Job insecurity,coping resources and personality dispositions in occupational strain

This paper presents research on the relationships between the work-related stressor of perceived job insecurity and various indicators of occupational strain, taking into account employees' personality dispositions (trait negative and positive affectivity) and coping resources. Respondents were 222 Australian public servants surveyed during organizational restructuring that involved downsizing and threat to job certainty. The research was formulated within an adaptation of Osipow, Doty, and Spokane's (1985) framework of stress-strain-coping that included the possible direct as well as moderating effects of personality dispositions in reporting occupational strain (Parkes, 1990). Findings from hierarchical regression analyses indicate consistent significant independent effects of personality dispositions, coping resources and perceived job insecurity on various indicators of strain. There was also support for the moderating roles of negative affectivity and self-care in the relation between perceived job insecurity and physical strain. Implications for the role of dispositional factors, especially negative affectivity, and the utility of various coping resources in accounting for occupational strain in times of threatened job security are discussed.     

答非所问与市场反应:基于业绩说明会的研究

对上市公司业绩说明会中投资者与管理层问答互动中管理层答非所问的现象进行了研究.本文以中小板和创业板上市公司召开的业绩说明会作为研究样本,利用文本分析方法对业绩说明会中管理层在回答投资者提问时答非所问的程度进行度量,进而实证分析了管理层的答非所问与市场反应和公司未来业绩表现之间的可能关联.结果发现:在控制其它因素之后,管理层的答非所问与市场反应之间呈现显著的负相关关系,即公司管理层的答非所问程度越高,随后公司股票的市场表现则就会越差,并且对于那些低分析师关注的公司尤为明显;而在公司未来业绩表现方面,管理层答非所问的程度越高,则公司未来的业绩表现则会越差.     

ALIGNING ACCOUNTABILITY AND AWARENESS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE IN OPERATIONS

This study assesses internal drivers of a firm's level of environmental awareness, including methods for incorporating environmental objectives into the strategic planning of operations, communication of objectives throughout the organization, and deployment of accountability to operating personnel and managers for environmental performance. Challenges firms may encounter in motivating and holding employees and process owners accountable for environmental performance are discussed, as well as a potential for inconsistencies between management's espoused theories and theories in use. A case study of a steel manufacturer is used to determine how accountability for and awareness of environmental objectives can be operationally implemented.     

Perceived Support and Women's Intentions to Stay at a Sport Organization

Women remain underrepresented in upper management within sport organizations and more broadly. This research examines organizational factors that may affect women's (and men's) likelihood of remaining with their sport organization, which would presumably affect their willingness and ability to step into leadership roles. The research examines the effects of equity human resource management practices, top management support for gender equity and gender‐related barriers on organizational commitment and intent to stay with their sport organization, as well as whether changes in perceived organizational support would mediate the relationships. Results from a survey of current employees in Australian sport organizations generally support the hypotheses. Perceived top management support for gender equity is a strong and consistent predictor of outcomes, and the effect is mediated by perceived organizational support. Implications for top management's role in implementing gender equity practices are discussed.     

Simple policies in the economic lot scheduling problem with zero setup costs

The economic lot scheduling problem is analysed for the case when the cost of setups, but not their duration, is assumed to be zero. This would be the case when setups are performed by the machine operators, or when management's goal is holding-cost reduction. Theoretical results are presented describing when the common cycle solution of producing one lot of every item every cycle is optimal or near optimal. Computational results using simulated data are then presented which show that the common cycle solution is nearly optimal in a wide range of practical situations.     

Using activity sensitivity and network topology information to monitor project time performance

The interest in activity sensitivity from both the academics and the practitioners lies in the need to focus a project manager's attention on those activities that influence the performance of the project. When management has a certain feeling of the relative sensitivity of the various parts (activities) on the project objective, a better management's focus and a more accurate response during project tracking should positively contribute to the overall performance of the project.     

Top Management's Transformational Leader Behaviors and Innovation Orientation: A Cross-Cultural Perspective in Eight Countries

This study builds upon the established relationship between top management's transformational leadership and firm-level innovation. It extends current research by determining how specific transformational-leader behaviors influence the firm's innovation orientation and how national culture moderates this relationship. The study examines these behaviors empirically in 954 firms from eight countries. Findings reveal that six transformational-leader behaviors positively influence innovation orientation but with differing levels of intensity. Only two of these relationships, “providing an appropriate model” and “accepting group goals,” are culturally independent, while the other behaviors' effects tend to be culturally dependent. For example, “providing intellectual stimulation” has a stronger effect in collectivist cultures, cultures with high power distance, and low uncertainty-avoidance cultures than in other cultures. Similar culture-dependent findings emerge for other leader behaviors.     

Risk Assessment and Alternatives Assessment: Comparing Two Methodologies

The selection and use of chemicals and materials with less hazardous profiles reflects a paradigm shift from reliance on risk minimization through exposure controls to hazard avoidance. This article introduces risk assessment and alternatives assessment frameworks in order to clarify a misconception that alternatives assessment is a less effective tool to guide decision making, discusses factors promoting the use of each framework, and also identifies how and when application of each framework is most effective. As part of an assessor's decision process to select one framework over the other, it is critical to recognize that each framework is intended to perform different functions. Although the two frameworks share a number of similarities (such as identifying hazards and assessing exposure), an alternatives assessment provides a more realistic framework with which to select environmentally preferable chemicals because of its primary reliance on assessing hazards and secondary reliance on exposure assessment. Relevant to other life cycle impacts, the hazard of a chemical is inherent, and although it may be possible to minimize exposure (and subsequently reduce risk), it is challenging to assess such exposures through a chemical's life cycle. Through increased use of alternatives assessments at the initial stage of material or product design, there will be less reliance on post facto risk‐based assessment techniques because the potential for harm is significantly reduced, if not avoided, negating the need for assessing risk in the first place.     

Production planning in a MRP/JIT repetitive manufacturing environment

Some literature suggests that the best approach to production planning is a complete implementation of just-in-time. It has also been suggested that JIT replaces material requirements planning, and computerized procedures are an unnecessary complex burden on management especially in a highly repetitive environment. This article examines the JIT programme at the John Deere Engine factory. In 1985 the factory began a JIT programme with the belief that it would replace their MRP system. The results of the JIT programme are examined and management's conclusion that the best approach is a blend of JIT and MRP is explored.     

A MODEL OF SITE‐SPECIFIC ANTECEDENTS OF ISO 14001 CERTIFICATION

ISO 14001 constitutes a major dilemma for many American firms. This new standard holds the promise of waste reduction and better process management, but the benefits and costs are very difficult to predict. This study attempts to identify and explain antecedents impacting the decision to pursue certification for some of the first plants certified in the United States. Using data from a large survey of U.S. managers and a Logit analysis, we find the factors influencing management decisions to actively pursue ISO 14001 certification to be distinctly different from those factors influencing management's decision not to pursue certification. For the latter, the decision is economically based; for the former, it is driven by other, more qualitative considerations.     

Centralized resource planning and Yardstick competition

Multidivisional and decentralized firms often operate inefficiently. In most cases, central management's instruments to influence its branches' behavior are limited. Although relative performance evaluation has been argued to be of great use in defining incentive mechanisms, such approaches cannot be transferred easily to internal performance management. We approach this issue by changing the perspective of performance evaluation. Based on the recently introduced CRA-DEA model, we develop a new super-efficiency measure that enables to establish purposive intra-organizational incentive mechanisms. By means of a numerical example, analyzing the performance of a German retail bank, the applicability of our measure is shown and compared to standard DEA models. Centralized super-efficiency seems able to suit the specific needs of intra-organizational performance management.     

Ethics and human resource management and development in a global context: case study of an Indian multinational

A firm's orientation to ethics is influenced largely by its national and organizational culture. Research shows that a growing number of Indian firms place a distinct emphasis on long-term orientation to business strategy with a social mission, underpinned by firm commitment to core organizational values, employee development and welfare. Through a case study of a large Indian multinational conglomerate, this article provides preliminary evidence of how some emerging economy firms are successfully mixing and matching indigenous business and people management strategies with the Western emphasis on meritocracy and professionalism to compete in the contemporary global economy. It further shows how the human resource development (HRD) discipline can play a pro-active role in embedding ethics and values throughout the organizational and HR architecture. The HRD professionals in the case study firm also face several structural and cultural challenges in discharging their ethics-driven HR mandate, such as management's ethnocentric attitude to global staffing and clash of work cultures.     

Ignorance Is Not Probability

The distinction between ignorance about a parameter and knowing only a probability distribution for that parameter is of fundamental importance in risk assessment. Brief dialogs between a hypothetical decisionmaker and a risk assessor illustrate this point, showing that the distinction has real consequences. These dialogs are followed by a short exposition that places risk analysis in a decision‐theoretic framework, describes the important elements of that framework, and uses these to shed light on Terje Aven's criticism of nonprobabilistic purely “objective” methods. Suggestions are offered concerning a more effective approach to evaluating those methods.     

Performance Related Pay in Practice: A Critical Perspective1

This paper discusses the use of performance related pay (PRP) as a means of control over the relationship between effort and reward. Taking a critical perspective, it describes how the implementation of PRP in a UK-based electronics company has been used as a device to remove trade union influence in wage-setting arrangements and to effect changes in employee behaviour. The opinions of supervisors, line managers, personnel managers and shop-floor staff are discussed and the implications for management control are assessed. The paper concludes that from management's perspective the PRP system appears to have been a success, for it has in some cases ‘commercialized’ the relationship between effort and reward, and has pre-empted expressions of employee resistance.     

Gestalt Approaches to Assessing Strategic Coalignment: A Conceptual Integration1

Strategic coalignment involves a configuration comprising the external environment, internal organizational arrangements and organizational effectiveness. Each of the above elements is constrained, quasi-deterministic (especially in the short-term) and multidimensional. For the open systems property of equifinality to be satisfied, organizational effectiveness profiles need to be considered endogenous to a gestalt containing all the three elements. Strategic fit would then be assessed in terms of the consistency of the gestalt. This approach would also position coalignment research more consistently with strategic management's goal of adaptive fit, as well the other open systems property of homeostasis. A modified analytical approach is suggested.     

Materializing Strategy in Mundane Tools: the Key to Coupling Global Strategy and Local Strategy Practice?

While much of the literature on strategy and strategy as practice (SaP) focuses on traditional strategic tools, technologies and discursive practices of managers, this paper extends the understanding of strategic change implementation by proposing that mundane material tools, understood as text, translate global strategic discourse in ways that make sense to workers and orchestrate successful global strategy implementation at the local level. Based on a rich case study within one branch of a national bank, this paper demonstrates how a middle manager's materializing practices developed local strategy practice while simultaneously transforming work and producing strategic figures or indicators that satisfied senior management's global strategic change objectives. The contributions of this paper are threefold: (i) it advances the understanding of the multimodality of materiality by identifying the influence of three types of mundane tools produced locally by a middle manager as he performed his sense of the senior managers’ strategic discourse; (ii) it reveals how these three types of physical texts materialized the manager's sense of this discourse, facilitating frontline workers’ engagement and coupling materiality and orality in a coherent way that allowed workers to embody the company's global strategy in their ‘sayings and doings’; and (iii) it highlights the importance of managers’ ability to materialize a strategic discourse.     

How do Greek banking institutions react after significant events?—A DEA approach

The efficiency of Greek commercial banks is considered through the period 1995–2003 using the data envelopment analysis technique. Two approaches are used to measure efficiency: one using financial ratios as outputs only and the other viewing banks as credit generation and transaction institutions. The empirical results are used to examine the reaction of banking institutions after significant events such as M&As, privatizations and the crisis of the Athens Stock Exchange in 1999. In most cases performance deteriorates for the next 1 to 2 years, while increases thereafter, forming specific patterns of efficiency. In the last part we introduce an index to measure the management's efficiency through a process of change. The results suggest that the Greek banking sector operated efficiently on average during the destabilization periods. The contribution of the article is that it comprises the first study which examines empirically the performance behavior of banking institutions within the scope of change management theory.     

Progress in monitoring the sociopolitical environment of the firm

The paper examines data collected in two surveys carried out in 1978 and in 1984 of two sets of British organisations and collates other evidence from the literature in order to assess the progress being made in monitoring and forecasting the sociopolitical environment of the firm. Some U.S. results are also referred to. The overall conclusion is that although a relatively small number of advanced organisations have developed sophisticated systems, most companies have not devoted much attention to the area in spite of the increased turbulence of their environments and the efforts of consultants and academics to propagate knowledge of the available techniques. As in a number of other management systems areas, the available technology seems still to be well ahead of management's inclinations to use it.     

Bayesian Treatment of Model Uncertainty for Partially Applicable Models

This article discusses how analyst's or expert's beliefs on the credibility and quality of models can be assessed and incorporated into the uncertainty assessment of an unknown of interest. The proposed methodology is a specialization of the Bayesian framework for the assessment of model uncertainty presented in an earlier paper. This formalism treats models as sources of information in assessing the uncertainty of an unknown, and it allows the use of predictions from multiple models as well as experimental validation data about the models’ performances. In this article, the methodology is extended to incorporate additional types of information about the model, namely, subjective information in terms of credibility of the model and its applicability when it is used outside its intended domain of application. An example in the context of fire risk modeling is also provided.