The role of employees' OCB and leaders' hindrance stress in the emergence of self-serving leadership

Media reports on self-serving leadership primarily focused on the negative consequences of such behavior for employees. However, much remains to be understood about the antecedents of self-serving behavior of leaders. In the present research we explore the role of employees' organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) in the emergence of self-serving leadership. Using one multi-source field study and three experiments, we showed that employees' OCB towards coworkers (OCBI) negatively impacted self-serving leadership. Moreover, we also examine the underlying mechanism for this relation. Results indicate that employees' OCBI mitigated leaders' hindrance stress, which mediates the relationship between OCBI and self-serving leadership. As such, our findings indicate that self-serving leaders are not necessarily inherently bad and that employees have an important role in shaping leaders' self-serving behavior.     

The servant leadership advantage: When perceiving low differentiation in leader-member relationship quality influences team cohesion,team task performance and service OCB

How does servant leaders' unique ability to place each follower's needs above their own influence relationships between followers and impact their collective performance? In a study that integrates principles of servant leadership with the social comparison theoretical framework, we tested a group-level model to examine how servant leadership induces low perceived differentiation in leader-member relationship quality (perceived LMX differentiation) within a group, which strengthens team cohesion and in turn positively influences team task performance and service-oriented organizational citizenship behaviors (service OCB). Our sample comprised 229 employees nested in 67 work teams. Structural equation modeling results indicate that servant leadership significantly predicts low perceived LMX differentiation; perceived LMX differentiation is strongly related to team cohesion such that the lower the perceived differentiation, the stronger the team's cohesiveness. And, team cohesion is also strongly related to both the team's task performance and service OCB. Perceived LMX differentiation and team cohesion mediate the effect of servant leadership on both team task performance and service OCB.     

Educational Landscapes and Urban Development. Contextual and Spatial Interfaces and Linkages

In the broad sociopolitical discussion on education quality within the last decade, it has become apparent that education is gaining importance for urban development, as well as space and the urban context are important dimensions of education. This becomes particularly evident in concepts for local educational landscapes (Ger. Bildungslandschaften). The young field of research on educational landscapes is currently lacking empirical research from spatial and planning sciences. In the paper, the current state of scientific research on educational landscapes in Germany and Europe and first insights to contextual and spatial interfaces and linkages between education and urban development in general are presented.     

Inventory Models with Continuous and Poisson Demands and Discounted and Average Costs

We develop a new, unified approach to treating continuous‐time stochastic inventory problems with both the average and discounted cost criteria. The approach involves the development of an adjusted discounted cycle cost formula, which has an appealing intuitive interpretation. We show for the first time that an (s, S) policy is optimal in the case of demand having a compound Poisson component as well as a constant rate component. Our demand structure simultaneously generalizes the classical EOQ model and the inventory models with Poisson demand, and we indicate the reasons why this task has been a difficult one. We do not require the surplus cost function to be convex or quasi‐convex as has been assumed in the literature. Finally, we show that the optimal s is unique, but we do not know if optimal S is unique.     

E-governance and Corruption-developments and Issues in Ethiopia

This paper reports the results of a survey of 400 respondents in Ethiopia about factors generating corruption and the potential of e-Governance to mitigate corruption. It is suggested that e-Governance can help not only in weeding out corruption but also in the establishment of sounder government citizen relationships in Ethiopia. While e-Governance cannot cure all the structural factors that breed corruption in the society, strategic implementation of e-Governance can help improve the critical variable in combating corruption-government citizen relationships. It is argued that while e-Governance initiatives can make important contributions to improving public services they can best do so by helping improve overall relationships between governments and citizens.

The Challenge of Political and Economic Change in Poland and Central and Eastern Europe

This article discusses political and economic changes in Poland, Central and Eastern Europe emerging since the demise of the ‘closed system’ in 1989. The presentation explores the range of change, the method and the sequence of change. General lessons in economic transition as identified by Polish Finance Minister Lezak Balcerowicz are discussed. The challenges involved in macroeconomic stabilization, radical liberalization, currency convertibility, subsidy reduction and conversion of state-owned enterprises are reviewed. Despite their complexity, economic and political reforms proved necessary and inevitable. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Work and shopping overflow — Consequences and differentiation among selected psychological and demographic characteristics

Contemporary individuals are forced to deal with excessive stimulation, which causes an overload in the cognitive and emotional areas. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the possible factors differentiating the perceived level of work and shopping overflow experienced by individuals and consequences of these states. Two psychological variables: cognitive control and sensation seeking, are chosen as potential factors differentiating the perceived levels of overflow. We assume that individuals with high cognitive control and sensation seeking will report lower levels of both types of examined overflows. Experiencing low overflow levels may manifest in the search for additional stimuli, rather than in the desire to limit them. Two indexes of behavior connected to seeking extra stimulation are selected: one belonging to the area of consumer behavior (readiness to participate in the experience economy) and one belonging to vocational behavior (choosing a boundaryless career). The quantitative study is conducted on a sample of 297 management students who are currently employed. The research results support the relation between cognitive control and perceived level of work and shopping overflow. Individuals who can cognitively control the situation and the incoming stimuli report lower levels of overflow. No significant relationship between sensation seeking and the level of overflow is found. The demographic variables that influence the perceived overflow are age and salary for work overflow and age for shopping overflow. As far as consequences of overflow are concerned, a low level of shopping overflow is related to readiness to participate in the experience economy. However, there is no link between work overflow and preferred career pattern. The managerial implications for human resource management and marketing strategy design are discussed.     

Review and preview of productivity research and applications

During the last two decades, productivity research and applications have not been given adequate importance when trying to attain excellence in the management of manufacturing enterprises. Recent developments in managerial philosophies Total Quality Management and Business Process Re-engineering , manufacturing technologies Flexible Manufacturing Systems, Computer Integrated Manufacturing, etc. and Information Technology innovations have made the traditional productivity improvement techniques obsolete. This article presents a review consisting of analyses of literature on productivity and a survey of manufacturing enterprises. A five-step preview strategy on productivity is enumerated which provides a meaningful direction towards future productivity research and application. The article is concluded by briefly describing the current research that is being carried out based on the preview strategy evolved.     

Modeling Pathology Workload and Complexity to Manage Risks and Improve Patient Quality and Safety

Anatomic pathology (AP) laboratories provide critical diagnostic information that help determine patient treatments and outcomes, but the risks of AP operations and their impact on patient safety and quality of care remain poorly recognized and undermanaged. Hospital-based laboratories face an operational and risk management challenge because clinical work of unknown quantity and complexity arrives with little advance notice, which results in fluctuations in workload that can push operations beyond planned capacity, leading to diagnostic delays and potential errors. Modeling the dynamics of workload and complexity in AP offers the opportunity to better use available information to manage risks. We developed a stock-and-flow model of a typical AP laboratory operation and identified key exogenous inputs that drive AP work. To test the model, we generated training and validations data sets by combining data from the electronic medical records and laboratory information systems over multiple years. We demonstrate the implementation of 10-day AP work forecast generated on a daily basis, and show its performance in comparison with actual work. Although the model somewhat underpredicts work as currently implemented, it provides a framework for prospective management of resources to ensure quality during workload surges. Although full implementation requires additional model development, we show that AP workload largely depends on few and accessible clinical inputs. Recognizing that level loading of work in a hospital is not practical, predictive modeling of work can empower laboratories to triage, schedule, or mobilize resources more effectively and better manage risks that reduce the quality or timeliness of diagnostic information.     

Definitions and linkages between operational and strategic flexibilities

This paper aims at clarifying the concept of strategic flexibility, starting from that much more common of manufacturing flexibility (or operational one). After characterizing the dimensions of the latter, a classification of strategic flexibility is presented which distinguishes four categories. The measures of strategic flexibility are also investigated. Then two analogies are pointed out with the operational flexibility. The first, of the cause-effect type, is on two levels: at the business level, the operational flexibility estimates the variation of practices, while the strategic flexibility measures the effect obtained on performances; at the corporate level, the operational flexibility estimates the variation of competences, while the strategic flexibility evaluates the change in business. The second analogy, related to the classification variables, permits the main types of operational and strategic flexibilities to be placed in a single framework. So this study seeks to provide a framework—which has not been proposed in prior literature—for analyzing and evaluating the correlated concepts of operational and strategic flexibilities, to create a theoretical foundation for future research and empirical testing.     

Review and reappraisal of modelling and predicting mental workload in single- and multi-task environments

The concept of mental workload has long been recognized as an important factor in individual performance within complex systems. It is documented that either overload or underload may degrade performance, and further affect the efficiency of the whole system. Therefore, systems designers need some explicit models to predict the mental workload imposed on individuals by the system at an early design phase so that alternative system designs can be evaluated. In examining mental-workload literature, it is found that few predictive mental-workload models have considered factors specific to individuals. This research aims to develop a practical framework for predicting mental workload in both single- and multi-task environments considering such individual factors. In order to describe mental workload more precisely and more completely, a framework for mentalworkload definitions, which contains instantaneous workload, average workload, accumulated workload, peak workload and overall workload, is proposed. In order to model individual factors, two new variables, i.e. effective workload and ineffective workload, are introduced to model the taskgenerated workload and individual-generated workload. The extension of the model to multi-task environments is also discussed. The proposed conceptual models are domain-independent and could be used to guide the development of operational models for different specific tasks.     

Additive and Multiplicative Models and Multistage Carcinogenesis Theory

In light of the Armitage-Doll multistage carcinogenesis theory, this paper examines the assumption that an additive relative risk relationship is indicative of two carcinogens that affect the same stage in the cancer process. We present formulas to compute excess cancer risks for a variety of patterns for limited exposure durations to two carcinogens that affect the first and penultimate stages; and using an index of synergy proposed by Thomas (1982), we find a number of these patterns to produce additive, or nearly additive, relative risk relationships. The consistent feature of these patterns is that the two exposure periods are of short duration and occur close together.     

Floods and Climate Change: Interactions and Impacts

Whether the floods experienced during the last decade in Germany and in other European countries are triggered or worsened by human activities has been the subject of a great deal of debate. Possible anthropogenic activities leading to increased flood risk include river regulation measures, intensified land use and forestry, and emissions of greenhouse gases causing a change in the global climate. This article discusses the latter by reviewing the existing knowledge on the subject. First, the relevance, capabilities, and limitations of climate models for the simulation and analysis of flood risk under aspects of the anthropogenic climate change are described. Special consideration is given here to differences between the "typical" spatial scale of climate models and hydrological flood models. Second, observations of trends in climate variables relevant for river flooding issues are summarized. Special emphasis is put on the Rhine and other German catchment areas. Third, the possibilities of modeling the different parts of the "cascade of flood risk" are summarized, introducing the special features of meteorological, hydrological, and river hydraulic models.     

Chronic stress and chronic disease in life and work: Conceptual and methodological issues

This paper argues that the lack of strong prospective evidence linking occupational and social stress to chronic disease stems from the failure of research designs to attend sufficiently to the aetiological chronicity of such diseases. Studies of both supposedly acute stress (life events) and chronic stress in life or work must increasingly be designed to distinguish between stress which is sustained or chronic over a period of yean or even decades, and hence capable of causing a serious chronic disease, and brief or transient stress, which may produce transient or brief psychological or physiological disturbances but cannot generate major chronic disease. Prospective studies are needed which collect measures of both stress and health or disease at multiple points over an extended period of time. Measures of stress should focus more on affect (for example, feelings of pressure and tension) than on cognition (for example feelings of satisfaction). Limited existing evidence is consistent with these ideals.     

Beliefs and the Perception of Risks and Accidents

Identifying the causes of accidents is a necessary prerequisite for preventive action. Some research suggests however that the analysis of accidents does not only differ between experts and laymen but that it is also linked to certain characteristics inherent in the analyst and in the social group to which he belongs: beliefs, value systems, norms, experiences in common, attitudes, roles, social and technical practices, etc. Culturally determined bias seems to affect the perception of risk and the causes of accidents. This article presents a certain number of thoughts and results based upon research carried out on causal attributions of traffic accidents in The Ivory Coast (West Africa) and discusses the importance of culture in risk-taking and accident prevention. It shows in particular that fatalistic beliefs and mystical practices influence the perception of accidents and consequently incite one to take more risks and neglect safety measures.     

Hardiness and the relationship between stressors and outcomes

Using a sample of 468 participants, from two organizations, this study examined direct and moderating relationships between hardiness (a composite of challenge, control, and commitment), life and work stressors, and a variety of health-related outcomes. The results indicated that hardiness did not moderate the relationship between stressors and outcomes as reported by others (e.g. Kobasa 1982a). However, hardiness did have significant direct effects on emotional and psychological factors thought to be related to personal well-being and work performance. Hardy individuals reported higher levels of job satisfaction and fewer tensions at work dun did the less hardy. In general, hardy individuals experienced a higher quality of life and a more positive affect while being more energized and less negative about life. Hardy individuals also reported fewer somatic complaints and tended to be less depressed and anxious than individuals low in hardiness. In addition, hardiness was negatively related to all four measures of life and work stress implying that hardiness may not be independent of life demands.     

On-shift and daily variations in self-report and performance measures in rotating-shift and permanent night nurses

An intensive study was conducted of the influence of type of shift system, type of shift, and time-into-shift on a battery of on-shift and daily measures obtained from 61 female nurses over a 28-day period. Thirty-two rotating-shift nurses and 28 permanent night nurses recorded data on a hand-held computer at the start and end of each day, and every 2-h during their shifts. The measures included a sleep diary, self-ratings of mood, workload, and personal disruption, and two cognitive performance tasks. These results suggest that the permanent night nurses were no worse off and for some measures were actually better off than the rotating-shift nurses after controlling for differences in age and shiftwork experience; the night-shift was problematic for the rotating-shift nurses but so was the early shift; mood deteriorated and reaction time got slower over the course of the night-shift but extra long responses (which may correspond to lapses of attention) and rated workload were lower on the night-shift. The relatively large number of consecutive night-shifts worked by the rotating-shift nurses, the uneven distribution of workload between shifts, and the long night-shift may have contributed to these results.     

On-shift and daily variations in self-report and performance measures in rotating-shift and permanent night nurses

Abstract

An intensive study was conducted of the influence of type of shift system, type of shift, and time-into-shift on a battery of on-shift and daily measures obtained from 61 female nurses over a 28-day period. Thirty-two rotating-shift nurses and 28 permanent night nurses recorded data on a hand-held computer at the start and end of each day, and every 2-h during their shifts. The measures included a sleep diary, self-ratings of mood, workload, and personal disruption, and two cognitive performance tasks. These results suggest that the permanent night nurses were no worse off and for some measures were actually better off than the rotating-shift nurses after controlling for differences in age and shiftwork experience; the night-shift was problematic for the rotating-shift nurses but so was the early shift; mood deteriorated and reaction time got slower over the course of the night-shift but extra long responses (which may correspond to lapses of attention) and rated workload were lower on the night-shift. The relatively large number of consecutive night-shifts worked by the rotating-shift nurses, the uneven distribution of workload between shifts, and the long night-shift may have contributed to these results.     

Career Dis-integration and Re-integration in Mergers and Acquisitions:: Managing Competence and Motivational Intangibles

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are increasingly prevalent, powerful and risky corporate events. The resistance or support of people in the integration of two previously separate organizations plays a key role for their success or failure. In this paper we present a Career Concept approach to better understand and manage sources and incentives for individual contributions and reactions to M&A. As ‘merged’ corporations integrate previously separate organizations, they can often dis-integrate individual careers with lay-offs, reduced advancement opportunities, upset or changed career plans, and other resistance-generating changes. This is the poorest means of mobilizing motivation, experience, commitment and competence, all of which are usually seen as critical justifications for M&A in the first place. Organizations face opportunity to select new combinations and integrate work in ways that individual careers can be re-integrated into the goals of the M&A with the goals and motivations of participants affected by it, by recognizing and effectively supporting different motivational and competence profiles.     

Mastery-approach and mastery-avoidance goals and their relation with exhaustion and engagement at work: The roles of emotional and instrumental support

The results of two cross-sectional studies (N = 220 and N = 258) indicate that employees' work-related mastery-approach goals (i.e. the striving to improve one's performance at work) were positively associated with work engagement. Further, this relationship is explained by high levels of instrumental support. In contrast, employees' work-related mastery-avoidance goals (i.e. the striving to avoid performing worse than one aspires to) are positive predictors of job detachment and fatigue. The relationships between mastery-avoidance goals and these detrimental work outcomes are explained by low levels of perceived emotional support. Altogether, these results suggest that workers with mastery-approach goals tend to invest in their social work environment by establishing instrumental exchange relationships. Such relationships are considered functional for task performance and explain the positive relationship with work engagement. Employees who hold mastery-avoidance goals, on the other hand, tend to withdraw from the social structure of the workplace which explains the negative relationship with emotional support. In turn, given the lack of emotional support, psychological detachment and fatigue may emerge. These results are discussed in relation to the surging interest in the social mechanisms that result from the pursuit of achievement goals.