Search results

This study aims to explain how negative workplace interactions are formed by the application of a performance management system (PMS).

The study draws from unique in-depth interviews with service workers who resigned from an accounting shared service centre (SSC), discussing the reasons behind the resignations. Following an abductive approach, organisational justice theory is used to analyse the service workers' perceptions of negative interactions and to link the negative interactions to the use of the PMS.

The findings suggest that negative workplace interactions are characterised by cost consciousness, inequality and competitiveness. These interactions are attributed to the use of a PMS in the centre and are related to perceptions of distributive, procedural and interactional injustice.

Managers and leaders of shared service–type organisations should not rely on PMSs as an all-encompassing solution; instead, they should acknowledge the fairness of the use of PMSs. Moreover, HR professionals should choose and train employees to apply PMSs fairly. Fairness is important in work allocation, resourcing, monitoring, giving feedback, recognising good performance, promotion and interaction between peers.

This study contributes to the literature by taking an overall perspective on PMSs to analyse and explain the unintended negative consequences of a PMS in a highly scripted and monitored work environment that is usually considered appropriate for such a system's use. Through the analysis, the study highlights pitfalls in the use of a PMS and the importance of interactional injustice not only between but also within organisational levels.

At the beginning of the 21st century, a new class of information workers, the “information have-less” has risen. This class of workers alleviates the influence of information and communication technologies (ICTs) revolution on poverty and unemployment. The purpose of this study is to investigate the presence of this class of workers in Egypt and assess the size and potential growth of this category of workers.

The study clarifies the conceptual framework of the new division of labor, in the information age. The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and Information and Decision Support Center websites provided secondary data for this study. These data are used to assess the size of “the information have less” in Egypt.

The division of work and class, in the 21st century, depends on the level of skills possessed to work with ICTs. So, class and labor nowadays could be divided into self-programmable labor (Innovators). Information have-less labor class, adding value to the economy by learning skills and presenting repetitive work. Generic labor class, who cannot work with ICTs, and work in jobs, that do not need computers or other ICTs. The study has shown that the “information have-less” labor class is present in Egypt since the beginning of the 21st century, in all its categories; entrepreneurism, the service sector and the manufacturing sector. There are approximately 50% of this labor class in the service sector and only 13% of the information have-less works in manufacturing sector despite the great opportunities that Egypt has to expand manufacturing to absorb more employment. The inclusion of information technology (IT), in all domains, has not decreased employment in Western countries but has reallocated information have-less employment toward the service sector, and there would probably be the same effect in Egypt.

The study highlights the need for Egyptian policymakers to encourage the manufacturing and service sectors to provide huge working opportunities. The Egyptian government has to change the educational policies, at all stages, to include digital learning skills so IT can be incorporated in a wide range of economic activities. Further research includes: conducting a survey to measure the contribution of the entrepreneurial part of the information have-less employment in Egypt. In addition, a model may be developed, by the researcher to examine the reallocation of employees in Egypt.

Studying employment, in Egypt, using the conceptual framework of the information age is rarely being done.

Work-life flexibility policies (e.g., flextime, telework, part-time, right-to-disconnect, and leaves) are increasingly important to employers as productivity and well-being strategies. However, policies have not lived up to their potential. In this chapter, the authors argue for increased research attention to implementation and work-life intersectionality considerations influencing effectiveness. Drawing on a typology that conceptualizes flexibility policies as offering employees control across five dimensions of the work role boundary (temporal, spatial, size, permeability, and continuity), the authors develop a model identifying the multilevel moderators and mechanisms of boundary control shaping relationships between using flexibility and work and home performance. Next, the authors review this model with an intersectional lens. The authors direct scholars’ attention to growing workforce diversity and increased variation in flexibility policy experiences, particularly for individuals with higher work-life intersectionality, which is defined as having multiple intersecting identities (e.g., gender, caregiving, and race), that are stigmatized, and link to having less access to and/or benefits from societal resources to support managing the work-life interface in a social context. Such an intersectional focus would address the important need to shift work-life and flexibility research from variable to person-centered approaches. The authors identify six research considerations on work-life intersectionality in order to illuminate how traditionally assumed work-life relationships need to be revisited to address growing variation in: access, needs, and preferences for work-life flexibility; work and nonwork experiences; and benefits from using flexibility policies. The authors hope that this chapter will spur a conversation on how the work-life interface and flexibility policy processes and outcomes may increasingly differ for individuals with higher work-life intersectionality compared to those with lower work-life intersectionality in the context of organizational and social systems that may perpetuate growing work-life and job inequality.

Whilst an urgent need for collaboration is increasingly seen in education to better respond to socio-educational challenges, in practice, collaboration between primary school teachers and their partners is hampered by barriers. The aim of this study is to shed light on these barriers from a human resource management (HRM) angle, using the ability, motivation and opportunity (AMO) framework.

Quantitative and qualitative data were collected amongst staff in 16 child centres offering joint pre-school, education and childcare.

The authors' findings suggest that in general, both teachers and childcare workers perceive themselves as skilled and motivated for collaboration. They perceive aspects of opportunity to perform as most important barriers.

Based on this research, school leaders are advised to organise opportunities for collaboration, especially by fostering an inclusive organisational climate and scheduling sufficient time for collaboration.

This paper contributes to the relatively scarce body of research on HRM within the education sector. Furthermore, it illustrates the applicability of the AMO model for gaining insight into how educational management can be utilised to foster increased collaboration between teachers and childcare workers.

The purpose of this study is to systematically review available state-of-the-art literature on comparative studies on Quick Commerce (Q-commerce) and E-commerce and their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The literature survey methodology is based on the funneling approach of Kitchenham (2004), where results are obtained according to inclusion and exclusion criteria. The literature review methodology used for this study covers the period from 2016 to 2022. The areas considered for the survey are operations, logistics and supply chain network design for the distribution of goods in e-business. After deciding on the criteria, a total of 140 articles were extracted from 9 journal articles that study e-commerce and environmental emissions.

The result of this study reveals that GHG emissions from both modes of shopping depend on various parameters such as speed of delivery, last-mile depot locations, logistics and vehicle efficiency, customers’ order patterns and average basket size. Furthermore, the findings also highlight the difference between Q-commerce and E-commerce supply chain networks.

This study only accounts for GHG emissions from logistics activities, but there are other sources of GHG emissions in the overall supply chain that are not taken into consideration. Supply chain/business analysts in Q-commerce companies might refer the findings from this study to measure GHG emissions from their operations.

This is the first study in the Q-commerce field that uses a structured approach to find relevant literature from the years 2016 to 2022 and focuses on GHG emission measurement.

In servitization research, there has been a call to move further toward the development of business models based on a service approach. This article aims to answer this call by adopting service logic (SL) and developing strategies and organizational resources and processes to create a service-centric business model called servification, defined as the process of identifying and developing strategies and organizational resources and processes to create a business model based on SL.

This article is conceptual and extends servitization in the direction of service-centric business model innovation by drawing on and extending SL.

The article defines service as a higher-order concept according to SL and develops the concept of a helping strategy as the foundation for a service-based business model. Further, it develops a typology of organizational resources and processes that must be developed for the emergence of such a business model.

Since this article is the first to conceptually develop servification, more both theoretical and empirical research is naturally required. The development of servification takes servitization in the direction of service-based business model innovation and also contributes to the research on SL.

Servification enables the development of service-centric strategies and organizational resources and processes and service-based business models.

This article is the first to adopt SL in studies of business model innovation.

Based on the case study of an SME company in the United Kingdom (which we will call SweetStar Cloud), this paper examines the attempts of the company to achieve significant strategic change. The company is attempting to move from being a tradition managed service provider of information services towards becoming a significant influencer in the market for digital services in the UK. As part of a knowledge transfer partnership (KTP), a local UK University has been closely involved in developing this new strategic direction and it is well poised to present and analyse the story. From the use of tried and tested strategic tools, including Porter's generic strategies and segmentation and targeting, the company has also embraced digital-specific approaches for developing partnerships with clients, developing pilot projects and experimenting with its use of social media. At the heart of this research is an analysis of the move from push marketing towards models of attraction. This paper aims to explore how traditional strategic tools are still applicable in the digital era alongside new tactical approaches in the digital sector. This aim has led to an approach to business that is responsible, in terms of moving away from a traditional push-selling model to one of partnership with customers at a strategic level. Strategy in dynamic markets often highlights responsiveness as a key success factor. The ability to respond (a response-ability) requires more agile companies. As SweetStar Cloud has developed its strategy, it has focused in achieving this more effective ability to respond through a more collaborative approach. In this sense, agile response-ability converges with business responsibility, as new abilities in communication, cooperation and trust development become key.

The chapter presents an overview of the state of Research Management and Administration (RMA) in Belarus. The country enjoys sound traditions in basic and applied research in some areas relevant to its economy, particularly in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The current science, technology, and innovation (STI) policy is focussed on the commercialisation of domestic research and development (R&D) results and the effectiveness of the national STI system.

The majority of competitive budget funds are allocated within different types of programmes that support R&D and innovation. Formal RMA positions exist at the programme level and are based in research centres, universities and companies being grounded on a solid legal basis. Roughly 150–250 people within 50 legal entities are directly involved in RMA. At the project level, the RMA activities are either combined with scientific supervision or informally distributed within the project team.

A possible increase in overall R&D expenditures in the country, the eventual enlargement of the scope of publicly supported STI projects and their collaborative nature, as well as their internationalisation and widening of international cooperation may significantly increase the demand for RMA professionals.

This paper examines how different configurations of societal impact are pursued by purpose-driven organizations (PDOs) and how these configurations align with the application of varying supply chain design (SCD) practices.

This multi-method study uses quantitative data from 1588 B Corps and qualitative data from 316 B Corps to examine how PDOs align SCD with the pursuit of diverse types of societal impact. The authors first conduct a cluster analysis to group organizations based on the impact they create. Second, qualitative content analysis connects impact with enabling SCD elements.

The analysis of the five identified clusters provides detailed empirical insights on influencers, design decisions and building blocks adopted by PDOs to drive a range of societal impacts. Specifically, the nature of the impact pursued affects (1) whether a PDO will be more influenced by a need in the political environment or an opportunity in the industry environment, (2) the relative importance of the design of social flows versus material flows and (3) the need to develop new relational resources with beneficiaries versus leveraging existing capabilities to manage inter-firm processes.

This study responds to calls to disaggregate different dimensions of societal impact and examines the relationship between SCD and a breadth of sustainability impacts for different stakeholders. In doing so, the authors identify four SCD pathways organizations can follow to achieve specific societal impacts. This study is also the first to employ a supply chain perspective in the study of certified B Corps.

The potential applications of information and communication technologies in the workplace are wide-ranging and, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, have increasingly found their way into the field of electronic performance monitoring (EPM) of employees. This study aims to examine the influence of EPM on individual performance considering the aspects of privacy invasion, organizational trust and individual stress within an organization. Thus, important insights are generated for academia as well as business.

A theoretical framework was developed which conceptualizes perceived EPM as independent variable and individual performance as dependent variable. Moreover, the framework conceptualizes three mediator variables (privacy invasion, organizational trust and individual stress). Based on a large-scale survey (N = 1,119), nine hypotheses were tested that were derived from the developed framework.

The results indicate that perception of EPM significantly increases privacy invasion, reduces organizational trust, increases individual stress and ultimately reduces individual performance. Moreover, it was found that privacy invasion reduces organizational trust and that this lowered trust increases individual stress. Altogether, these findings suggest that the use of EPM by employers may be associated with significant negative consequences.

This research enriches the literature on digital transformation, as well as human–machine interaction, by adopting a multidimensional theoretical and empirical perspective regarding EPM in the workplace context, in which the influence of EPM perceptions on individual performance is examined under the influence of different aspects (privacy invasion, organizational trust and individual stress) not currently considered in this combination in the literature.