Search results

The guest editorial seeks to introduce the papers in this special issue, which focus on the contribution which industrial and organizational psychology can make towards poverty reduction. It also aims to suggest future research directions.

The paper begins by offering a broad conceptualization of how industrial and organizational psychology can frame an approach towards poverty reduction. The second part gives a brief outline of each paper in the special issue.

This special issue brings together studies which generally focus on aspects of the aid worker experience, addressing adjustment issues for international aid workers, relationships between workers, and the value of self‐organizing and social support.

Factors, which could hinder aid workers from achieving their goals, are a common theme across the papers. Variables, which need to be considered, scales, which could be adopted for measuring key issues, and policy issues, which aid organizations need to consider, are discussed.

The paper highlights how industrial and organizational psychology can contribute to poverty reduction.

Some charitable organisations market third‐party gifts, in which some good, for example a goat, is given to a developing world beneficiary and at the same time is a present to a recipient in the developed world. Little is known about whether such gifts are successful as presents and whether these are a good charitable marketing device. This paper seeks to examine this issue.

Two studies investigated attitudes towards, and beliefs about, such gifts in possible and actual donors and recipients.

Third‐party gifts often make acceptable presents, depending on the recipient and occasion. Gifts of specific goods are preferred to gifts of money, particularly when the benefit to the developing world beneficiary is considered. Such gifts also inspire a reasonable degree of trust.

It is not clear how much benefit beneficiaries receive from third‐party gifts or why donors prefer to give specific goods as gifts.

Third‐party gifts appear to be a successful marketing tool and a means by which poverty can be reduced.

This research extends and combines previous research on gifting to the third‐party gift‐giving process and offers charities some insights into how they might use this process to facilitate donations.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an integrative model of time management, and in particular develop a scale to measure organizational variables which would facilitate and support time management practices. The research also examined whether the time management environment is related to turnover intentions and stress.

Three studies are reported. Study 1 sampled 262 employees from 20 organizations and these data were used for the initial factor analysis of the time management environment (TiME) scale. Study 2 sampled 205 employees from an aircraft maintenance organization, and these data were used to further refine the factor structure of the TiME scale, to conduct a CFA, examine the relationship between the TiME scale factors and turnover intentions, and to examine the test‐retest reliability of the TiME scale. Study 3 sampled 156 employees across eight organizations, and these data were used to examine the relationship between the TiME scale factors and stress.

The TiME scale has five factors, and each has acceptable internal consistency and test‐retest reliability. TiME scale factor scores were negatively correlated with both turnover intentions and stress.

The research did not examine the convergent and discriminant validity of the TiME scale.

The TiME scale provides for the assessment of whether an organization's environment is facilitating and supporting its employees' attempts to engage in time management, and can also be used as a measure of transfer climate for time management training interventions.

The TiME scale addresses a gap in the time management literature. It has considerable applied value, and along with our integrative model should allow for the development of a more complex understanding of the time management process.

The aim of this paper is to test a model of the relationship between organizational memory and empowerment. The model posited that organizational memory would be related to requests to share knowledge, psychological empowerment in the workplace (meaning, competence, self‐determination and impact), and organization‐based self‐esteem.

The model was tested with 134 employees representing six companies using hierarchical regression analysis.

Significant relationships were found between organizational memory and requests to share knowledge, empowerment, and organization‐based self‐esteem. Findings indicated that a positive stereotype may exist towards older workers and the frequency they are requested to share knowledge, and that a halo‐type effect may operate, where knowledge of an organization's history is generalized to other knowledge domains.

Causal implications cannot be made as this was correlational research. Some of the research measures while achieving acceptable to good reliability were in an early development stage. The study utilized a convenience sample that may limit how the results can be generalized.

The paper indicates that organizations can emphasize positive outcomes for those who are knowledge repositories and mentors. It is also important to consider possible “positive stereotypes” which may be operating when organizational members evaluate older workers as knowledge repositories and mentors.

The paper addresses the assumptions in the human resources literature concerning the role of older workers as repositories of organizational memory and suitable mentors. The study introduces the “requests to share knowledge scale”.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

Knight's Industrial Law Reports goes into a new style and format as Managerial Law This issue of KILR is restyled Managerial Law and it now appears on a continuous updating basis rather than as a monthly routine affair.

Theory predicts that balancing exploratory and exploitative learning (i.e., ambidexterity) across alliance portfolio domains (e.g. value chain function, governance modes) increases firm performance, whereas balance within domains decreases performance. Prior empirical work, however, only assessed balance/imbalance within and across two domains. The purpose of this study is to determine if theory generalizes beyond specific domain combinations. The authors investigated across multiple domains to determine whether alliance portfolios should be imbalanced toward exploration or exploitation within domains or balanced across domains. The authors also extended prior research by exploring whether the direction of imbalance matters. Current theory only advises managers to accept imbalance without helping with the choice between exploration and exploitation.

Hypotheses are tested using fixed-effects generalized least squares (GLS) regression analysis of a large 13-year panel sample of Fortune 500 firms from 1996 to 2008.

With respect to the balance between exploration and exploitation within each of the five domains investigated, imbalanced alliance portfolios had higher firm performance. No evidence was found that balance across domains relates to performance. Instead, for four of the five domains, imbalance toward exploration related positively to firm performance.

An alliance portfolio that allows for exploration in some domains and exploitation in other domains appears more difficult to implement than prior theory suggests. Firms benefit mostly from using the alliance portfolio for exploratory learning.

The purpose of this paper is to explore resources or capabilities that enable medium-sized firms to be resilient, namely, to avoid and recover from supply chain disruptions.

A case-study method is employed with four medium-sized manufacturing firms headquartered in the USA that have global supply chains. Data are collected from semi-structured interviews with key informants from diverse functions and managerial levels, archival documents, observation and a resilience assessment.

Internal social capital emerged as a resilience-enhancing resource, comprising: structural capital grounded in small network size, geographical proximity among decision makers and low hierarchy; relational capital grounded in close relationships, commitment and respect; and cognitive capital grounded in long employee tenure.

This is the first paper in the supply chain management literature to examine the resilience of medium-sized firms, an under-researched context. It is also the first paper to introduce internal social capital as a resilience-enhancing resource. Hence, this is among the few papers to propose a resilience-enhancing resource rooted not in a firm’s supply chain operations but its human resources. This paper, moreover, identifies several facets of internal social capital within medium-sized firms. Finally, the paper makes several managerial contributions.

Those of us in our mid‐thirties can just barely remember the tourist homes, guesthouses, small hotels, and “mom and pop” tourist cabins which once dotted the two‐lane highways of this country, roads like Route 66 which spanned the country east to west and U.S. I which ran from Maine to Florida. However, aided by the developing interstate highway system, Holiday Inn, Best Western, and several other major chains spread themselves all over the landscape in the 1960s and 1970s and won a large part of the growing leisure and business travel dollar. Indeed, Holiday Inn's ubiquitous qualities were so thoroughly standardized that the company adopted the slogan, “The best surprise is no surprise.” The trouble is some people like to be surprised, especially if the surprise is a pleasant one. Until a few years ago, the traveler looking for a more interesting or cheaper accommodation than a typical chain motel had few guidebooks to choose from. Country Inns and Back Roads and Farm, Ranch and Country Vacations were about all that were available. Since the late 1970s, however, a steady stream of alternative accommodation books has appeared, and now any library faced with choosing guidebooks for the reference collection finds a bewildering number of them. In this review I will examine and evaluate what is available to guide the traveler to alternative accommodations in the United States and Canada. I'll look at bed and breakfast guides, guides to country inns, farm vacations, and college campus accommodations, but not camping guides.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).