Improving the Quality of Staff and Participant Interaction in an Acquired Brain Injury Organization

Weekly observations of direct-care staff in a facility for persons with brain injury yielded less than optimal interactional style with facility residents. Following an observational baseline, staff were asked to self-rate a 15-min video sample of their interaction behavior with participants on their unit. They were then asked to compare their self-ratings to those of a supervisor, as well as view a video exemplar of appropriate positive interaction behavior. Elements of their interactional style were highlighted and specific feedback was provided on how to improve their performance. Interaction style was then reevaluated via an unobtrusive observer and yielded positive gains for all participants. Subsequent on-the-job feedback sustained performance gains.     

A Preliminary Examination of the Effects of Observer Presence on Work-Related Behavior in a Simulated Office

The current study evaluated the effects of prolonged observer presence on individuals' work-related behavior within sessions and across sessions. Participants were three undergraduate students who transcribed articles at a computer workstation in a simulated office setting. Overall, participants demonstrated increases and decreases in their work-related behavior in the presence of an observer. The demonstration of spontaneous recovery suggests that those decreases were due to fatigue, not habituation. Although limitations exist in the current study, this study represents an initial step toward examining behavioral habituation in humans to prolonged observer presence. Future researchers are encouraged to conduct analog studies with more participants, and various observer presence schedules, to determine whether performance changes to direct observation are habituation, fatigue, attention-related changes, or some other confound.     

Forecasting lead times with economic data

Procurement lead time estimates are critical factors in production planning; however, they are generally based on a buyer's experience. The Westinghouse Corporation developed a linear model which successfully predicted procurement lead times for hot and cold rolled steel. This paper discusses nine models which use utilization and inventory data to predict lead time planning factors for aluminum, magnesium, steel and titanium products. The Lockheed-Georgia Company, which produces aerospace products, provided data for this research. The functional form of the models is significant and suggests that a nonlinear transformation of utilization based upon simple queueing models is a significant predictor of lead time duration.     

An industrial application for total productivity optimization

Abstract. This paper presents four strategies for total productivity optimization of a real-life manufacturing company. These strategies are developed to attain overall growth, cost reduction, upgrading of technical efficiency and management effectiveness. Such strategies have been modelled mathematically by using a nonlinear mathematical programming approach. The model base and the data base used in implementing the strategies can serve as decision support to management for optimizing total productivity.     

Evaluation of a class-based storage scheduling technique applied to dual-shuttle automated storage and retrieval systems

Research to improve the performance of automated storage and retrieval systems has concentrated on developing more effective system designs or scheduling control programs to reduce the time a shuttle spends travelling in a rack. Sarker et al. (1991) showed that a dual-shuttle AS/RS operating under a nearest-neighbour scheduling model would significantly improve system throughput performance over a single-load shuttle system. The study was limited in that it only considered dual-shuttle improvements under the nearest-neighbour model. This research exploits the benefits of a dual-shuttle system by integrating the technology with a more effective scheduling technique, the class-based storage model, for reducing the shuttle travel time. The dual-shuttle, class-based storage model produced a significant reduction in shuttle travel time and thus higher throughput results over the dual-shuttle, nearest-neighbour model. This study further supports the premise that a dual-capacity shuttle is an effective way of improving the productivity of an automated storage and retrieval system.     

Participation satisfaction and organizational commitment: moderating role of employee's cultural values

This paper explores the moderating role of cultural values on relationships between participation satisfaction (PS) and employees’ organizational commitment (OC). A survey of 1390 employees of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, a Government of India Public Sector Undertaking providing telecommunication services across India, shows that PS is directly related to OC, and is moderated by employees’ cultural values at individual level. The form of moderation reveals: positive and insignificant relationship between PS and affective commitment for employees high in uncertainty avoidance; positive and significant relationship between PS and normative commitment for employees high in individualism/collectivism, low in masculinity/femininity, and low in power distance. No moderation has been found in the relationship between PS and continuance commitment.     

The role of tourism in national human resource development: a Jamaican perspective

Research in the national human resource development (NHRD) field is increasingly considering unique cultural and economic conditions and the influence this may have on a number of employment-related indicators. To date, the NHRD literature has largely ignored issues related to skills training and workforce development in the tourism industry, despite the expanding nature of this dynamic service sector in many nations. This literature review study of NHRD in Jamaica examined ongoing national-level human resource development (HRD) initiatives with specific attention to the current and future impact of NHRD on the tourism industry. The results showed that governmental development plans clearly identified tourism as a key sector for economic growth to support larger economic and social development goals. Furthermore, the development of human resources in the tourism sector was seen as being of vital importance for tourism organizations and for the continued development of Jamaica. The existing NHRD literature has largely overlooked the potential influence and future role of the tourism industry to assist in education, training and development goals at the national level. Recommendations are made for additional research exploring connections between NHRD and tourism employment.     

Further specification of the leader political skill–leadership effectiveness relationships: Transformational and transactional leader behavior as mediators

The present investigation was a three-source test of the intermediate linkages in the leader political skill–leader effectiveness and follower satisfaction relationships, which examined transformational and transactional (i.e., contingent reward behavior) leader behavior as mediators. Data from 408 leaders (headmasters) and 1429 followers (teachers) of state schools in the western part of Germany participated in this research. The results of mediation analyses, based on bias-corrected bootstrapping confidence intervals, provided support for the hypotheses that political skill predicts both transformational and transactional leader behavior, beyond other established predictors, and that transformational and transactional leader behavior mediate the relationships between leader political skill and leadership effectiveness. The contributions to theory and research, strengths and limitations, directions for future research, and practical implications are discussed.     

Followership,leadership and social influence

Traditional research in leadership has largely relegated followers to the role of passive recipients or, at best, moderators of leader influence and behaviors. However, recent work in the area of followership has begun shifting this focus and emphasizing the possibility that followers actively have an influence over leaders, in particular leader behavior. This paper revisits traditional areas of the leadership literature and builds on the emerging followership literature to reintroduce followers as part of the social context of leaders. In an attempt to build theoretical rationales for how followers influence leader behavior we draw on the social influence (e.g., Social Impact Theory, Latane, 1981) and the power literature to suggest individual (e.g., strength and immediacy of followers) and group level (e.g., number of followers and unity of the group) characteristics that influence leader behaviors as a function of a leader's informational and effect dependence on followers.     

Leader political support: Reconsidering leader political behavior

Historically, organizational politics and political leader behavior have been framed and characterized negatively, as self-serving and counter-productive. However, scholars have noted that political acts can achieve positive ends, and have called for further discussions of positive forms of political leadership. Continuing in this recent stream of research on positive perspectives on organizational politics, a framework of leader political support is proposed, suggesting that the positive features of leader political behavior, and testable propositions are developed. The leader political support construct is defined and its antecedents are explicated utilizing a social capital perspective. Additionally, social exchange theory is used to explain the consequences of leader political support. Contributions to both leadership and organizational politics literatures and directions for future research are discussed.