Full papers
Full Papers
Leadership and Organisational Performance as Mediated by Innovation in SMEs (219)
Author/s: Nuttawuth Muenjohn
Track: Organisational Studies
Paper Type: Full Papers
Keywords: Leadership, Workplace Innovation, Organisational Performance, SMEs
Abstract: Within a strong business competitive world, innovation becomes a source of building a longterm competitive sustainability that leads to superior performance of organisations. Both small and medium firms, to be competitive, have focused their efforts and resources in providing innovative products and services to their customers. The success of innovation development, however, depends on several factors. One of these factors, according to existing literature, is leaderships capacity and ability of the managers of its organisation. The current paper aims to examine the relationship between leadership, innovation and performance within an SME context that would provide us with a better understanding of how leadership quality could affect workplace innovation and in turn influence organisational performance.
Negative Capability - Disambiguating The Concept (298)
Author/s: Suneetha Saggurthi Munish Kumar Thakur
Track: Organisational Studies
Paper Type: Full Papers
Keywords: Negative capability, Imagination, Truth, Aesthetics
Abstract: This paper aims to disambiguate the under explored concept of Negative Capability, a term that has traveled to management from English literature. Coined by the poet Keats, NC is a way to reach the truth using ones sensations, imagination and intuition as against reasoning and logic. We provide an understanding of the concept by going back to its roots in English literature. We discuss the elements involved in NC and the necessary conditions for NC. We also bring back the focus on the much neglected aspect of diligent indolence, which is the ground for NC. We discuss how one could develop NC and put forth implications of NC for organizations.
Entrepreneurship And Leadership: Do The Dots Connect? (308)
Author/s: Munish Kumar Thakur Gaurav Marathe Suneetha Saggurthi
Track: Organisational Studies
Paper Type: Full Papers
Keywords: Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Meaning creation
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to explore how meaning has the potential to explain both leadership and entrepreneurship. We discuss how meaning connects the two and how it also differentiates them, based on the variation in the content of the components of meaning making process which are beliefs, values, knowledge and external reality. While entrepreneurship entails making personal meaning, creation of a secular meaning is an essential condition for leadership. We also examine the meaning making process in both these contexts.
Strong and Balanced Organizational Culture and Organizational Performance: Focusing on Mediating Effects (359)
Author/s: Yong-Sun Chang Jian Hui Guo
Track: Organisational Studies
Paper Type: Full Papers
Keywords: Organizational Culture, Organizational Competency, Organizational Performance, Job Satisfaction, Organizational Commitment
Abstract: The purpose of this study was to identify the relationships between strong and balanced organizational culture, overall attitudes, organizational competencies and organizational performance. We hypothesized the effects of strong and balanced organizational culture on organizational performance. And we hypothesized the mediating effect of organizational competencies and overall attitudes between strong and balanced organizational culture and organizational performance. In addition, this research hypothesized the dual mediating effect of organizational competencies and overall attitudes between the two variables. This research data was collected through Korea Research Institute for Vocational Educational and Training panel survey of 2013. To avoid problems of common source variance, this research obtained data from multiple sources for each variable. Independent variable was measured by 3,530 employees of 163 companies. Overall attitudes and organizational competencies were measured by 1,167 managers of 163 companies. The dependent variable was measured as the log of per capita sales of 163 companies. Regression analysis showed that the strong and balanced organizational culture had significantly positive effect on organizational performance, organizational competencies, and attitudes. Also our research suggested that attitudes of satisfaction and commitment mediated the relationship between the strong balanced organizational culture and organizational performance. And this research showed double mediating effects of organizational competencies and attitudes between the two variables. The findings suggest that management should strive to form the strong balanced organizational culture concurrently reflecting flexibility and stability.
Transformational leadership as a Determinant of Organizational Commitment: The mediating effects of Psychological Empowerment and Psychological well-being (415)
Author/s: Kamran Iqbal
Track: Organisational Studies
Paper Type: Full Papers
Keywords: Transformational leadership, Psychological empowerment, Psychological well-being, Organizational commitment
Abstract: The present study aims to examine the linkage between transformational leadership and organizational commitment through two underlying mechanisms of psychological empowerment and psychological well-being. Data were collected from (n=299) nurses in Sargodha district of Pakistan. Preacher and Hayes (2008) procedure was used to test direct and mediating hypotheses. The results of the study indicate that transformational leadership positively influence the organizational commitment of nurses. Furthermore, the results support the mediating role of psychological empowerment and psychological well-being between transformational leadership and organizational commitment. These findings suggest that when the nursing staff perceives their leader as transformational, they feel more empowered and higher in well-being, which in turn increase their commitment to their hospitals. This study offers a better understanding of the ways through which transformational leadership affect organizational commitment.
Antecedents and Consequences of Participation in Decision Making in Public Sector (610)
Author/s: Khalid Mohamed I A Al-Hashimi Vishanth Weerakkody Sankar Sivarajah
Track: Organisational Studies
Paper Type: Full Papers
Keywords: Participation in Decision Making (PDM), Tenure, Motivation, Task Variety, Organisational Commitment, Job Satisfaction, Qatar
Abstract: Successful organisations have effective decision-making processes as a key element in their success. However, employees need to be encouraged to participate in decision making in order to enrich this process. The aim of this study is to investigate the antecedents and consequences of participation in decision making at the Ministry of Justice in Qatar. A survey was distributed through the internal mail system of the Ministry of Justice and 110 responses were collected. Results show that task variety and organisational motivation were the factors that had a significant influence on Participation in Decision Making (PDM). In addition, results also show that PDM had a significant influence on organisational commitment and job satisfaction. In this document, the implications of the results are discussed, the research limitation is provided and future research is suggested.
Craft Knowledge In Spatial Decision-making In Football (644)
Author/s: David Thomas Weir
Track: Organisational Studies
Paper Type: Full Papers
Keywords: Spatial, decision-making, craft, practitioner
Abstract:
This paper examines themes in contemporary strategic analysis, the management of complexity and the spatial dimension of knowledge by an extended analogy from Association Football, (Soccer),especially the operation of the offside rule, illustrating how spatial factors influence decision-making in a specific context and skilled knowledge-practitioners operate as knowledge-mediators within communities of practice to reduce uncertainty.
Learning is facilitated by shared cognitive and material bases, mental models and cultural backgrounds. Congruent communication structures and common experiences of success and failure reinforce performance patterns.
We argue that it is time to place performance in spatial context at the centre of the study of managerial cognition.
From Job Satisfaction to Profession Satisfaction (670)
Author/s: Hossein Ali Abadi Christian L van Tonder Desmond Tutu Ayentimi
Track: Organisational Studies
Paper Type: Full Papers
Keywords: job satisfaction, profession satisfaction, turnover intention, educator
Abstract: Despite the potential role of satisfaction with the profession being a co determinant in employees intention to remain or leave their profession, limited research has focused on this construct and the potential factors that may influence it. People may like a job, but not necessarily like the profession, which consequently may influence their intention to remain or leave the profession. While theoretical justification for the difference between job satisfaction and profession satisfaction is non exist, this study adopted a classic Grounded Theory research strategy to investigate the notions of job and profession satisfaction among former educators. Findings show the existence and of profession satisfaction and its role in influencing educators intention to leave the profession. This brings a totally different and expanded perspective to the study of job satisfaction and turnover intention, with potentially significant ramifications for future research in this domain.
Bringing Body Back: Job Crafting, Human Agency and Identity Play (762)
Author/s: Ai Yu Harishchandra Jyawali
Track: Organisational Studies
Paper Type: Full Papers
Keywords: Job crafting, human agency, body, identity play, constraining environment
Abstract: Job crafting has been understood as a better alternative to job design in expressing human agency at work. However, the discussion on agency in the existing job crafting literature has been largely confined to a cognitive process of positive meaning making and identity construction. Little is known about the bodily dimension of agency in job crafting. Through an ethnographic study of culinary organisations, we are able to elaborate how chefs bodies and bodily encounters are always embedded in job crafting that trigger particular identity plays on one hand, and exert material limits on those on the other. The findings suggest that the body provides more than a motive or vehicle for human agency, it in itself has an agentic capacity to affect and be affected. As such, the boundaries, meanings and consequences of job crafting are not fixed, but subject to the changes emerging from human and non human interactions in the socio material assemblage of everyday life. The study offers an embodied approach to job crafting via identity play that deepens our understanding of human agency in a constraining environment.
Navigating Formal and Informal Trajectories in Complex Creative Projects (784)
Author/s: Charalampos Mainemelis Evy Sakellariou
Track: Organisational Studies
Paper Type: Full Papers
Keywords: creative project, bootlegging, creative deviance, slacklining
Abstract: Using data from a real time and in-situ study of a creative communication campaign in a subsidiary of a Fortune 500 multinational corporation, we explore how creative projects unfold in organizations by accessing formal and informal channels. Our findings reveal that during the course of its evolution the creative project followed a zigzagging trajectory by combining legitimate evolution in the formal channel, illegitimate evolution in the informal channel, and tactical switching between the formal and informal channels aimed at maximizing the creative projects chances of success. Drawing on our findings, we designate this zigzagging trajectory as slacklining. We discern in our data five behavioral components of slacklining brokerage, selective concealment, shared wins framing, use of time, and creative licensing that are configured in different ways depending on the target of slacklining. We develop a grounded theoretical model that describes slacklining as a politically driven form of creative action that alters decisively the balance of power among the structural barriers, structural enablers, and structural gaps that affect the evolution of creative projects in organizations. We discuss implications for theory and research on creative projects, bootlegging, and creative deviance.
Download Paper
The Practice of Process (785)
Author/s: John Brocklesby
Track: Organisational Studies
Paper Type: Full Papers
Keywords: process organisation studies, law enforcement, organised crime
Abstract: With respect to the currently popular process perspective in organisation studies, this paper responds to claims that after a lengthy gestation period during which great attention has been directed at mapping out its philosophical, theoretical and methodological terrain, the focus now needs to look more systematically at what putting this way of thinking about organisations and their management might mean in practice. In order to illustrate what the practice of process might involve in a complex setting, this paper looks at the problem of organised crime and the law enforcement response to it. The paper argues that while there may be a degree of philosophical incommensurability between the relatively static object based, and the more dynamic process thinking, in practice they almost always co exist and it is very much a matter of where the balance lies between the two. With this balance in mind, the paper argues that global trends in organised criminality strongly suggest that a law enforcement strategy tilted in favour of process thinking is potentially much more effective than an object based approach. However it is also significantly more challenging. In illustrating how all of this plays out organisationally the paper draws upon general trends in law enforcement as well as the experience of the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency between 2006 to 2014.
Sensemaking And Institutional Theory: Bringing Sense Making And Institutions Into Organisational CSR Practices Through Mechanisms (949)
Author/s: Hira Gulshan Alexandros Psychogios
Track: Organisational Studies
Paper Type: Full Papers
Keywords: Keywords: sensemaking, institutional theory, mechanism, corporate social responsibility (CSR)
Abstract: Karl Weicks sensemaking perspective proved to be a central point for organisational CSR practices. According to Weick, sensemaking is a universal and ongoing process and helps organisations to understand their ambiguous and complicated situations. Several authors argued that they can investigate CSR more deeply by using sensemaking approach Basu and Palazzo, 2008, Nijhof and Jeurissen, 2006). But still to date organisations do not have walk the talk culture in their social processes. Karl work had persistent criticism that he missed larger social and historical contexts in sensemaking. This study will address this critique by bringing institutions into process of sensemaking. This study proposes a link between institutions and sensemaking perspective. This study questions why we are still debating on definition and concept of CSR Is sensemaking perspective important to understand CSR? Why sensemaking is not an accomplishment on its own Why institutional theory cannot be applied independently in CSR practices What institutions and sensemaking perspective together can bring into organisational CSR practices This research will develop a strong understanding of relating institutions and sensemaking in organisational CSR practices.
Alcohol at Work: A Poststructuralist Perspective (1034)
Author/s: Samuel Osei-Nimo
Track: Organisational Studies
Paper Type: Full Papers
Keywords: Alcohol, Poststructuralism, Management, Control, Power
Abstract: The key aim of this paper is to provide an understanding of how alcohol use or misuse in the British workplace could be constructed as a problem following Michel Foucaults approach to social phenomena. In this regard, the research focuses mainly on alcohol use and misuse in the workplace and intends to shed light on how alcohol is constructed as a problem, the dimensions of the problem and how these are shaped by the numerous discourses. Furthermore, the research aims to achieve this by evaluating the interaction between the organisational discourses and the actual practices regarding alcohol in the workplace while ensuring to give the same importance to the diverse organisational discourses. Nonetheless this research, unlike the traditional studies on alcohol in the workplace, is not intended to provide an absolute answer to the issue of alcohol in the workplace but to contribute towards a better understanding of the actual practices related to the use of alcohol in the workplace, and why, how and when the use of alcohol could be considered as a problem. This paper will involve the genealogical dimension of Foucaults method of analysis, that is, the Poststructuralist approach the research has adopted will be fully effected in this study through the consideration of the archaeological phase of the project which addressed the different discourses, the dynamics of power and knowledge, diverse interest. The paper will address the research aim presented in order to understand the historical context of alcohol use or its misuse in the workplace based on insights generated from the discourses unearthed.