Why and How Do Employees Break and Bend Confidential Information Protection Rules?

Organizations cannot function effectively if their employees do not follow organizational rules and policies. In this paper, we explore why and how employees in two high‐tech organizations often broke or bent rules designed to protect their employers' confidential information (CI). The CI protection rules sometimes imposed requirements that disrupted employees' work, forcing employees to choose between CI rule compliance and doing their work effectively and efficiently. Employees in these situations often broke the rules or bent them in ways that enabled employees to meet some of the rules' requirements, while also satisfying other expectations that they faced. We discuss implications of our findings for practice and for future organizational scholarship on rule following.     

Leader–member exchange and strain: a study of job demands and role status

High‐quality supervisor–subordinate relationships, measured as leader–member exchange (LMX), can either reduce or intensify subordinates' job strain. We examined LMX effects on job demands and strain in junior and senior role nursing dyads in a sample of five UK hospitals. LMX reduced job demands and strain for junior subordinates, but for senior subordinates both low‐ and high‐quality LMX lead to greater strain, indicating a curvilinear relationship between LMX and strain. We found no buffering effect of LMX between job demands and strain. The article discusses the role of supervisors in controlling potential job stressors for employees and implications for stress management in large, complex workplaces.     

Human capital and life satisfaction in economic transition

This study explores the life satisfaction of Egyptians – with a particular focus on the impact of higher education on happiness – both before and after that country's Arab Spring of 2011. Ordered logit results point to positive and significant relationships between life satisfaction and both perceived high incomes and the human capital variable, good health, for the pre- and post-Arab Spring periods in Egypt, thus confirming prior studies of transition economies. For a second human capital variable – secondary education – the results indicate a positive and significant relationship with happiness in pre-Arab Spring Egypt, while that relationship for post-Arab Spring Egypt is negative and significant. This particular finding is probably the result of the failure of educated Egyptians to achieve a better life despite their investments in human capital – due to the lack of opportunity that accompanied the failure of the country's Arab Spring to change the political and social environment.     

Does biotechnology have a role in the promotion of underutilised crops?

Rapidly developing biotechnology applications aimed at improving major crops receive large investments and could, in theory, play a role in the promotion of underutilised plant species in the tropics and subtropics, in order to address current and emerging challenges for agriculture. The application of such methods is, however, sometimes controversial, and the frequently considerable costs involved must be weighed against the limited resources available to develop underutilised species, as well as against the many alternative methods available for promotion. Through database searches, we take an evidence-based approach to assess whether there are clear examples where biotechnology has been used practically to enhance the cultivation of underutilised plants at a field level. We conclude that tissue culture and micropropagation techniques have proven useful, but for other applications benefits are generally unclear at present, although ongoing work suggests genomic and genetic modification approaches may in future be significant for a subset of underutilised species. Successful outcomes, however, appear to be limited by a lack of integrated thinking during the use of biotechnology methods. We review the particular limitations and risks associated with applying biotechnology to underutilised crops, including the negative consequences of technology centralisation. In addition, the specific actions needed to ensure that smallholder farmers in low-income countries better benefit during the use of biotechnology on underutilised species, by placing a stronger emphasis on partnerships and by proper monitoring of benefits along value chains, are described.     

Innovation leadership: Best-practice recommendations for promoting employee creativity,voice, and knowledge sharing

Innovation—the implementation of creative ideas—is one of the most important factors of competitive advantage in 21^st century organizations. Yet, leaders do not always encourage employee behaviors that are critical for innovation. We integrate existing literature on the critical factors that serve as antecedents of innovation, including employee voice and knowledge sharing, which in turn lead to creativity and innovation. Based on existing empirical research, we offer evidence-based recommendations for managers to become innovation leaders by: (1) developing the right group norms, (2) designing teams strategically, (3) managing interactions with those outside the team, (4) showing support as a leader, (5) displaying organizational support, and (6) using performance management effectively.     

Reward strategy spillover effects on observer cooperation in business networks

Marketing Letters - Drawing on social comparison and equity theory, this study examines the influence of reward strategies a manufacturer in a focal dyad employs on the cooperative behaviors of...     

Food Sovereignty and Fome Zero: Connecting Public Food Procurement Programmes to Sustainable Rural Development in Brazil

The global discourse on food sovereignty suggests several mechanisms for improving food security and agricultural livelihoods, including redistributive land reform and restructuring of markets to improve food distribution and access. In Brazil, the Fome Zero (Zero Hunger) social welfare programme has created innovative links between public nutrition and food security programmes and rural development initiatives through mediated market support for the family farm sector. We report on a participatory assessment of the experience of land reform beneficiaries in seven municipalities in Mato Grosso, Brazil, who were contracted to produce food for the Programa de Aquisição de Alimentos (Food Procurement Programme, PAA) and the Programa Nacional de Alimentação Escolar (National School Feeding Programme, PNAE) under the umbrella of Fome Zero. This analysis offers insight into the opportunities and challenges related to participation in mediated ‘farm‐to‐institution’ food procurement programmes, and assesses their influence on key food sovereignty principles, including agro‐ecological transition, increased market stability and farmer autonomy.     

Social protection for people with disabilities in Africa and Asia: a review of programmes for low- and middle-income countries

Despite a greater need for social protection among people with disabilities, there is limited evidence of their inclusion into social protection programmes in low- and middle-income countries. This paper presents the findings from a review of regional and global data sources for Asia-Pacific and Africa to identify social protection programmes that aim to include people with disabilities. It finds a substantial number of programmes in both regions, although there is considerable variation in the quantity and types of programmes within and between regions and countries, as well as between low- and middle-income countries. Further, the quality of data is not sufficient to assess the degree to which these programmes are genuinely inclusive of people with disabilities. As such, it highlights important limitations in the way data is currently being collected that require further attention in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals and the commitment to ‘Leave No-one Behind’