Search results

Work engagement represents an important aspect of employee well-being and performance and has been related to both job and personal resources. The purpose of this paper, based on Social Cognitive Theory, is to emphasize the proactive role of self-efficacy which is hypothesized to predict work engagement, not only directly, but also indirectly through positive changes in employee’s perceptions of social context (PoSC); namely, perceptions of one’s immediate supervisor, colleagues and top management.

A sample of 741 employees of a communication service company completed two questionnaires, with a time interval of three years. Structural equation modeling was performed in order to test the hypothesized model.

Results revealed that, as expected: first, initial self-efficacy predicts work engagement three years later; and second, positive changes in employee’s perceptions of the social work context across the three year period, mediates the relationship between self-efficacy and work engagement.

Results relied only upon self-report data. Moreover, each variable was only measured at the time in which it was hypothesized by the conceptual model.

The significant role of self-efficacy as a direct and indirect predictor of work engagement suggests the development of training programs centered on the main sources of self-efficacy, specifically focussed on the social work domain.

This research provides evidence of the substantial contribution of self-efficacy to work engagement over time. Moreover, the results also support the beneficial effects of self-efficacy through its influence on the improvements in the individuals’ perceptions of their social context.

The influences of perception have been studied in educational, army, sports and business settings but never in the development field. The Pygmalion effect generally suggests that the perceiver's positive expectation enhances the target's performance. This first time research seeks to explore how managerial perceptions of the aid workers of the local staffs affect their behaviour and performance in cross‐cultural project settings.

With the cooperation of Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), 244 valid responses were obtained from the aid workers through a web‐based survey. Using factor analysis, five perception‐related factors and two behaviour‐related factors were extracted. Subsequently, in order to clarify the causal relationship, the above factors and one observed organisational performance variable were tested using path analysis.

Positive causal relationships were confirmed between two perception‐related factors and one behaviour‐related factor, and also between the behaviour‐related factor and the organisational performance variable. These results strongly suggest that aid workers' positive perception causes positive behaviour in local colleagues and will result in higher organisational performance.

Whilst avoiding generalisation, nevertheless, the results suggest that there is a need for people‐related and cross‐cultural management skills to ensure successful future activities, and stress management competencies to maintain the positive managerial perception on the part of the aid workers.

Despite the considerable influence of donor staff's managerial perception on the quality of the human relationships and organisational performance, this field of enquiry has remained neglected. The study provides first‐time empirical evidence on its significance.

The purpose of this paper is to examine perceptions of the psychological contract (PC) simultaneously at the individual level (fulfillment of obligations by the organization and PC violation) and the organizational level (normative contract), and their relationship with employees’ evaluations of organizational justice. Based on justice and information processing approaches, the hypothesis is that normative contract has an effect on employees’ perceptions of organizational justice, and also moderates the relationship between PC violation and organizational justice.

Multilevel modeling was employed with a multinational sample of 5,338 employees nested in 214 companies.

Findings showed that beyond the positive effect of fulfillment of obligations by the organization, PC violation has a strong negative effect on organizational justice. In addition, normative contract has a positive effect on organizational justice, showing that when shared perceptions of normative contract are higher, then the organizational justice perceptions of employees are also higher. Furthermore, the normative contract moderated the relationship between PC violation and organizational justice, showing that the negative relationship of PC violation with organizational justice was stronger when the normative contract was higher.

Findings suggest that normative contract has effects on organizational justice, and that PC violation had more negative effects on employees’ perceptions of organizational justice perceptions when colleagues’ shared perceptions of fulfillment were higher. This means that social context (shared perceptions in an organization about the PC) has effects on individual perceptions of organizational justice. Companies need to pay attention to detrimental effects on employees who perceive a worse PC than their colleagues do.

The study extends the current research by demonstrating that employee–employer exchanges are not limited to individual level effects because shared perceptions of PC fulfillment (normative contract) also have relevant effects on employees’ perceptions of organizational justice.

This study departed from the aim to progress Malaysia as a high-income nation in 2025 via decent work and economic growth (Sustainable Development Goal 8). Thus, this study aims to examine the effects of demographic, experience and organisational factors on the ethical integrity of local enforcement officers from self-proclaim and colleague perception perspectives.

The data of this study was collected from Pusat Latihan Penguatkuasa Selangor (PULAPES), a training centre for local enforcement officers in Selangor. Based on a survey in 2019, this study used primary data based on a scenario-based questionnaire survey with a total sample of 535 respondents.

From a self-proclaim perspective, the results show that secondment and training factors have a positive relationship with the ethical integrity of local enforcement officers. From a colleague perception perspective, the results indicate that the secondment factor has a positive relationship with ethical integrity. In contrast, the officer rank factor has a negative relationship with the ethical integrity of local enforcement officers.

This research seeks to develop new theories or refine existing ones to explain how diverse circumstances affect law enforcement ethics. Learning people’s habits through observation and consequences like rewards or punishments impact behaviour recurrence are suggested. Law enforcement ethics can be examined by examining how peers, supervisors and organisational culture shape officers’ ethics.

The finding of this study could serve to evaluate training programmes or rewards and punishments for ethical behaviour including how accountability and community involvement aid to promote law enforcement ethics.

The survey results of this study are based on local enforcement officers’ ethics that serve to aid in illuminating the elements which affect ethical behaviour among law enforcement personnel and identify the tactics for fostering ethical behaviour.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate university faculty perceptions and practices of using Wikipedia as a teaching resource.

This study is based on a large survey to all faculty members in two large public universities. A total of 913 valid responses were collected through an online questionnaire with 9 control variables and 41 Likert-scaled questions.

The results do not support an overwhelming sceptical attitude among faculty towards Wikipedia. The overall quality of Wikipedia articles is highly valued and most faculty are regular users, just as students are. Though most faculty show a positive view on the teaching usefulness of Wikipedia, few of them actually use it for teaching purposes. A certain conflict has been detected between standard academic procedures of knowledge building and the open collaborative model on which Wikipedia rests. In the end, two important factors play a role in shaping faculty views: their colleagues’ perceived opinions and practices, and academic disciplines.

The survey has only been conducted in two universities. More institutions are needed to broaden the scope.

The authors have gathered a greater number of answers than those collected in previous studies. The questionnaire is also very extensive. The survey has been addressed to all faculty members at one online university and at one standard brick-and-mortar university.

The literature on student transition to university commonly investigates student expectations, perceptions and experiences and rarely focusses on university academic staff viewpoints. The purpose of this paper is to explore the staff development potential of a filmed visit of university academic staff to a sixth form college.

The project created a space for eight university colleagues from a wide range of discipline areas in a large metropolitan university and ten college students from one local sixth form feeder college to observe and reflect on their experiences of learning and teaching (L&T) in the two environments.

Staff development episodes were subsequently designed to allow staff who had not attended the visit to comprehend the experiences of L&T in colleges and promote a consideration of pedagogies for student transition. Observations and reflections from this “second audience” are presented.

This was a case study of a visit of a small group of university academic staff to one Roman Catholic sixth form college who selected students to speak on film. The visit occurred just prior to final exams at the end of the academic year.

Packaging the visit via film and workshop activity enabled university staff to hear their own colleagues’ reflections on how students learn in college and the step up to university study. This combination of vicarious/peer learning could be used in a range of staff development and training settings.

This study explored a practical way of extending a small-scale episode of experiential staff development to a much larger staff audience via the use of filmed reflections of participants, combined with workshop activity and online comment and discussion.

The purpose of this study is to reveal the mechanism of peer abusive supervision on bystander behavior based on the perspective of bystander from two different paths of bystander empathy and bystander hostility toward supervisor. At the same time, it discusses the moderation effect of bystander traditionality on the two paths.

This study conducted a three-wave longitudinal survey. The data were collected from 454 employees and their coworkers in several Chinese enterprises. The authors used Mplus 7.4 and adopted a bootstrapping technique in the data analysis.

Peer abusive supervision leads bystanders to empathize with the abused colleague and thus exhibit more organizational citizenship behaviors, and peer abusive supervision also induces bystanders to develop hostility toward the abusive supervisor and thus produce more workplace negative gossip behaviors. In addition, it is found that bystander traditionality has a moderation effect in the process by which peer perceptions of abusive supervision influence bystander empathy and bystander hostility.

Based on Affective Events Theory, this study explores the mechanism of colleague perception of abusive supervision on bystander behavior from a bystander perspective. The results of this study not only provide a more comprehensive expansion of the weighting factors in the influence mechanism of abusive supervision but also provide new ideas for organizations to reduce the negative effects of workplace abusive behaviors.

This study aims to introduce the perceived systems intelligence (SI) inventory, developed based on the earlier published self-report SI inventory (Törmänen et al., 2016). It can be used together with earlier managerial level tools for building a learning organization and included in general 360-style evaluations in personnel development.

The inventory is validated with confirmatory factor analysis with a model based on the self-report SI inventory, using data from full-time used employees and managers in the USA and UK. Perceived SI factor scores are correlated with the perceived study performance of the individual.

The perceived SI inventory is found to have good factorial validity, and it correlates strongly with evaluations of perceived study performance. Managers perceived high in performance are also found to score high in perceived SI. Perceived SI does not depend on gender, age, organization size or industry.

The perceived SI inventory is the first personnel level peer evaluation tool suggested for developing learning organizations. The new inventory makes peer evaluations possible and provides a new grassroots level tool for personnel development programs in learning organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore which personal and contextual factors affect the use of Wikipedia as a teaching resource in higher education institutions.

This research question is approached by investigating faculty perceptions and attitudes in two large Spanish universities. For this purpose, a comprehensive empirical study has been employed, based on an online survey to faculty members and the inclusion of a decision-making model in the analysis.

Data provide evidence that a combination of cultural, social and subjective factors influences the decision to use Wikipedia. This decision is not only associated with lecturers’ individual characteristics, but mostly with surrounding influences. Teaching uses are more frequent when academics have close reference models and when they perceive that Wikipedia is being positively valued by their colleagues.

The present study provides a creative framework to analyze the main determining factors of Wikipedia usage by faculty. The inclusion of both internal and external factors in the decision process has proved to be a valuable novelty.

The study detects the main factors affecting the negative or reluctant attitude toward Wikipedia and provides some recommendations to overcome these barriers.

The study widens the scope of previous investigations supplying a new research framework and including, for the first time, a prominent online university in the analysis in order to discard the potential effects of digital and information illiteracy among students and faculty members.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the impact of management and colleagues on the perception of work harassment and outcomes of local government employees in Australia and the USA.

Completed surveys from local government employees (265 from the USA and 250 from Australia) were analysed using structural equation modelling and an ANOVA.

The results depict support for the overall measurement and structural models showing that workplace relationships impact on work harassment, and in turn employee outcomes (psychological wellbeing and Organisational Citizenship Behaviour-Individual (OCB-I)), although not all paths were accepted for each country. Statistically significant differences were found between the Australian and USA samples for both the measurement and structural models, with the sample from the USA showing much higher levels of satisfaction with workplace relationships, higher levels of psychological wellbeing, OCB-I, and lower perceptions of work harassment.

The findings provide implications that Australian and US local government employees, positioned closest to the public, experience work harassment probably as a result of chronic under-resourcing both in terms of manpower and other resources, and coupled with unrealistically high-performance targets. The results depict that such work harassment is resulting in lower psychological wellbeing (USA only) and lower extra-role behaviour associated with OCB-I (Australia and USA).

The value of this paper is that it benchmarks the impact of workplace relationships on work harassment for local government employees across two Anglo-American countries.