Search results

The purpose for writing this paper is to help develop and apply integrated models and methods of best practice that can prevent and manage workplace incivility (WPI) and workplace violence (WPV).

This approach uses the framework of the public health model to integrate neurobiological, behavioural, organisational, mental health, and educational theory into a holistic framework for the primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention of WPV. The key concepts built into this model are those of organisational violence (OV), trauma‐informed services, and positive behaviour support (PBS). This approach is further illustrated by case studies from organisations that have successfully implemented safety protocols that demonstrate the effectiveness of such an integrated approach. This method is derived primarily from qualitative data based on the expertise and experience of the authors in the areas of psychiatry, social work research, and instructional implementation as well as reviews of the current literature.

This model suggests that understanding WPI and violence as reactions to a combination of internal and external stressors is key to interrupting these violent responses. Responding to WPV requires that organisations first take responsibility for their own role in generating WPV and recognize the impact of organisationally generated trauma on staff and services users. In this behavioural model, WPV and WPI have functions which require the teaching of replacement behaviours that help individuals to escape from these stresses in ways that do not cause harm to themselves and/or others. Thus, management must instruct staff how to teach and reinforce appropriate social and communicative behaviours in order to replace those behaviours leading to WPV and WPI.

The practical implications of this paper are that it provides human service practitioners with: an understanding of the functions of reactive violence at work; a methodology to identify different types WPI and WPV; a framework to proactively teach violence replacement behaviours, empowering people to address the causative factors in ways that do not cause harm to self and/or others; skills that can be taught to management and staff individually or in group settings, as well as to service users; and implementation models from various organisations that have achieved significant reductions in WPV. Another important outcome demonstrated through the case studies is that significant financial savings can be achieved through reduction of WPI and WPV which may in turn lead to a related improvement in the quality of life for staff and service users through changes in workplace practices. This outcome has implications for organisational practice and theory as well as human services education and training.

One key social implication of the model, if integrated into the company's social responsibility policies and practices, is the potential for improving the quality of life for staff and patients in health care settings as well as employees, customers, and service users in other settings.

The originality shown in this paper is the way the three key concepts of OV, trauma‐informed services, and PBS are built into a public health model to prevent and mitigate WPV. This paper is of particular value to boards of management, organisational directors, supervisors, HR and training departments as well as direct care staff, service providers, and regulatory bodies.

A small group of pioneering founders led the creation and early evolution of the service research field. Decades later, this article shares timeless service wisdom from ten of those pioneering founders.

Bowen and Fisk specified three criteria by which to identify a pioneering founder. In total, 11 founders met the criteria (Bateson, Berry, Bitner, Brown, Chase, Edvardsson, Grönroos, Gummesson, Parasuraman, Schneider and Zeithaml) and were invited to join Bowen and Fisk – founders that also met the criteria as coauthors. Ten founders then answered a set of questions regarding their careers as service scholars and the state of the field.

Insightful reflections were provided by each of the ten pioneering founders. In addition, based on their synthesis of the reflections, Bowen and Fisk developed nine wisdom themes for service researchers to consider and to possibly act upon.

The service research field is in its fifth decade. This article offers a unique way to learn directly from the pioneering founders about the still-relevant history of the field, the founders' lives and contributions as service scholars and the founders' hopes and concerns for the service research field.

This paper tries to draw links between the creation of new Diderot unities (products consumed in a group and that have an internal consistency based on lifestyle) with “impulse purchases” as key departure products. A study, using exploratory in‐depth interviews, is reported. Common themes are drawn from the interviews to serve as possible identifying elements of the phenomenon. Emotive and cognitive themes are identified and are offered as a starting point for further research into such product unities. The self‐concept theory of “possible selves” is offered as one possible explanation that determines when an“impulse purchase” is a key departure product for a new Diderot unity.

In 2011, Sherry Hunt was a vice president and chief underwriter at CitiMortgage headquarters in the United States. For years she had been witnessing fraud, as the company bought billions of dollars in mortgage loans from external lenders that did not meet Citi credit policy and sold them to government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs). This resulted in Citi selling to GSEs such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pools of loans that were considerably defective and thus likely to default. Citi had also approved hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of defective mortgage files for U.S. Federal Housing Administration insurance. After reporting the mortgage defects in regular reports, notifying and working closely with her direct supervisor (who was subsequently asked to leave Citi after alerting the chairman of the board to these issues) to stop the purchase of defective loans, leaving anonymous tips on the FBI's and the Department of Housing and Urban Development's websites, and receiving threats from two of her superiors who demanded that she change the results of her quality control unit's reports, the shy and conflict-avoidant Hunt had to decide who she should tell about the fraud, and how.

The case gives students the opportunity to recommend how Hunt should proceed based on their analysis of the stakeholders involved. To aid instructors, the case includes Kellogg-produced videos of Hunt—the only on-camera interviews she has ever given—explaining what happened after she reported the fraud to Citi HR and, later, the U.S. Department of Justice. Within the case, students are also briefly exposed to legislation and bodies pertinent to whistle-blowing in the United States, including the Dodd-Frank Act, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and the SEC Office of the Whistleblower.

This case won the 2014 competition for Outstanding Case on Anti-Corruption, supported by the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME), an initiative of the UN Global Compact.

• Analyze stakeholders' motivations to prepare counter-arguments to the resistance one might encounter when reporting unethical behavior

• Write a script for who to tell, how, and why

• Discuss how incentive structures, management, and culture play roles in promoting or hindering ethical behavior in organizations

• Identify behaviors that help a whistle-blower be effective

• Gain experience resolving ethical dilemmas in which two values may conflict, such as professional duty and personal ethics

Analyze stakeholders' motivations to prepare counter-arguments to the resistance one might encounter when reporting unethical behavior

Write a script for who to tell, how, and why

Discuss how incentive structures, management, and culture play roles in promoting or hindering ethical behavior in organizations

Identify behaviors that help a whistle-blower be effective

Gain experience resolving ethical dilemmas in which two values may conflict, such as professional duty and personal ethics

Film provides an alternative medium for assessing our interpretations of cultural icons. This selective list looks at the film and video sources for information on and interpretations of the life of Woody Guthrie.

The purpose of this paper is to examine to what extent service delivery in the Canadian federal government actually improved after a decade of reform efforts, and how employee empowerment accounted for any improvements that arose.

Five focus group interviews were conducted in 2002 with federal government employees involved in service delivery. Interview transcripts were content analyzed. The employee empowerment and service quality literatures, including critical perspectives, provide the theoretical underpinnings of the study.

Productivity and service enhancement did materialize, but little empowerment occurred. Work intensification was revealed. The shortcomings of applying private sector‐style definitions of productivity to the public sector were identified.

Study findings have limited generalizability due to small sample size. Findings must be verified through additional research. Comparative findings from countries that introduced service reforms more comprehensively than did Canada would be of interest.

Public sector efforts to improve service delivery should address possible material barriers affecting service delivery and pay more attention to employee needs. The efficacy of quantitative performance targets should be re‐examined.

The outcomes of a public service reform initiative intended to improve service quality by allegedly empowering front‐line workers are presented from an employee perspective. As there is limited empirical research done on this topic from that perspective it should be of general interest to researchers in the fields of public policy and human resources management.

Prior research identified conflicts in implementing performance measurement systems that include both financial and non-financial measures. Attempts to incorporate non-financial measures, for example, balanced scorecards (BSCs), have shown short-term success, only to be replaced with systems that rely on financial measures. We develop a theoretical model to explore evaluators’ choice and use of the most important performance measurement criterion among financial and non-financial measures.

Our model links participants’ prior evaluation experiences with their attitudes about relative accounting qualities and with their choice of the most important performance measure. This choice subsequently affects their evaluation judgments of managers who perform differentially on financial versus non-financial measures.

Experimental testing of our structural equation model indicates that it meets the accepted goodness of fit criteria. We conclude that experience has an influence on choice of performance measures and on decision heuristics in making such evaluations. We suggest that an “experience gap” must be considered when deciding which performance metrics to emphasize in scorecards or similar performance reports. We analyzed four accounting qualities, importance, relevance, reliability, and comparability and found that importance, relevance, and reliability have strong effects on how managers prioritize and use accounting measures.

We conducted our study in a controlled, experimental setting, including participants with diverse experiences. We provide direct evidence of participants’ experience and attitudes about the relative accounting qualities of financial and non-financial measures which we link to their choice of the most important performance measure. We link this choice to their performance evaluations.