School of Psychological Science

		Professor Jim McLennan Adjunct Professor		Phone: +61 3 9479 5363 Fax: +61 3 9479 1956 j.mclennan@latrobe.edu.au Room 255 Biological Sciences 2 Building
		BA(Hons)-Sydney; MA(Psych. Couns.)-ANU; PhD (Monash)

I began my professional career as an industrial/organisational psychologist, first with the Navy and then with the Commonwealth public service. I subsequently moved, via occupational psychology, into counselling psychology, in which field I worked for some 25 years as practitioner, educator, and researcher. In the course of my research, much of which involved telephone-based help services, I became increasingly interested in how people made decisions: both to seek, and to offer, help. This rekindled my interest from early days in safety-related decision making and in the mid-1990s, in collaboration with Dr Mary Omodei, I began to work with the Melbourne Metropolitan Fire Brigade investigating decision making by on-scene Incident Controllers. This lead to various research studies concerning decision making with: the Defence Science and Technology Organisation—Air Operations, and Marine Operations, the Office of Corrections; and CFA. In 2004 I joined the School as a senior Research Fellow, managing the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) Volunteerism Project and working on the Firefighter Safe Behaviour and Decision Making Project. Since the 2009 Black Saturday Victorian bushfires I have been working as a member of the Bushfire CRC Task Force undertaking research in the aftermath.

My current research activities include: the role of anticipation in managing complex tasks; emotional and cognitive self-control in survival-related decision making; effective community alerting and warning.

Publications

Book Chapters

Omodei, M. M., Wearing, A. J., & McLennan, J. (1997). Head-mounted video recording: A methodology for studying naturalistic decision making. In R. Flin, M. Strub, E. Salas, & L. Martin (Eds.), Decision making under stress: Emerging themes and applications (pp. 137-146). Aldershot: Ashgate.

Omodei, M. M., Wearing, A. J., & McLennan, J. (2000). Relative efficacy of an open versus a restricted communication structure for command and control decision making: An experimental study. In C. McCann & R. Pigeau (Eds.), The human in command: Exploring the modern military experience (pp 369-386). Plenum Press.

McLennan, J., Omodei, M. M., & Wearing, A. J. (2001). Cognitive processes of first-on-scene fire officers in command at emergency incidents as an analogue of small-unit command in peace support operations. In P. Essens, A. Vogelaar, E. Tanercan, & D. Winslow (Eds.), The human in command: peace support operations (pp. 312-332). Amsterdam: Mets & Schilt.

Clancy, J. M., Elliott, G. C., Ley, T., Omodei, M. M., Wearing, A. J., McLennan, J., & Thorsteinsson, E. (2003). Command style and team performance in dynamic decision making tasks. In S. Schneider & J. Shanteau (Eds.), Emerging perspectives in decision making (pp 586-619). Cambridge University Press.

Omodei, M. M., Wearing, A. J., McLennan, J., Elliott, G. C., & Clancy, J. M. (2005) “More is better?”: Problems of self-regualtion in naturalistic decision making situations. In H. Montgomery, R. Lipshitz, & B. Brehmer (Eds.), How professionals make decisions (pp.29-42).Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

McLennan, J., Pavlou, O., & Omodei, M. M. (2005). Cognitive control processes discriminate between better versus poorer decision making by fireground commanders. In R. Montgomery, R. Lipshitz, & B. Brehmer (Eds.). How professionals make decisions (pp.209-222). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Omodei, M. M., McLennan, J., & Wearing, A. J. (2005). How expertise is applied in real-world settings: Head mounted video and cued recall as a methodology for studying routines of decision making. In T. Betsch & S. Haberstrohe (Eds.), The routines of decision making (pp. 271-288). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum

McLennan, J., Holgate. M., Omodei, M. M., & Wearing, A. J. (2007). Human information processing aspects of emergency incident management decision making. In M. Cook, J. Noyes, & Y. Masakowski (Eds.), Decision making in complex environments (pp. 143-151). Aldershot: Ashgate.

Lipshitz, R., Sender, A., Omodei, M., McLennan, J., & Wearing, A. (2007). What’s burning? The RAWS heuristic on the fireground. In R. Hoffman. (Ed.), Expertise out of context (pp. 97-111). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

McLennan, J., Birch, A., Cowlishaw, S., & Suss, J. (2008). Save that brigade! Recruiting and retaining fire service volunteers to protect your community. In J. Handmer & K. Haynes (Eds.), Community bushfire safety (pp 158-168). Melbourne: CSIRO Publishing.

Selected Refereed Articles

Omodei, M. M., & McLennan, J. (2000). Conceptualising and measuring global interpersonal mistrust-trust. Journal of Social Psychology, 140, 279-294.

Dickson, J., McLennan, J., & Omodei, M. M. (2000). Effects of concurrent verbalization on a time-critical dynamic decision-making task. Journal of General Psychology, 127, 217-228..

McLennan, J., Pavlou, O., Kelin, P., & Omodei, M. (2005). Using video during training to enhance learning of emergency incident command and control skills. Australian Journal of Emergency Management, 20 (3), 10-14.

Beatson, R., & McLennan, J. (2005). Australia’s women volunteer fire fighters: A literature review and research agenda. Australian Journal on Volunteering, 10(2), 18-27.

McLennan, J., & Birch, A. (2005). A potential crisis in wildfire emergency response capability? Australia’s volunteer fire fighters. Environmental Hazards, 6(2), 101-107.

McLennan, J., Holgate, A. M., Omodei, M. M., & Wearing, A. J. (2006). Decision making effectiveness in wildfire incident management teams. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 14, 27-37.

Birch, A. & McLennan, J. (2007). Who’s interested? The NSW Grain Belt community survey about volunteering with the NSW Rural Fire Service. Australian Journal on Volunteering, 12(1), 14-25.

McLennan, J., Birch, A, Beatson, R., & Cowlishaw, S. (2007). Recruiting and retaining Australia’s women volunteer firefighters: Some research evidence. Australian Journal on Volunteering, 12(2), 59-69.

Cowlishaw, S., Evans, L., & McLennan, J. (2008). Families of fire service volunteers. Rural Society, 18, 17-25.

McLennan, J., Birch, A., Cowlishaw, S., & Hayes, P. (2008). I quit! Leadership and satisfaction with the volunteer role: Resignations and organisational responses. Proceedings of the 43rd Annual APS Conference. pp. 215-218.

McLennan, J. & Birch, A. (2008). Why would you do it? Age and motivation to become a fire service volunteer. The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Organisational Psychology, 1, 8-12.

Cowlishaw, S., McLennan, J., & Evans, L. (2008). Volunteer firefighting and family life: An organisational perspective on conflict between volunteer and family roles. Australian Journal on Volunteering, 13(2), 21-31.

McLennan, J. & Birch, A. (2009). Age and motivation to become an Australian volunteer firefighter. International Journal of Mass Emergencies ,and Disasters, 27 53-65.

McLennan, J., Birch, A., Cowlishaw, S., & Hayes, P. (in press). Maintaining volunteer firefighter numbers: Adding value to the retention coin. Australian Journal of Emergency Management.