among top management teams,
organizational commitment and the role of cognition in
collective political decision making.
Robert's
consulting activities have included conducting numerous
employee attitude surveys, designing and implementing
performance appraisal systems, developing employee selection
systems, and conducting needs assessment for county government.
These consulting projects have been conducted for organizations
in both the private and public sectors.
Over
the last nine years, Robert has collaborated with Phyllis
Panzano, President of Decision Support Services, Inc.,
in a series of projects in the mental health industry.
They have been examining how top management teams in Ohio's
local mental health authorities and service agencies interpret
and respond to new developments in the health care system,
in an attempt to better understand and predict strategic
organizartional decisions and actions.
email
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Sheri
Chaney, M.A., Research Associate
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Sheri
received her M.A. in Industrial/Organizational (I/O) Psychology
from Central Michigan University
and did her undergraduate work at The
Ohio State University, where she graduated Magna Cum
Laude with Distinction in Psychology. Her previous research
has focused on decision makers' commitment to a failing
course of action across many different reinforcement histories,
the construct validity of teamwork situational judgment
tests, and the effectiveness of using covariance to detect
applicant faking on personality measures. As an independent
consultant for a mid-sized manufacturing company, Sheri
developed a presentation skills training program for sales
employees and conducted a computer skills needs assessment
for office professionals, which lead to an in-house computer
training lab. Currently, she is involved with data collection
for the Innovation
Diffusion and Adoption Research Project (IDARP). In
addition, she is a researcher on the job
taxonomy project, which tests a model of motivational
job design for use with adult members of disadvantaged
populations (e.g., welfare, mentally-ill).
resume
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