Search results

Business ethics provide a potent source of competitive advantage, placing increasing pressure on organizations to create and maintain an ethical workforce. Nonetheless, ethical breaches continue to permeate corporate life, suggesting that there is something missing from how we conceptualize and institutionalize organizational ethics. The current effort seeks to fill this void in two ways. First, we introduce an extended ethical framework premised on sensemaking in organizations. Within this framework, we suggest that multiple individual, organizational, and societal factors may differentially influence the ethical sensemaking process. Second, we contend that human resource management plays a central role in sustaining workplace ethics and explore the strategies through which human resource personnel can work to foster an ethical culture and spearhead ethics initiatives. Future research directions applicable to scholars in both the ethics and human resources domains are provided.

This chapter proposes a paradigm shift in considering the collective identification of employed physicians and how it influences physician engagement.

There are many challenges for organizations employing physicians, particularly in terms of engagement in organizational initiatives. Prior research suggests this conflict stems from how physicians think of themselves as professionals versus employees (as forms of collective identification). Unfortunately, research is limited in addressing these dynamics.

This conceptual chapter considers the complex network of relationships that physicians perceive between the collectives to which they belong. A primary collective identification (i.e., the profession) is proposed to influence subsequent collective identification (i.e., the organization), and that these meanings and relationships along with contextual factors drive engagement.

Health care organizations increasingly rely on engagement from their physicians to improve upon coordinated care. This proposed conceptualization offers new insight into the dynamics surrounding how and why employed physicians become engaged.

DURING the last few years a programme of creep tests under general stress systems at high temperatures has been carried out at the N.P.L., using four metallic alloys which were chosen as being representative of basic groups of materials used in practice in machinery operating at high temperatures. This work, it was hoped, would fulfil, at least partly, the great need for experimental data in this field, as opposed to the comparative abundance of theoretical work available, and also enable a critical examination of the merits of this theoretical work to be made. The materials chosen in order of examination were a cast 0–17 per cent carbon steel, an aluminium alloy (R.R. 59), a magnesium alloy (containing 2 per cent aluminium), and a nickel‐chromium alloy (Nimonic 75). Each material was tested at temperatures lying within the normal working range of the material in question. Thus the 0–17 per cent carbon steel was tested at 350, 450 and 550 dcg. C. (662, 842 and 1,022 deg. F.), the aluminium alloy at 150 and 200 deg. C. (302 and 392 dcg. F.), the magnesium alloy at 20 and 50 deg. C. (68 and 122 dcg. F.), and the nickel‐chromium alloy at 550 and 650 dcg. C. (1,022 and 1,202 deg. F.).

This article reviews the extensive history of dynamic performance research, with the goal of providing a clear picture of where the field has been, where it is now, and where it needs to go. Past research has established that job performance does indeed change, but the implications of this dynamism and the predictability of performance trends remain unresolved. Theories are available to help explain dynamic performance, and although far from providing an unambiguous understanding of the phenomenon, they offer direction for future theoretical development. Dynamic performance research does suffer from a number of methodological difficulties, but new techniques have emerged that present even more opportunities to advance knowledge in this area. From this review, I propose research questions to bridge the theoretical and methodological gaps of this area. Answering these questions can advance both research involving job performance prediction and our understanding of the effects of human resource interventions.

Purpose: We examined whether the five-service quality dimensions described by SERVQUAL (SQ) and SERVPERF (SP) are consistent with perceived dimensions of management accounting (MA) service quality and we compared responses from users and providers.

Design/methodology/approach: We surveyed experienced providers and users of MA services to learn their perceptions and expectations of accounting service quality using SQ/SP adapted to an MA context. We used principal components analysis (PCA) to investigate service quality dimensions.

Findings: Participant responses identified three dimensions of MA service quality. There was a high degree of correspondence in dimensions of service quality between users and providers, but with notable differences in service priorities. A performance-only (SP) approach seems to provide a better measure of overall service quality than performance minus expectations (SQ).

Research limitations/implications: Participants self-selected to participate. Respondents were not matched by organization. The SQ/SP instrument may not capture important organization specific attributes. Our approach may serve as a guide for future studies of accounting service quality.

Practical implications: SP may be more useful to managers who wish to evaluate overall service quality. SQ may be more useful to identify specific gaps between user perceptions and expectations. SQ/SP assessments may help to improve the quality of MA service delivery and provider-user communications.

Originality/value: This is the first empirical study to our knowledge that reports on MA service quality dimensions using both the SQ and SP instruments. This study investigated perceptions and expectations of MA service users and providers. Our sample is a cross-section of experienced professionals.

For decades organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) has been of interest to scholars and practitioners alike, generating a significant amount of research exploring the concept of what citizenship behavior is, and its antecedents, correlates, and consequences. While these behaviors have been and will continue to be valuable, there are changes in the workplace that have the potential to alter what types of OCBs will remain important for organizations in the future, as well as what types of opportunities for OCB exist for employees. In this chapter we consider the influence of 10 workplace trends related to human resource management that have the potential to influence both what types of citizenship behaviors employees engage in and how often they may engage in them. We build on these 10 trends that others have identified as having the potential to shape the workplace of the future, which include labor shortages, globalization, immigration, knowledge-based workers, increase use of technology, gig work, diversity, changing work values, the skills gap, and employer brands. Based on these 10 trends, we develop propositions about how each trend may impact OCB. We consider not only how these trends will influence the types of citizenship and opportunities for citizenship that employees can engage in, but also how they may shape the experiences of others related to OCB, including organizations and managers.

Examines varied empirical studies on downsizing which have revealed that, as a result of its aftermath, high percentages of companies have judged these efforts as unsuccessful. Corporate restructuring encompasses multiple forms of change, which are classified into three distinct categories: portfolio, financial and organizational. An analysis of the Freeman and Cameron theoretical framework on downsizing implementation processes is examined in terms of where the process occurs, during periods either of convergence and/or of reorientation, and the results associated with each approach. A case study of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment revealed that restructuring did not provide visible improvements in efficiency, economy and responsiveness. Cultural impact of this intervention revealed negative intergroup reactions, i.e. denial, dissatisfaction. An analysis of Richard Johnson’s model of the antecedents, processes and outcomes of downsizing revealed the impact upon strategy, productivity, human resources and finance. Interrelationships suggested diminished performances of firms which downsized without a lucid blueprint, adversely impacting upon these businesses. Finally, 30 recommendations are given for the human resource executive for effective downsizing, focusing upon: approach, involvement, leadership, communication, preparation, support, cost cutting, measurement, and implementation.