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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the influence of job satisfaction on hostage employee loyalty in Isfahan Province Gas Company (IPGC).

The statistical population of this study included the formal recruited employees of IPGC out of which, 212 employees have been selected using a stratified random sampling method. A questionnaire has been developed and used for data collection regarding job satisfaction and employee loyalty. In this study along with the other studies of the authors, employees of IPGC were classified into four different categories on the basis of loyalty matrix, and the majority (78 percent) of them were located in the hostage category. Structural equation modeling has been used for data analysis.

The findings imply that job satisfaction does not have a significant influence on the loyalty of hostage employees.

Organizations are encouraged to identify the individual and organizational factors and obstacles, take necessary measures to increase job satisfaction and maintain the level of employee loyalty and gradually shift them from the hostage category to the apostle category, which results in an increased number of loyal and satisfied employees.

This study indicates how the application of the concepts of loyalty matrix, particularly its hostage category, can be expanded in the field of organizational behavior management.

This study aimed at developing and testing a model to evaluate employee performance in Isfahan municipality.

A mixed-method design is applied in this study. To extract the model, a semi-structured interview based on the thematic analysis approach was employed. The qualitative data were obtained using a researcher-made questionnaire from a sample of 12 municipal experts selected based on purposive sampling. In the quantitative phase, the sample consisted of 76 managers and interim managers. The validity of the questionnaire was determined by the content validity index, while the structural validity was tested based on structural equation modeling using SmartPLS software. The reliability of the questionnaire was confirmed using Cronbach's alpha and composite reliability indices.

The factors obtained in the qualitative model included performance evaluation criteria, the desired time interval for performance evaluation, results announcement, performance evaluation approach, performance evaluation method and evaluator-related variables. There should have been an agreement between evaluators and those who were evaluated in all components of the model. In the quantitative section, performance evaluation criteria, evaluators, the evaluation method and time interval were confirmed with coefficients of 0.871, 0.815, 0.646 and 0.615, respectively.

The novelty of this study is that it uses a mixed-method research approach to extract a performance evaluation model that is specific to the Isfahan municipality.

The novelty of this study is that it uses a mixed-method research approach to extract a performance evaluation model that is specific to the Isfahan municipality.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and analyze a model of factors influencing interpersonal conflicts.

This research was conducted using a mixed method approach. In the qualitative study, the conceptual model of the factors affecting interpersonal conflicts was extracted from semi-structured interviews with 17 relevant experts using a theme analysis technique. Then, three hypotheses were developed based on the model and relevant theoretical evidence. Using a researcher-made questionnaire which was developed earlier based on the qualitative results, a quantitative-based survey was performed to assess the interpersonal conflicts and also the standard scale of the level of interpersonal conflicts (Jehn, 1997). The hypotheses were tested on a sample of 160 employees of Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari Province Gas Company (CBPGC).

The results of the qualitative study indicated that individual factors including personality dimensions and individual differences; organizational factors including five dimensions of organizational culture, organizational structure, management characteristics, intra-organization factors and human resource systems; and environmental factors influenced the creation of interpersonal conflicts. The results of the quantitative study indicated that organizational factors with an effect size of 0.502 were identified as the most important factor influencing interpersonal conflicts.

The findings of this study can provide a roadmap to managers of the CBPGC to be aware of the contributing factors to conflict within their organization.

The use of mixed method to identify the causes and factors of interpersonal conflict and analyzing a context different from previous studies can be considered as the innovations of this study.

Trust and impersonal trust, in particular, are of significant importance both for organizations and for innovative personnel, who are regarded human assets to organizations. The purpose of this study is to investigate the antecedents and consequences of impersonal trust in organizations.

The population of this study constituted the managers, specialists and personnel of a pharmaceutical company in Iran. Out of a total of 200 questionnaires having been administered, 187 were returned; and structural equation modelling (SEM) was used for data analysis.

The findings of the study indicate that personal learning has a significant positive effect (β = 0.64) on impersonal trust, that interpersonal communication has a significant positive effect (β = 0.14) on impersonal trust, and that organizational justice perception, also, has a significant positive effect (β = 0.14) on impersonal trust. In addition, the findings show that impersonal trust has a significant positive effect both on job satisfaction (β = 0.47) and on innovation (B = 0.42) and job satisfaction has a significant positive effect (β = 0.39) on innovation. Moreover, impersonal trust, through job satisfaction, has a significant indirect effect (β = 0.18) on innovation; and personal learning, through organizational justice perception, does not have a significant indirect effect (β = 0.014) on impersonal trust.

This study is among only a few studies having investigated the antecedents and consequences of impersonal trust together. Also, in a developing country like Iran, impersonal trust has rarely been studied.

This study aims to develop and test a model of the antecedents, mediators and consequences of the glass cliff phenomenon through public sector service organizations in Iran to explore more insights on gender inequality in managerial positions.

The current research was conducted based on a mixed-method approach, using both qualitative and quantitative research designs. First, the qualitative method includes content analysis by conducting semi-structured interviews with 20 university professors and expert managers working in public sector service organizations in Iran. The outcomes of the qualitative phase lead to designing the conceptual framework and research hypothesis. Then, through a quantitative phase, 384 female managers working in public sector service organizations in Iran are selected using stratified random sampling and fill out the research questionnaire. The exploratory factor analysis was used to verify the model. Moreover, structural equation modeling, using AMOS 24, was used to test the research hypothesis.

The findings of the qualitative phase were represented in three categories including antecedents (e.g. the characteristics of women’s leadership, the selection of women based on meritocracy criteria, women’s preferences and organizational factors), mediation effect (e.g. succession planning, personal development planning and support networks) and consequences of the glass cliff phenomenon (e.g. positive and negative consequences). The results of the exploratory factor analysis show there are ten components, explaining 88.5% of variances. Moreover, the test of the structural model supports the direct effect of antecedents on the glass cliff phenomenon. The results also show the effect of the glass cliff phenomenon on consequences through mediation effects.

There are some limitations that can be addressed by other researchers. Accordingly, the limited number of female managers in Iran prevented larger quantitative research. Moreover, the current research only found casual and mediation consequences of the glass cliff phenomenon, and potential moderators were not considered in this study.

The present study’s innovations may include using a mixed-method approach to investigate the antecedents, mediators and consequences of the glass cliff phenomenon in this study and examining the model constructs in some public sector service organizations. This research may provide a deep understanding of the antecedents, mediators and consequences of the glass cliff phenomenon by finding new factors using a mixed-method approach.

The purpose of the present research is to investigate the impact of environmental knowledge and awareness on green behavior with respect to behavioral intentions, environmental attitude and green commitment as mediator variables.

The statistical population included the managers of Esfahan Mobarakeh Steel Company in Iran. In total, 135 questionnaires were distributed among relevant managers, out of which 120 questionnaires were returned and analyzed using structural equation modeling method.

The findings of the study showed that environmental knowledge and awareness has a significant direct effect on managers’ green behavior (β = 0.42). Also, environmental knowledge and awareness has a significant indirect effect on managers’ green behavior through behavioral intentions (β = 0.34), environmental attitude (β = 0.19) and green commitment (β = 0.33).

This study is among the first to simultaneously investigate the multiple pathways from environmental knowledge and awareness to green behavior. The second contribution of the present study is considering green behavior of personnel in the iron and steel industry in a developing country.

Organizational democracy is the new model of organizational design for a Democratic Age, and out of this new model grows a freedom-centered and healthy climate. Democratic management is a key to greater organization success and a necessity to gain higher levels of performance and innovation. The purpose of this paper is to explore the antecedents and consequences of organizational democracy in an Iranian context.

Statistical population includes the employees of the Gas Company of Isfahan Province. For data analysis, 263 accurate completed questionnaires are used. Structural equation modeling is applied to investigate the relationship between the research variables.

The findings showed that some types of organizational culture (i.e. self-criticism, team, and participatory culture) (β=0.33); and some dimensions of organizational structure (i.e. decentralization, flat hierarchy, and less formalization) (β=0.55) as antecedent variables have a significant direct effect on organizational democracy. Also, organizational democracy has a significant direct effect on human resources outcomes consist of organizational commitment, self-efficacy, and improving work relationships (β=0.64); and organizational outcomes consist of organizational learning and organizational agility (β=0.96).

Despite years of encouragement from consultants and theorists, managers have generally shown little interest toward democratic process as a system of decision making and management in organizations. This study proposes a comprehensive model for identifying the antecedents and consequences of organizational democracy. Most studies in this field are theoretical rather than empirical. But, in this research, the proposed relationships are examined empirically.

In this study, an open innovation (OI) model was designed in which the organization’s human resource systems comprise the main core. To identify the various dimensions of the model, this study aims to investigate how and under what conditions the organizations update and upgrade their knowledge and experiences in the human capital (HC) systems domain within the OI framework and in line with sharing them with other organizations.

In this qualitative study, the data were collected by means of semi-structured interviews and analyzed through grounded theory, which led to the extraction of the final model.

The implementation of the HC-based OI helps upgrade knowledge in the organization and industry knowledge, create win-win relationships and increase the interaction capital, power and credit of the organization.

In this study, HC systems have been regarded as the core of the OI model (rather than an intervening factor in OI). This is the main innovative aspect of the current study. In addition, the special attention paid to the inside-out approach to OI and the examination of the human and social aspects of inter-organizational knowledge sharing – particularly in the light of the fact that the study was carried out in a developing country – are the other innovative aspects of this study.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an improved economic value model for human resource valuation. For this purpose, the probability of promoting people to a higher position and the satisfaction coefficient of employees and customers have been computed by competency and Kano models.

In order to calculate the probability of promoting people to a higher position, competency model and questionnaire have been used. The satisfaction coefficient of employees and customers has been calculated as a factor influencing the survival of an individual in the organization by using the Kano model. For this purpose, two questionnaires have been designed; one was completed by the employees and the other by the customers. The proposed model has been examined in a consulting company in Iran.

The human resource value of the company under study has been estimated over 29bn rials (Iranian currency). The obtained results indicate that the proposed approach as an integrative monetary and nonmonetary measure can remove the limitations of the economic value model.

The proposed model helps organizations in managing their human capitals more effectively.

In this study, the Kano and competency models have been integrated with one of the common models of human resource valuation, i.e. the economic value model. The proposed integrated model seems more effective compared to the basic model of economic value model. Application of the proposed model within the context of Iran for the first time would constitute as potential for contribution to the knowledge of human resource management in the developing countries.

Even the smartest organizations believe that “good enough is never good enough.” Highly intelligent people may be able to do important things individually; still, it is their accumulated brainpower that allows them to do great things. Collective intelligence means when a group of people do things that seem intelligent. On the other hand, when intelligent people are gathered or hired in an organization, they tend toward collective stupidity and slow-wittedness. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to develop a model of the factors affecting and affected by collective stupidity.

This study was conducted using a mixed-method approach and in two phases: qualitative and quantitative. First, in the qualitative phase and in order to achieve new findings, semi-structured interviews with experts from 12 knowledge-based companies were used to design a conceptual model and formulate the hypotheses. At the end of the qualitative phase, the conceptual model and relationships between variables were drawn. Then, in the quantitative phase, by running structural equation modeling, the antecedents and consequences of collective stupidity derived from the qualitative phase findings were analyzed and the research hypotheses were tested in 110 industrial knowledge-based companies.

The results of the qualitative phase revealed that individual, group and organizational factors were the antecedents of collective stupidity, with individual factors having three dimensions, collective ones including two dimensions and organizational ones focusing on the characteristics of managers/companies. It was also found that collective stupidity had individual consequences in three dimensions and organizational consequences in five dimensions; and one-sidedness, non-strategic thinking, organizational injustice and weakness in the management of key personnel were extracted as mediators. The results of the quantitative phase confirmed the research model and showed that individual factors and organizational consequences had the lowest (0.037) and highest (1.084) effect sizes on collective stupidity, respectively.

The study of the phenomenon in a particular context and the difficulty of generalizing the findings to other situations, the small size of the study population due to the disproportionate number of experts to the total staff in the qualitative phase, and the limited participation of experts due to the negative nature of the issue in the quantitative phase. Taking advantage of the diversity of experts' mental abilities through equipping the organization with tools for recognizing collective stupidity, improving collective decision-making, enhancing the efficiency of think tanks and organizational prosperity in the age of knowledge economy, preventing damage to the body of knowledge of the company and reducing social loafing can be the main operational implications of this study.

Using a mixed-method approach for analyzing the antecedents and consequences of collective stupidity in this study and examining such a phenomenon in a knowledge-based organizational context and its implementation in a developing country can be among the innovations of the present research. By following a few studies conducted in this field in addition to the organizational pathology of the phenomenon using a fundamental method, this study obtained deep results on how to make the maximum use of experts’ capacities. This was to the extent that in all of the three sections, i.e. the antecedents and consequences of collective stupidity, a new factor emerged.