Integrity's place among the character strengths of middle-level managers and top-level executives

One purpose of this study was to extend integrity research in organizations into the ranks of middle management. We therefore examined whether middle-level managers' behavioral manifestations of integrity related to ratings of their performance. Results of hierarchical regression analysis indicated that direct report ratings of a middle-level manager's integrity were positively related to boss ratings of that manager's performance. A second purpose of this study was to understand differences in integrity's relative importance to performance among other character strengths, and as a function of context (e.g., managerial level). We extend research in this area by showing, through relative weight analysis, that integrity was relatively less important to middle-level managers' current performance compared to other character strengths (e.g., social intelligence). In contrast, integrity was relatively more important for the performance of top-level executives — roles middle-level managers may hold in the future. Implications of these results for future research and practice as well as the current study's limitations are discussed.     

Public or Private? Public Corporations,Companies and the Decline of the Middle Ground

In the era of New Public Management in the Anglo-Saxon countries, governments have become infatuated with things private and disparaging of things public. This dramatic attitudinal shift has been reflected in the importation of private sector business method into so much of what government does, and in the championing of privatization in its various forms as a way of reducing the size and importance of public sectors. The change represents a retreat from the more traditional acceptance that a valuable social purpose was served by middle ground structures and activities located in the outer parts of these public sectors, i.e., between the highly politicised cores of government systems and the highly commercialised institutions of private enterprise. In particular, this article argues that the form of the public (or government, statutory or crown) corporation epitomised such social value, and that the state-owned company which is now so often replacing it represents an abandoning of social value.     

Analyzing organizational ideology: A workplace assessment exercise

This paper provides an experiential exercise to increase understanding of employees attraction to ideological organizations and its relation to employees perception of loyalty, value congruence, and affective organizational commitment. Three separate conditions influencing employee attraction to organizational ideology are loyalty, value congruence, and affective commitment. These three component dimensions of employee attraction are outlined and used to define an eight-phase model through which individuals tend to pass in their decision to form and join ideological organizations.The analysis supports the notion of a stepwise movement from loyalty to value congruence to perceived commitment in strengthening ideological attraction and demonstrates how progressive phases are associated with perceived quality and connection to ideological organizations. Although the levels and phases are progressively prepotent and attractive in predicting employee propensity to form and join ideological organizations, different patterns and paths through the phases for individuals are indicated.The workplace assessment exercise is a tool that will permit managers and professionals to make first order assessments of quality of work life. This survey will discover which personnel and/or jobs are most strongly bonded to the organization and which are the most likely candidates for intervention and revitalization.     

Perceived managerial and leadership effectiveness in a non-profit organization: an exploratory and cross-sector comparative study

This paper presents the results of an ‘HRD professional partnership’ study of perceived managerial and leadership effectiveness carried out within a UK third sector (non-profit) organization. Using the critical incident technique, concrete examples [critical incidents (CIs) ] of observed effective and least effective/ineffective managerial behaviour were collected from a purposive sample of senior and middle-level managers of the collaborating registered charity. The CIs were content analysed to identify themes and analytical categories. Behavioural statements were then devised to reflect the constituent CIs of each category. The paper also reports the results of a subsequent cross-sector comparative analysis that explored the similarities and differences between the identified behavioural statements and the results of equivalent studies in the UK public and private sector organizations. The findings challenge the widely held image that managers need to adopt different managerial behaviours to be effective in non-profit organizations because of inherent differences between the sectors. How the resultshave been used by the collaborating organization is outlined. Finally, thelimitations, implications for practice and research recommendations are discussed.     

What Does Hollywood Think Nonprofit CEOs Do All Day? Screen Depictions of NGO Management

This article explores the cinematic image of chief executive officers (CEOs) of nonprofit organizations in the U.S. Movie CEOs head a broad range of the nongovernmental organizations, including hospitals, colleges, social service agencies, prep schools, labor unions, legal aid, faith-based and youth-serving. They are predominantly white males. Their professional backgrounds include medicine, teaching, union organizing, social activism, clergy, law and environmental activism. Movie audiences see nonprofit CEOs involved in the mundane and inspirational elements of day-to-day management. One of their primary responsibilities consists of overseeing line functions, including fund raising, media relations, managing volunteers and board relations. But, nonprofit managers are also responsible for broader concerns, such as protecting the organization's values and equilibrium. Some movie nonprofit CEOs are shown multitasking and trying to balance competing demands from multiple stakeholders.     

The Changing Nature of Internal Labor Markets

Research on Internal Labor Markets (ILMs) has had enormous influence on social sciences since the seminal work by Peter Doeringer and Michael Piore, thirty years ago.This article discusses the past and current contribution of the ILM concept to the development of labor economics, organization theory and human resource management and argues that research on ILMs remains important, despite the changes occurred in the economy. Therefore, a renovated effort of theoretical and field studies is required and desirable in order to reach a better understanding of the efficiency and equity issues the knowledge economy poses to the employment relation. In fact, the emergence of a new employment contract, characterized by less sticky a relation between employer and employees asks for a major re-conceptualization of ILMs that cannot be limited to a diverse, more detailed classification, or to an update of their possible variants. Such re-conceptualizationcould be linked with the new organizational forms literature, i.e. with that body of research that models organizations as hybrids or networks.     

Why middle managers quit

The current trends in organizational downsizing may be causing the involuntary loss of high-performing, middle-level managers. This article reports on the perceived causes of turnover and how managers at differing levels of the organization have dramatically differing perceptions. Lower- and middle-level managers place greatest importance on lack of control and input on the job, while upper-lever managers see dissatisfaction with rewards and interpersonal conflicts as the critical causes of middle manager turnover.     

Institutional Complementarities within Corporate Governance Systems: A Comparative Study of Bankruptcy Rules

Recent research work has put forward theconcept of national system of corporate governance to describe the complex architecture of legal rules, economic mechanisms and mentalities which constrain managerial discretion in a different way according to the country considered. The role played by the legal system in this set of mechanisms is particularly important and, as part of the legal system, the bankruptcy law performs a specific function: designed as a governance device for financially distressed firms, it also acts as a monitoring mechanism for healthy ones. The aim of this paper is to investigate the mechanisms of corporate governance in the context of bankruptcy in a comparative perspective. Relying on a broad definition of corporate governance (i.e., one which takes into account the influence of all stakeholders on managerial discretion), we first examine the insolvency codes of five countries (France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States). The stance of the law (creditor-oriented vs. debtor-oriented) is discussed in relation to the legal tradition of each country. We then study the way bankruptcy law in each country articulates with the other governance mechanisms. For that purpose, a typology of those mechanisms is used, based on the type of device each kind of stakeholder is able to activate. Results of both theoretical and empirical studies on bankruptcy are used to understand which of the different devices are used in each country. The comparative approach underlines the impact of institutional differences on organizations through the incentives sent to their stakeholders.     

Examining the link between social responsibility and decision styles

The paper examines the factors that influence socially responsible decision making by individuals. The study found four social responsibility styles: Playing it Safe, Weather The Storm, Problem to Solve, and Hope it Goes Away. These styles describe individuals on the basis of decision style, propensity for risk, and coping style. The styles explain why people with different values might come to the same decision in the same circumstances.     

Circadian Rhythm and the Business Person

Each human being has an internal timekeeping mechanism. To date, over 100 so-called circadian rhythms have been detected. Perhaps the most significant is body temperature. There is an apparent connection between this rhythm and the efficiency with which we do things in the course of the working day. Within individuals, patterns have been discovered which give credence to the popular notions of a morning or an afternoon person, and so on. Our memory changes from morning to afternoon: short-term memory is stronger in the morning, and long-term memory stronger in the afternoon; in schools, morning students have higher grades than students who have other time-of-day preferences. Therefore, a strong case can be made in support of flexible time schedules. It is reported that productivity went up on the introduction of such a scheme. Employee stress has been seen to decline also. When flextime was offered, parents with small children took advantage of the benefit as well as unmarried employees. The only drawback is ensuring that, with so many individual variations in preferences, the needs of the company are fully met. If such a scheme can be devised, however, the research suggests that productivity and efficiency will increase.     

Work value orientations and patterns: A comparison of future managers with manager and non-manager groups

This study uses the Values for Working questionnaire to classify the primary value systems and value patterns of 501 senior business school students (future managers). The students' scores on six value systems measured by the questionnaire are compared to national data on blue collar and clerical workers and on managerial and professional workers. The business students scored in the average range for four of the six value systems when compared to the manager group, but for only one of the value systems when compared to the non-manager group. Of the business students who had a primary value system, 82 percent wereexistential ormanipulative. There were significant differences in the value systems scores by sex but not by business major.     

手机银行用户采纳的影响因素研究

手机银行作为新兴的金融服务手段有着很大的发展潜力,然而现有研究对其拓展模式还没有清晰的认识.本文在2007年对以中层管理人员为主的中青年消费群体问卷调查和访谈的基础上,通过结构方程模型(SEM)的构建分析,开发了手机银行用户采纳模型(TAM).该模型为手机银行的有效拓展提供了科学的依据,通过该模型可发现拓展手机银行应该着重改善服务内容,提高用户的使用能力,加快对用户的服务速度,并消除消费者对手机银行安全方面的顾虑.     

Administrative Reform and Style of Work Behavior: Adaptors-Innovators

In this paper the situation of Iranian reform agents from their style of work behavior point of view (such as problem solving and decision making) is analyzed.The assessment is based on a modified version of Kirton's theory of adaptors and innovators (modified KAI). The purpose of this study is to see whether the reform agents were seen as innovative enough to bring about fundamental changes in Iranian bureaucracy. The study of work behavior makes a difference in how people approach, solve and communicate problems, and therefore, may influence the success of reform program. Although the results indicate that the reform program was not perceived as having been as successful as expected, however, about 75 percent of Iranian reform agents could be categorized as innovative-inclined. The level of education and age account for little of the variance in the responses. Differences in the (modified) KAI mean scores of the agents of reform working in different organizations may explain some communication problems.     

Paired-domination in generalized claw-free graphs

In this paper, we continue the study of paired-domination in graphs introduced by Haynes and Slater (Networks 32 (1998) 199–206). A set S of vertices in a graph G is a paired-dominating set of G if every vertex of G is adjacent to some vertex in S and if the subgraph induced by S contains a perfect matching. The paired-domination number of G, denoted by , is the minimum cardinality of a paired-dominating set of G. If G does not contain a graph F as an induced subgraph, then G is said to be F-free. Haynes and Slater (Networks 32 (1998) 199–206) showed that if G is a connected graph of order , then and this bound is sharp for graphs of arbitrarily large order. Every graph is -free for some integer a ≥ 0. We show that for every integer a ≥ 0, if G is a connected -free graph of order n ≥ 2, then with infinitely many extremal graphs.     

Ethylene Oxide Cancer Risk Assessment Based on Epidemiological Data: Application of Revised Regulatory Guidelines

Ethylene oxide (EO) research has significantly increased since the 1980s, when regulatory risk assessments were last completed on the basis of the animal cancer chronic bioassays. In tandem with the new scientific understanding, there have been evolutionary changes in regulatory risk assessment guidelines, that encourage flexibility and greater use of scientific information. The results of an updated meta-analysis of the findings from 10 unique EO study cohorts from five countries, including nearly 33,000 workers, and over 800 cancers are presented, indicating that EO does not cause increased risk of cancers overall or of brain, stomach or pancreatic cancers. The findings for leukemia and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) are inconclusive. Two studies with the requisite attributes of size, individual exposure estimates and follow up are the basis for dose-response modeling and added lifetime risk predictions under environmental and occupational exposure scenarios and a variety of plausible alternative assumptions. A point of departure analysis, with various margins of exposure, is also illustrated using human data. The two datasets produce remarkably similar leukemia added risk predictions, orders of magnitude lower than prior animal-based predictions under conservative, default assumptions, with risks on the order of 1 × 10^–6 or lower for exposures in the low ppb range. Inconsistent results for lymphoid tumors, a non-standard grouping using histologic information from death certificates, are discussed. This assessment demonstrates the applicability of the current risk assessment paradigm to epidemiological data.     

Trivial Two-Stage Group Testing with High Error Rates

Given a population of cardinality q ^r that contains a positive subset P of cardinality p, we give a trivial two-stage method that has first stage pools each of which contains q ^{r – 2} objects. We assume that errors occur in the first stage. We give an algorithm that uses the results of first stage to generate a set CP of candidate positives with |CP| (r + 1)q. We give the expected value of |CPP|. At most (r + 1)q trivial second stage tests are needed to identify all the positives in CP. We assume that the second stage tests are error free.     

Are g.p.a. and ethics related?

This article reports results of a study of some 200 college-aged students at California State University. Ethical values are measured using a subset of the well-known and frequently used Rokeach Value Survey. Using nonparametric statistical analysis, four value measures, and four different consistent tests of significance and probability, the research data, perhaps disappointedly for many observers including the authors, reveal that there is no relationship between college grade point average and student ethics. Statistical analysis was done on g.p.a. splits of less than 3.0 versus 3.0 or more and also on g.p.a. data for 2.5 or less versus 3.5 or more. In all cases, there are no significant relationships between high or low grade point averages and scores on ethical value rankings.     

Decision Support for Airline Schedule Planning

Since the 1950s, the operations research community has developed a large number of computer models to aid in the solution of airline scheduling problems. One notable characteristic of these contributions is that each algorithm was developed with its own input and output structures, user interface, and hardware and software requirements. The result is that many of these contributions are under-utilized because they are cumbersome to use, not integrated with the other airline's systems, and not connected across all functions of the airline (from planning to operations control). What was needed to make these contributions effective was a scheduling environment with a systematic interaction between the human, standardized databases across all functions of the airline, powerful desktop workstations for decision support, a standardized interactive graphical user interface for schedule editing, and the operations research techniques for optimization. This paper reports on the application of the integration of computer science and operations research in a decision support system for airline schedule planning. The application integrates a graphical user interface and the database with the schedule optimization algorithms.     

Managerial Influences on Intraorganizational Information Technology Use: A Principal-Agent Model

Our current understanding of information technology (IT) usage does not explain why and how managers can influence organizational members to use a new IT. Drawing on principal-agent research, this paper develops and tests a model of intraorganizational IT usage that addresses this important issue. Managerial incentives and control are examined as important components of managerial influences, which are linked to IT usage via a principal-agent model (PAM). Seven research hypotheses are generated from this model and empirically tested using a laboratory experiment. Results of the study indicate that managers can promote IT usage within organizations by designing appropriate incentives and control structures such as monitoring and multiple-period contracts. However, the effectiveness of these structures will depend on potential users' ability to distinguish between various forms of incentives and control.     

Card-based production control: a review of the control mechanisms underpinning Kanban,ConWIP, POLCA and COBACABANA systems

Since the emergence of Kanban, there has been much research into card-based control systems. This has included attempts to improve Kanban and/or develop alternative systems, particularly ConWIP (i.e. Constant Work-In-Process), POLCA (i.e. Paired-cell Overlapping Loops of Cards with Authorisation) and COBACABANA (i.e. Control of Balance by Card-Based Navigation). Yet, to date, no unifying review of the mechanisms underpinning these systems has been presented. As a consequence, managers are not provided with sufficient support for choosing an appropriate system for their shop; and researchers lack a clear picture of how the mechanisms compare, leading to several misconceptions. This paper reviews the control mechanisms underpinning the Kanban, ConWIP, POLCA and COBACABANA systems. By comparing the ‘control mechanism’ (i.e. the loop structure and card properties) and ‘contextual factors’ (i.e. routing variability, processing time variability, and whether stations are decoupled by inventory or the flow of jobs is controlled), we provide managers with guidance on which system to choose. For research, we show for example that most criticisms put forward against Kanban systems, e.g. to justify the development of ConWIP, POLCA or COBACABANA, only apply to work-in-process Kanban systems and not to production Kanban systems. Future research directions for each control system are outlined.