A model for evaluating the effectiveness of middle managers' training courses: evidence from a major banking organization in Greece

Contemporary management thinking embraces the organizational training theory that sustainable success rests, to a great extent, upon a systematic evaluation of training interventions. However, the evidence indicates that few organizations take adequate steps to assess and analyse the quality and outcomes of their training. The authors seek to develop the existing literature on training evaluation by proposing a new model, specific to management training, which might encourage more and better evaluation by practitioners. Their thesis is that training evaluation is best if it can be based on criteria derived from the objectives of the training and they draw on the management effectiveness literature to inform their proposed model. The study seeks to examine the effect of six evaluation levels – reactions, learning, job behaviour, job performance, organizational team performance and some wider, societal effects – in measuring training interventions with regard to the alterations to learning, transfer and organizational impact. The model was tested with data obtained from 190 middle managers employed by a large banking organization in Greece and the results suggest that there is considerable consistency in the evaluation framework specified. The paper discusses these results and draws conclusions about their practical implications. The study's limitations are considered and some future research needs identified.     

The Effects of Ethical Climates on Bullying Behaviour in the Workplace

Various aspects of the relationship between ethical climate types and organizational commitment have been examined, although a relationship with the concept of bullying, which may be very detrimental to an organization, has not attracted significant attention. This study contributes to the existing research by taking the effects of bullying behaviour into consideration. The aim of this study is to explore the effects of bullying behaviour upon the relationship between ethical climate types and organizational commitment. It will be noted that work-related bullying behaviour significantly mediated the relationship between instrumentality climate and two of the dimensions of organizational commitment. Significant relationships between ethical climate dimensions and organizational commitment can also be detected. By emphasizing a required ethical climate dimension for organizations this study therefore presents in outline a partial strategy to reduce bullying behaviour and to increase organizational commitment.     

Value Orientations as Determinants of Preference for External and Anonymous Whistleblowing

Incidences of organizational wrongdoing have become wide spread throughout the whole business world. The management of organizational wrongdoings is of growing concern in organizations globally, since these types of acts can be detrimental to financial well being. Wrongdoing occurs within organizational settings and organizational members commonly have knowledge of and thus the opportunity to report the wrongdoing. An employee’s decision to report individual or organizational misconduct, i.e. blow the whistle, is a complex phenomenon that is based upon organizational, situational and personal factors. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between value orientations of individuals and choices for particular whistleblowing modes. Our results show that there are significant relationships between these variables. We contribute to the extant literature by choosing Turkey as context as most studies have been conducted in the US and Europe, and little has been reported about the actions taken by employees in non-Western cultures when they observe wrongdoing in their organizations.     

Consumer cynicism: Interdisciplinary hybrid review and research agenda

Over the years, consumers have been questioning the intentions and actions of firms, resulting in a cynical attitude and behaviour. Due to the severity of the outcomes that cynical consumers may display, reputed journals and prolific researchers have addressed the core issue in their own unique ways. However, no single study offers a uniform, comprehensive, and contemporary review of consumer cynicism literature. Thus, we use an interdisciplinary approach to study the literature spanning 47 years (1976–2022) on cynicism in consumer research, psychology, and organizational domains through a hybrid review involving bibliometric and systematic literature reviews. Following the SPAR-4-SLR protocol, this review shows the most cited and co-cited articles, researchers, and keywords in cynicism research. We infer that the consumer cynicism construct draws heavily from the organizational behaviour area, possessing the potential to be correlated with, and extended to interdisciplinary research. Also, we offer an all-inclusive model of the predictors and predictands of consumer cynicism based on the ADO-TCM framework. We close this study with its academic contributions, practical implications, and future research directions using the ADO-TCM framework.     

Taking a positive approach to organizational downsizing

We drew from the literature on positive organizational behaviour (Luthans & Youssef, 2007) to test a process model relating generalized optimism (Carver & Scheier, 1999) to the cognitions, affect, and behaviour of 237 Canadian federal government managers during and following a major organizational downsizing. Our data supported a model in which generalized optimism measured 18 months prior to the downsizing (T1) associated positively with managers' cognitions, attitudes, job performance, and self‐reported coping effectiveness measured 12 months postdownsizing (T3). Analyses suggested that some of these associations were partially mediated by a positive thinking coping strategy and expectations for future career and job success reported during the downsizing (T2). We advocate for more research that draws from the positive organizational behaviour literature to study the effects of downsizing on survivors. Copyright © 2008 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Differences between workstations and keypad group support systems: Implications for keypad GSS facilitators

Organizations are successfully using group support systems (GSS) to improve efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction in organizational meetings. Meeting success relies on making an appropriate match between group, taks, and technology. This responsibility often falls to the meeting facilitator. This article draws upon GSS and facilitation literature to develop a framework for the discussion of effective facilitation in workstation and keypad meeting environments. The article identifies differences between the systems and how they impact upon the behavior of the meeting facilitators and their choice of technology. Compensatory actions are proposed for keypad facilitators to address the lack of key workstation features. Keypad strengths are also identified to show the opportunities available to facilitators to maximize the benefits of using these GSS. Further, it is proposed that different types of GSS are not mutually exclusive and should be seen as complementary components of a suite of GSS tools designed to support organizational goals.     

Charismatic leadership in IT firms in Taiwan: an empirical study

This study aims to look at charismatic leadership and management innovation in a sample of Information Technology firms in Taiwan. The literature on such leadership was examined because it reveals how leaders serve as key agents who stimulate others with their vision of the potential of an innovation. Theoretically, we suggest that charismatic leadership behaviour can help management innovation but only when certain conditions are met. Empirically, we find that charismatic leaders must create a higher level of trust in their subordinates at all levels of the organizational hierarchy, based on common perceptions of the firm as a trustworthy entity.     

Organizational Citizenship Behaviour for the Environment: Measurement and Validation

While the importance of employee initiatives for improving the environmental practices and performance of organizations has been clearly established in the literature, the precise nature of these initiatives has rarely been examined (particularly the issue of their discretionary or mandatory nature). The role of organizational citizenship behaviour in environmental management remains largely unexplored. The main objectives of this paper were to propose and validate an instrument for measuring organizational citizenship behaviour for the environment (OCBE). Exploratory (Study 1, N?=?228) and confirmatory (Study 2, N?=?651) analyses were conducted to examine the factor structure of OCBEs. The factor structure that emerged from Study 1 indicated that the three main types of OCBEs were eco-initiatives, eco-civic engagement and eco-helping. The factor structure found in Study 1 was confirmed by Study 2. Analysis of the three types of OCBEs highlighted the complexity of discretionary initiatives for the environment in the workplace and points to a number of avenues for further research.     

Practitioner-Based Theory Building in Organizational Ethics

Understanding of organizational ethics phenomena requires complex understanding of organizational practices in their real world contexts. We can try to understand and build theory about these complex real world practices from the points of view of: (1) a traditional deductive, ethics literature-based, literature gap formulation approach; or, (2) an inductive, practitioner-based literature gap formulation approach. This consideration of inductive, practitioner-based versus deductive, literature-based literature gap formulation is related to the discussion concerning “engaged scholarship” and relationships and gaps between theory and practice in organization studies [Van De Ven, 2007, Engaged Scholarship: A Guide for Organizational and Research Knowledge (Oxford University Press, NY)]. However, there is an important difference with respect to the key issue of ethics literature versus practitioner-based literature gap formulation. This article offers examples of the two different approaches and makes comparisons between them. Implications for practice-based organizational ethics theory building, Ph.D. education, and public intellectual work are considered.     

An Investigation of Antecedents for the Development of Customer Support Services in Manufacturing Companies

ABSTRACT

There is widespread agreement in the literature that customer satisfaction is an important driver of organizational performance. However, existing research has tended to focus on only a few variables which mediate the link between customer satisfaction and organizational performance (especially customer loyalty). The goal of this paper is to provide deeper insights into the outcomes of customer satisfaction by studying the link between customer satisfaction and price sensitivity, drawing upon different theoretical perspectives (i.e., transaction cost theory and equity theory). The study is based on a dyadic data set collected from salespeople and their customers across multiple manufacturing and services industries in a business-to-business context. Results indicate the presence of an inverse relationship between customer satisfaction and price sensitivity. Findings also indicate that the link under consideration is particularly strong in the case of high product/service specificity and product/service complexity.     

Organizational Justice and the Management of Stakeholder Relations

Despite the appeal of the stakeholder concept, little work had been done with respect to the development of specific structures for the management of stakeholder relations. This paper draws upon the organizational justice literature to demonstrate how many of its concerns coincide with those of the stakeholder management literature. It shows that organizational justice can provide specific advice for the design of stakeholder relations, while stakeholder theory can broaden the scope of current inquiries into organizational justice.     

Risky business? The survival implications of exploiting commercial opportunities by nonprofits

Prior research is equivocal as to the performance implications of exploiting market-based opportunities by nonprofit organizations. We investigate an under-addressed measure of performance in this literature: organizational survival. Drawing upon resource dependence theory, we argue that performance is largely dependent upon the extent to which nonprofits focus on market-based opportunities. Through analysis of the population of Canadian charities, we find support for a U-shaped relationship indicating that low to moderate levels of market-based income decrease the likelihood of firm exit, whereas high levels increase this likelihood.     

营销情境中的心理契约及其测量

心理契约发轫于组织行为学研究，但心理契约在企业与顾客的营销情境中同样存在。在文献回顾基础上，本文将心理契约应用到营销情境中，界定了特定的概念内涵，开发设计了相应的测度量表，并通过调查数据分析，对量表的信度与效度进行了实证检验。     

Town centre management in the UK: A review,synthesis and research agenda

Despite rapid growth in the number of town centre management schemes in the UK there have been few attempts to consider this topic from an academic perspective. This article develops a typology of town centre management schemes, based upon a comprehensive review of existing literature. The criteria of organizational structure and resource origin are identified as primary influences in the initiation and development of such schemes. The article concludes by outlining a research agenda which considers both local governance and spatial and temporal themes in the initiation and development of town centre management. The analysis of such factors is vital to a fuller understanding of this area.     

Organizational socialization and positive organizational behaviour: implications for theory,research, and practice

The purpose of this paper is to advocate a shift in research and practice on organizational socialization towards one based on positive organizational behaviour (POB). First, we demonstrate how the prevailing perspectives of organizational socialization are based on a cognitive‐learning process that emphasizes information and knowledge acquisition. We then review the literature on POB and psychological capital (PsyCap) and argue that socialization processes should be designed to develop the PsyCap of newcomers. We offer a new approach to organizational socialization called socialization resources theory (SRT) and describe four broad socialization resources that can be used to develop newcomers' self‐efficacy, hope, optimism, and resilience. Finally, we discuss the implications of this approach for research and practice on organizational socialization. Copyright © 2010 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Towards an understanding of health care purchasing: The purchasing behaviour of general practice fundholders 1

In the last few years there have been considerable changes in the National Health Service. Perhaps the most significant of these has been the introduction of competition into health care, that is the split of the health service into purchasers and providers of care. Central to this development has been the introduction of general practice fundholding, whereby practices are able to purchase health care for their patients directly from competing suppliers. Those pradices which have become fundholders have faced considerable challenges in developing their purchasing function. At the same time, provider units in areas where fundholding has become established face an increasingly fragmented purchasing base.

Building on existing theoretical work into the nature of organizational purchasing behaviour and current knowledge of the health care market in Britain, this paper attempts to develop an understanding of the dynamics of GP fundholder purchasing behaviour.     

Ethical Considerations and Change Recipients’ Reactions: ‘It’s Not All About Me’

An implicit assumption in most works on change recipient reactions is that employees are self-centred and driven by a utilitarian perspective. According to large parts of the organizational change literature, employees’ reactions to organizational change are mainly driven by observations around the question ‘what will happen to me?’ We analysed change recipients’ reactions to 26 large-scale planned change projects in a policing context on the basis of 23 in-depth interviews. Our data show that change recipients drew on observations with three foci (me, colleagues and organization) to assess change, making sense of change as multidimensional and mostly ambivalent in nature. In their assessment of organizational change, recipients care not only about their own personal outcomes, but go beyond self-interested concerns to show a genuine interest in the impact of change on their colleagues and organization. Meaningful engagement of employees in organizational change processes requires recognizing that reactions are not simply ‘all about me’. We add to the organizational change literature by introducing a behavioural ethics perspective on change recipients’ reactions highlighting an ethical orientation where moral motives that trigger change reactions get more attention than is common in the change management literature. Beyond the specifics of our study, we argue that the genuine concern of change recipients for the wellbeing of others, and the impact of the organizations’ activities on internal and external stakeholders, needs to be considered more systematically in research on organizational change.     

A morphological review of enterprise social media literature

Introduction of Enterprise Social Media (ESM) in organizations is driven by a need to improve communication and knowledge sharing within the enterprise. Studies show that soon after ESM adoption, there is some initial enthusiasm and subsequently there is a perceptible drop in usage. A review of ESM literature in a morphological framework, with the aim of demystifying the troubling trend, is presented here. Morphological analysis of literature helps exhibit relevant work on ESM in a framework consisting of dimensions and options from which insights can be derived. The framework developed depicts ESM literature through seven dimensions – organizational level factors influencing ESM, unit of analysis, business objectives of ESM adoption, individual level factors influencing ESM, theoretical framework used, outcomes of adoption, and context of ESM implementation. For each of the dimensions, relevant options were explored and listed. Preliminary observation indicates that at an individual level, themes such as absorptive capacity and lurking behavior of individuals need to be studied in the context of ESM. At an organizational level, the impact of human resources (HR) policies on ESM adoption, uses of ESM for internal crowdsourcing need to be evaluated. Practitioners can use these findings to assess and design their ESM strategies and for academicians, the morphological framework reveals the state of current research in the field and identifies gaps for further research in specific areas of ESM.     

Genre and Postemergency Contexts: The Nexus of Strategic Communications

This article explores why organizations choose to enact public relations discourse genres after an emergency situation —organizational crises, disasters, and issues—has been resolved. In the aftermath of emergency situations, we argue that organizational communicators employ discourse messages according to five governing “commitments,” which corporate officials use to shape postemergency messages the way they do. This essay, then, is not so much a retrospective analysis of what happened in selected emergency situations but, rather, is more a prospective explanation about how to use these five governing commitments when anticipating emergencies that could happen. Organizational learning and organizational renewal are addressed accordingly. In this argument we draw upon literature in linguistics, rhetorical theory, and organization studies. Examples of postemergency situations are used to bridge theory and practice to show how what was done retrospectively can be done prospectively to prepare for communication during postemergency contexts.     

Institutionalized Resistance to Organizational Change: Denial, Inaction and Repression

An extensive theoretical and research literature on organizational change and its implementation has been accumulating over the past fifty years. It is customary in this literature to find resistance to change mentioned as an inevitable consequence of organizational change initiatives. Yet there has been little discussion of the nature and forms of resistance that is institutionalized in organizational structure and processes. Furthermore, organization development perspectives on organizational change address management-initiated change, but not change proposed by advocates for the powerless and disadvantaged. Focussing on institutionalized resistance from the standpoint of the advocate of fundamental change, this discussion proposes a typology consisting of a sequence of forms of active resistance to change, from denial through inaction to repression. The typology is illustrated by referring to responses of organizational decision makers to the efforts of employment equity change agents to address issues of systemic discrimination in the work place. The purpose of the typology is to assist change advocates, such as equality seekers, to name, analyze and think strategically about the institutionalized resistance they encounter, and about effective responses to the resistance.