Doing more with less: smart stockroom management equals great service.

As manufacturers compete for a larger share of a shrinking market, cries for a better way of doing business can be heard resounding throughout the business community. Many companies are now looking toward these principles for help: working smarter, doing more with less, and supplying superior service. One area in which they can be applied successfully is stockroom management. Their implementation can result in positive, cost-effective changes. This article describes how a materiel control organization was able to meet the call for change and in the process increase accuracy, reduce cycle time, and enhance its commitment to providing "great service" to both internal and external customers.     

Antecedents of employee involvement with the comparative model

Instead of discussing employee’s performance that previous researchers emphasized in their studies on the work behavior of employees, this study analyzes employee involvement from the viewpoint of their emotional labor, organizational culture, and the intimacy relationships between employees and their supervisors. Large-scale financial holding conglomerates in Taiwan and subsidiaries of Hong Kong-based conglomerates were selected as the populations for the research. The result of the empirical analysis indicates that emotional labor has a significantly positive effect on the involvement of employees; the stronger the intimacy relationship between employees and their supervisors is, the higher the employee involvement will be, strong culture has a significantly negative effect on the involvement of employees, and there is a significant difference in a number of dimensions among some Chinese enterprises in Taiwan & Hong Kong. This study has the following characteristics in comparison with the previous studies: (1) The theoretical structure of this study is formed based on an integrated prospect of internal organizational structure, personal factors of employees and their interpersonal relationship; (2) the study focuses on a comparative study of regional enterprises, which was seldom emphasized in literature; (3) the study uses the Non-Linear Fuzzy Neural Network Model and multivariate analysis approach as tools for the research and may contribute more to the theory in this field.     

Measuring the cost and incidence of employee benefits.

Demographic, social, and economic changes and employer cost-cutting efforts are combining to produce new, more flexible, more integrated benefits--which are more difficult to measure.     

Team-based organization: the fruits of employee empowerment

Tennalum, a division of Kaiser Aluminum, received the 1995 Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing. The plant also received the 1995 Tennessee Quality Achievement Award, the criteria for which are based on the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award. In 1994, Tennalum received the Clemson University's 21st Century Organizational Excellence Award, 33 Metal Producing Magazine's T.O.P. Award, and the Tennessee Quality Interest Award, and it was a finalist in Industry Week magazine's Top 10 Plants in America. Tennalum also earned ISO-9002 certification during that year. This article explains how Tennalum's people work together as self-directed work teams in an atmosphere of empowerment, involvement, and continuous improvement that translates into outstanding performance results.     

HMOs and other health plans: coverage and employee premiums.

Ten years after the passage of the HMO Act, health maintenance organizations represent a small proportion of employee health plans; benefits are more comprehensive and worker premiums higher than for traditional insurance, but other variables make comparisons difficult.     

Employee buyouts and employee involvement: a case study investigation of employee attitudes

This article investigates the association between employee share ownership (ESO) and employee involvement (EI) in an employee‐owned firm.Based on data from the firm’s employers and employees, the article concludes that the mere presence of share ownership is no guarantee on increased involvement for employees, highlighting instead the significance of other variables.     

Investigating the incremental validity of employee engagement in the prediction of employee effectiveness: A meta-analytic path analysis

The current study used meta-analytic estimates and path analysis to examine whether the construct of employee engagement (EE) shows incremental validity in the prediction of employee effectiveness (a broad measure of performance-related behaviors) over other job attitudes such as job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment. Meta-analytic estimates between EE and various employee effectiveness indicators were computed from 49 published correlations representing a total of 22,090 individuals. We combined these estimates with published meta-analytic estimates between employee effectiveness and job attitudes to produce a meta-matrix representing 1,161 unique correlations. Using this meta-matrix, a series of path model comparisons produced two results: (1) EE bears low to moderate incremental validity over individual job attitudes (R² change of 0.02 to 0.06), and (2) EE bears low incremental validity over a higher-order job attitude construct representing the combination of other job attitudes in the prediction of a higher-order employee effectiveness construct (R² change of 0.01). Given the brevity of popular EE measures, the results suggest EE is better conceptualized as a higher-order measure of job attitudes that is an effective and concise predictor of employee effectiveness.     

Bringing along the young employee

The value systems of different generations is bound to be at variance, so if a job is to be redesigned to attract young men, it must be redesigned on the basis of what the young man needs, not on the basis of what today's mature manager needed at that age.     

Mobley revisited: dynamism in the process of employee turnover

In the employee turnover literature, studies of antecedents at static points prior to the ‘stay versus leave’ decision have generally not exhibited great predictive power. Mobley (1982 Mobley, W.H. 1982. Some Unanswered Questions in Turnover and Withdrawal Research. Academy of Management Review, 7(1): 111–6. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) suggests that such studies require the inclusion of change, time, actions and operations. A study is accordingly reported here in which employee recall of satisfaction, commitment and withdrawal intentions at three periods prior to the stay/leave decision is examined. Measures recalled at a single time (static) are found to be unreliable or even contrary to expectation. Alternately, change in variables is found to be significantly more predictive of final turnover than static measurements of these variables, especially over a year. Different antecedents appear to dominate in the turnover process at different times. Furthermore, antecedents differ over demographic groups, suggesting that movement capital may affect turnover.     

Managing the locals: employee relations in South Asian restaurants

This paper examines the management of employee relations in South Asian firms in the UK independent restaurant sector. Key working practices pertaining to the employment relationship are examined in a particular socio-economic and spatial context. Acknowledging such contexts facilitates an appreciation of how ethnicity and employment relations interact, rather than abstracting culture from the material context in which it operates. Consistent with this analytic focus, a mixed embeddedness perspective (Kloosterman et al. 1999) is adopted which recognizes the importance of both economic and social aspects of ethnic minority entrepreneurship. A qualitative methodology, drawing upon 23 case histories (involving both employer and employee perspectives) is deployed. The indications from this research suggest that the employment relationship is an outcome of the fluid interaction of social, economic and geographical contexts. This renders problematic both culturalist and purely economic approaches to ethnic minority entrepreneurship. Future research should carefully consider how the employment relationship is influenced by its embeddedness within specific communities.     

Ecosystems for smart cities: tracing the evolution of governance structures in a dutch smart city initiative

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal - Smart cities use integrated information and communication technology in order to help their citizens and organizations deal with the...