Leadership succession planning for today’s digital transformation economy: Key factors to build for competency and innovation

Digital transformation is rapidly changing the competitive landscape and the war on talent for today’s organizations. As part of this economy, organizations and their HR units must continuously reevaluate leadership structures and practices that exploit core competencies while allowing for innovation (i.e., leadership ambidexterity) and incorporate big data with predictive analytics. In this vein, understanding how HR executives can create better solutions around this problem remains sparse. Specifically, what frameworks can HR executives apply to identify potential alignment failures in leadership succession planning in light of newer emerging markets? What internal decision-making traps need to be recognized? Finally, what specific forms of data and evidence must test these plans for relevance and recharge and renew the talent-to-strategy pipeline? In this article, we examine these questions by reviewing the gaps in the literature and identifying through our four-step model how organizations can incorporate ambidexterity-building as a leadership succession planning practice.     

Creating disciples: The transformation of employees into trainers

Business realities demand that organizations place a strategic emphasis on developing knowledge workers and becoming a learning organization. Numerous programs of organizational change and renewal must also be undertaken to keep firms competitive. This requires ongoing training for all employees to succeed in today's global marketplace. While external consultants and professional staff are often called upon to provide this training, many organizations are turning to their own employees as an effective, lower cost alternative. There are several benefits to using this strategy, but significant support must be provided to realize these benefits. Herein, we describe a systematic process to turn novice employee trainers into a powerful force for organizational change. By transforming employees into disciples, organizations can give training the impact it needs.     

Managing for competency with innovation change in higher education: Examining the pitfalls and pivots of digital transformation

Digital transformation recently converged on organizations as a new paradigm—a must-have exemplar—to enable competitive advantage. While the effects of digital transformation and their analytics, along with platform technologies, are becoming pronounced in companies, there is still a need to examine their implications on higher education. In light of the dynamics of digital transformation, how can higher education better manage the shift toward newer competencies and the need for innovation presented by the emergence of digital technologies? In this article, I examine the issues around the need for this balance—often defined in strategy as ambidexterity, or the need to address both competency with innovation—by outlining the historical trajectories that led to this problem in higher education, identifying three common pitfalls that higher education programs and administrators face, and tying these issues to higher education’s absorptive capacity. To resolve these pitfalls, this article builds upon absorptive capacity frameworks for education practitioners and strategies as a prospective change management tool.     

Evidence-based recommendations for employee performance monitoring

From security cameras to GPS tracking systems, nearly 80% of organizations use some type of electronic performance monitoring (EPM). EPM uses technology to gather, store, analyze, and report employee behavior (e.g., productivity, use of company time, incivility). The objective, real-time data that EPM systems collect can be used for performance appraisal, training and development, logistical tracking, wellness programs, employee safety, and more. Despite the organizational benefits of EPM, these systems can have adverse effects on employee satisfaction, organizational commitment, fairness perceptions, and employee behavior. Research provides evidence, however, that these downfalls can be mitigated by implementing these systems with employee attitudes and privacy perceptions in mind. Using theory and empirical research evidence, we offer five recommendations for maximizing the positive effects and minimizing the negative effects of EPM: (1) Be transparent with employees about EPM use, (2) be aware of all potential employee reactions to being monitored, (3) use EPM for learning and development rather than deterrence, (4) restrict EPM to only work-related behaviors, and (5) consider organizational makeup when implementing an EPM system.     

The Association Between Ethical Conflict and Adverse Outcomes

In this study, we consider the association between ethical conflict and adverse outcomes, including employee stress, (lack of) organizational commitment, absenteeism, and turnover intention. Our findings show that ethical conflict is associated with adverse outcomes. Our results identify the importance of ethical conflict for organizations and the benefit for organizations to address and mitigate ethical conflict. In addition, our research contributes to the person–organization and turnover literature by extending the person-fit framework to the ethical domain and by suggesting that ethical conflict can be useful in predicting turnover. The findings of our study reinforce the need to minimize ethical conflict in the workplace due to the organizational costs associated with ethical conflict.     

Examining the impetus for internal CSR Practices with digitalization strategy in the service industry during COVID-19 pandemic

The year 2020 began with a glimpse into the darkness with the onset of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. An invisible, threatening virus has forced many countries to practice restricted movement and impose lockdowns for the sake of their citizens’ safety and well-being. In response, many business organizations have implemented various remote-work arrangements. These arrangements have spurred the use of digitalization strategies and have landed many employees in the vulnerable virtual workplace. With employees facing all these uncertainties and vulnerabilities, their commitment to their workplace could come into question. At the same time, organizations facing tremendous challenges are searching for committed employees to navigate through this turbulent time. From a strategic management perspective, organizations could revisit their internal core competencies to prevail through internal corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices. Meanwhile, the rapidly growing pace of digitalization could further augment organizations’ survival and resilience. This research paper showcases the empirical outcomes of the promising match between internal CSR practices and digitalization strategy; and employees’ organizational commitment during times of crisis. The results reveal that internal CSR practices positively stimulate employees’ organizational commitment, while digitalization strategy intercedes in the nexus between internal CSR practices and affective commitment. The empirical outcomes shed light on business organizations and their ability to take a frugal approach in turbulent times.     

Targeting a company's real core competencies

By recognizing its core competencies, a company can clearly define organizational boundaries and focus resources for maximum advantage. The authors outline an approach for identifying those competencies that can provide a company with the best chance to achieve long-term competitive advantage.     

A Change in Business Ethics: The Impact on Employer–Employee Relations

This research explores the historical perspective of business ethics from the viewpoint of the employer–employee relationship by outlining the impact of the changing social contract between employer and employee relations from the end of World War II to the current day; provides the basic definition of the key elements of the organizational social contract and outlines the social contract in employment relations. It also provides what the author believes to be the key drivers in employer–employee relations and the benefits to good employer–employee relations for each individual within the employment relationship. The results of this research indicate a significant shift in business ethics as it relates to the employers relationship to the employee within a work environment. It further shows the state of the employment relationship prior to World War II. Written contracts were unheard of, but rather, the employment agreement was steeped in a tradition that carried the promise sealed with nothing but a handshake. Now employees have little or no rights; and the ones they are given are provided not by the employer, but by government regulation and court precedent. Issues such as time off for illness, sexual harassment, and workers’ compensation are all handled through legal or regulatory means rather than ethical considerations. The research further shows that the distinct lack of leadership within organizations play a significant role in the disintegration of employer–employee relationships. Specifically, how the lack of leadership relates to the emotional intelligence of the leader. Areas such as empathy and social skills are under trained and under developed by organizations. This research shows that the employer who is willing to give employees what they want and need are far more likely to have success, but more importantly, the organizations will be doing the right thing.     

Organizational Ethical Culture: Real or Imagined?

Can companies be identified by how ethical they are? The concept of organizational culture suggests that organizations have identifiable cultures of which ethics are a part. By definition culture is the shared beliefs of an organization's members, hence the ethical culture of an organization would be reflected in the beliefs about the ethics of an organization which are shared by its members. Thus, it is logical to conceptualize the ethics of different organizations as existing on a continuum bounded at one end by unethical companies and at the other, highly ethical companies. This research assesses the efficacy of the existing measure of organizational ethical culture for identifying the ethical status of organizations on a this continuum. Results suggest that the Ethical Culture Questionnaire designed by Trevino, Butterfield and McCabe (1995) measures individual perceptions regarding organizational ethics but does not identify shared beliefs about an organizationÕs ethical culture.     

Spiritual Leadership as a Paradigm for Organizational Transformation and Recovery from Extended Work Hours Cultures

Various explanations are offered to explain why employees increasingly work longer hours: the combined effects of technology and globalization; people are caught up in consumerism; and the “ideal worker norm,” when professionals expect themselves and others to work longer hours. In this article, we propose that the processes of employer recruitment and selection, employee self-selection, cultural socialization, and reward systems help create extended work hours cultures (EWHC) that reinforce these trends. Moreover, we argue that EWHC organizations are becoming more prevalent and that organizations in which long hours have become the norm may recruit for and reinforce workaholic tendencies. Next, we offer spiritual leadership as a paradigm for organizational transformation and recovery from the negative aspects of EWHC to enhance employee well-being and corporate social responsibility without sacrificing profitability, revenue growth, and other indicators of financial performance. Finally, we will offer suggestions for future theory, research, and practice.     

Lean, take two! Reflections from the second attempt at lean implementation

It’s not easy being lean. And for many companies, getting lean right the first time does not always happen. Lean is a management philosophy focused on identifying and eliminating waste throughout a product’s entire value stream, extending not only within the organization but also along the company’s supply chain network. Lean promises significant benefits in terms of waste reduction, and increased organizational and supply chain communication and integration. Implementing lean, however, and achieving the levels of organizational commitment, employee autonomy, and information transparency needed to ensure its success is a daunting task. This article describes in detail two lean implementation projects within the same company: a global manufacturer of food processing machines and equipment. The first project was a failure, while the second is viewed as a success. Examining these projects in detail, the major criteria and conditions that led to either lean failure or lean success are identified. Based on these conditions, we highlight a number of lessons learned, all of which may help other organizations ensure the success of their own lean implementation and improvement efforts.     

Organizational ethics education and training: a review of best practices and their application

Insuring that ethical action remains a vibrant aspect of an organization's climate and culture is an ongoing challenge for those responsible for training and development. To better understand what best practices are being utilized today, eight organizations in the Silicon Valley region of the United States were studied. Findings suggest that ethics training is particularly intensive when an employee is first hired, when rules, regulations and corporate values are shared during the indoctrination period. Training continues, but is often limited to online activities. Face‐to‐face interaction, necessary for learning and development, is usually reserved for specialized functions and senior level managers. Most firms emphasize a compliance‐based approach, with little attention directed toward developing moral competencies over time. In addition, assessment tools to measure ethical competencies are rarely used as performance criteria. Findings from this study reveal specific trends, which can inform, guide and improve practitioners' efforts to further develop ethical decision‐making and action within their organizations.     

Organizational climate for innovation and creativity – a study in Swedish retail organizations

ABSTRACT

Innovation in retailing is under-investigated in academia and yet a highly relevant concern given the current changes in the retail landscape. Although retailing is often characterized by a dynamic and highly competitive environment, retail organizations are not often considered as ‘innovative,’ at least when compared with manufacturing industries, or when using existing innovation frameworks in academic literature. There are many aspects of innovation discussed in literature and a need to consider different ways of looking into retail’s innovativeness. Among them, the importance of organizational climate on influencing creativity and innovation may help explain how to enable innovation in service organizations, such as retailers. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the climate for innovation and creativity and examine how retail organizations perceive it. We applied a mixed-methods approach using an established organizational climate survey and semi-structured, one-on-one interviews regarding the innovation climate and other aspects of innovation management in the companies. The study shows that despite retail organizations still struggling to incorporate innovation on a strategic level and move beyond incremental developments in their operations, retailers score positively on being innovative regarding certain dimensions of the organizational climate survey. This indicates that retailers (especially conventional ones) could benefit from challenging current practices and moving towards becoming more active and strategic innovators since their organizational climate to a certain extent allows for it. Respondents within the organizations also express a need for better innovation support, whether it is through established structures and processes or an improvement in the current conditions of the organizational climate. How retailers could enable themselves to become more active innovators – based on what we know that retailers look more towards entrepreneurship and continuous development as a driving force rather than formalized innovation practices per se – is a potential avenue for further research.     

Learning to perform? A comparison of learning practices and organizational performance in profit‐ and non‐profit‐making sectors in the UK

To date, much of the research on employee development activities and organizational performance has been conducted in private sector organizations, with the largely untested assumption that the same findings will apply to other sectors. This paper addresses the deficit by describing a study comparing differences in the use of employee learning practices between profit‐making and non‐profit‐making organizations, and examining the relationship between these learning practices and multiple dimensions of organizational performance. The study data was gathered through conducting structured telephone interviews with senior training and development managers in 368 UK organizations from a range of sectors. It was found that non‐profit‐making organizations had greater engagement in individual employee learning practices than profit‐making organizations, but no differences were found in terms of team learning practices or engagement in strategic needs analysis and evaluation activities. The analyses also indicated that individual learning practices showed a stronger relationship with performance in the non‐profit‐making organizations, whereas team learning practices were more significant for the profit‐making companies. The learning practices collectively accounted for greater variance in organizational performance in the non‐profit‐making organizations. The study implies that the functional aims of organizations need to be taken into account when examining the learning practice–organizational performance relationship.     

The nonprofit case for corporate volunteering: a multi-level perspective

ABSTRACT

This article argues that the nonprofit case for corporate volunteering is complex, requiring a multi-level perspective on the outcomes for nonprofit organizations (NPOs). To develop this perspective, we adopted an inductive research approach, conducting 39 exploratory semi-structured interviews with NPO staff. We argue that NPO scholars and practitioners should disentangle individual and organizational-level outcomes resulting from interactions between corporate volunteers and NPO staff, as such micro-dynamics ultimately affect NPO services. Moreover, these outcomes are subject to conditions at the organizational level (e.g. involvement of intermediaries), as well as at the individual level (e.g. type of assignment). Our study highlights the complexity that should be considered when addressing the fundamental question of whether corporate volunteering contributes to the ability of NPOs to provide their services, and under what conditions. We therefore propose that corporate volunteer management within NPOs is inherently, albeit contingently, intertwined with the services that these organizations provide.     

The Marketing of Employee Volunteerism

Employee volunteerism can be an effective strategy for increasing the effectiveness of corporate philanthropy. However, in order to be effective, volunteer initiatives should be directed by the firm to ensure a strategic fit and focus on the core competencies of the firm. Therefore, internal marketing strategies are needed to ensure managers receive employee support. Our research quantitatively extends research by Peloza and Hassay (Journal of Business Ethics 64(4), 357–379, 2006) who argued that employee volunteerism is motivated by egoistic, altruistic and organizational citizenship motives. Our findings suggest that volunteer opportunities that fulfill egoistic and organizational citizenship motives will be effective, but that the altruistic motive is not significant. We also find that formal policies concerning manager recognition or time off are not effective, providing more discretion for individual managers. Implications for managers seeking to increase the effectiveness (and therefore support the business case) of their corporate philanthropy are discussed.     

Positioning Southwest Airlines through employee branding

As the field of employee branding has begun to unfold, more and more executives have become interested in how this process can help them achieve a competitive advantage for their organizations. This article explains how employee branding works and how it can be utilized to position the organization in the minds of customers, employees, and other stakeholders. A contextual analysis of its use as a source of sustainable competitive advantage at Southwest Airlines is presented. Finally, key success factors are identified for those who wish to make employee branding a strategic focus within their organizations.     

Do I Hear the Whistle…? A First Attempt to Measure Four Forms of Employee Silence and Their Correlates

Silence in organizations refers to a state in which employees refrain from calling attention to issues at work such as illegal or immoral practices or developments that violate personal, moral, or legal standards. While Morrison and Milliken (Acad Manag Rev 25:706–725, 2000) discussed how organizational silence as a top-down organizational level phenomenon can cause employees to remain silent, a bottom-up perspective—that is, how employee motives contribute to the occurrence and maintenance of silence in organizations—has not yet been given much research attention. In this paper, we argue that this perspective is a meaningful complementation of the existing literature and that it is sensible to conceptualize distinct forms of employee silence (Pinder and Harlos, Research in personnel and human resources management. JAI Press, Greenwich, 2001; van Dyne et al., J Manag Stud 40:1359–1392, 2003). Drawing on past research and theory we conceptualize four forms of employee silence, namely quiescent, acquiescent, prosocial, and opportunistic silence. We present scales to assess the four forms and provide empirical tests for their distinctiveness and patterns of relationships to various correlates and potential antecedents and consequences.     

The neglected state of organizational-level turnover studies in the Chinese context: a call for research

In this essay, the authors discuss the neglected state of organizational-level turnover research in the Chinese context. They provide a brief overview of the importance of turnover research in the organizational sciences, highlight the role of performance-related turnover rates research, and outline general theories and findings that appear in the Western and English-language literature. This evidence is compared with a dearth of studies using samples of Chinese organizations and in Chinese-language journals. They conclude by calling for additional theory and empirical studies on turnover rates.     

Company support for employee volunteerism: Does size matter?

This article examines the relationship between company size and support for employee volunteering. Based on organizational ecology and organizational stages theory, the study hypothesizes that larger versus smaller companies demonstrate greater formalization and codification of their support for employee volunteering. Similarly, larger versus smaller companies use employee volunteering efforts more strategically; this finding is consistent with a need to justify decisions. These outcomes in turn impact the nature of volunteering and the organizations benefiting from such programs. Survey data from a size-stratified sample of 990 randomly selected Canadian businesses indicates that large companies support employee volunteerism in a more formalized and strategic manner than small companies. This behavior includes having formal policies and programs, as well as exercising greater influence over the causes which benefit from employee volunteering. Additionally, large companies are more likely to tie other forms of charitable support to employee volunteering. The article discusses how the more formalized approach of large companies may impact society.