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1 – 10 of over 18000This study explores the role of organisational culture in promoting collective coping strategies in construction project teams in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Three collective…
Abstract
Purpose
This study explores the role of organisational culture in promoting collective coping strategies in construction project teams in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Three collective coping strategies were examined, including problem-focused, relationship-focused and emotion-focused coping strategies.
Design/methodology/approach
O'Reilly et al.’s (1991) organisational culture profile (OCP) assessed organisational culture values. Data were collected through an online questionnaire from practitioners in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) construction organisations.
Findings
The findings show a high correlation between competitiveness culture values and problem-focused team coping strategy. Relationship-focused team coping strategy was found to have a high correlation with emphasis on rewards and performance orientation values. Conversely, an emotion-focused team coping strategy correlates highly with competitiveness, supportiveness and emphasis on rewards cultural values.
Research limitations/implications
The cross-sectional design of the survey and the UAE context may present limits to the generalisability of findings.
Practical implications
Limited attempts have been made to study collective coping in construction project teams. The study paves the path for exploring emergent socio-psychological concepts in construction organisations, including the impact of organisational culture on team collective coping with adverse events.
Originality/value
Understanding the pivotal impact of culture on successful team coping provides managers with valuable insights into managing situational adversity in construction project teams.
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Jo-Yun Li, Yeunjae Lee and Dongqing Xu
The purpose of this paper is to explore how the excellent practice of public relations concerning strategic internal communication may help empower female employees to cope with…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how the excellent practice of public relations concerning strategic internal communication may help empower female employees to cope with workplace gender discrimination. It constructs and empirically tests a theoretical model that investigates the role of transparent internal communication on diversity and inclusion in shaping female employees' sense of empowerment, and that empowerment may affect how they cope with such problems in the workplace.
Design/methodology/approach
An online survey was conducted with 402 full-time female employees in large-sized organizations in the United States. Structural equation models were conducted to test the proposed measurement model and hypothesized model.
Findings
The findings of this study offer support for the proposed model that featuring transparent internal communication regarding workplace gender discrimination increases female employees' empowerment to tackle the problems, which in turn encourages them to adopt problem-focused coping and participate in collective coping behaviors.
Research limitations/implications
Excellent internal communication not only facilitates organization-employee relationships as prior research widely demonstrated, but, according to the findings of this study, also creates a sense of empowerment among female employees, which encourage them to proactively address workplace gender discrimination issue.
Practical implications
Organizations should practice transparent communication regarding diversity and inclusion, ensuring employees receive sufficient information, clear guidelines, and opportunities to voice as well as aim to develop empowerment interventions that help employees address discrimination issues in the workplace.
Originality/value
To the best of the author's knowledge, this study is among the first empirical studies that present the importance of strategic internal communication, particularly transparent communication, in facilitating gender equality in the workplace.
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Malgorzata W. Kozusznik, Hillie Aaldering and Martin C. Euwema
A strong relation between task and relationship conflict has toxic impact on teams and poses a high-risk factor in startup organizations. The purpose of this study is to…
Abstract
Purpose
A strong relation between task and relationship conflict has toxic impact on teams and poses a high-risk factor in startup organizations. The purpose of this study is to investigate the moderating role of conflict behavior and related coping strategies on the relationship between task and relationship conflict in startup teams.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted surveys among 100 Dutch and German startup members (Study 1) and 75 Belgium startup members (Study 2). In Study 3, 75 startup members completed weekly surveys in 11 consecutive weeks.
Findings
Both Study 1 and 2 show that the positive association between task and relationship conflict is buffered by problem-solving conflict behavior while this relationship is amplified by the use of avoiding strategies in startup teams. Similarly, the results of Study 3 show that individual and team-level problem-focused coping over a period of 11 weeks buffers the association between task and relationship conflict during this period, while individual disengagement coping potentiates it.
Originality/value
This study adds to the literature on conflict management and entrepreneurship by studying conflict behavior as a moderator in the association between task and relationship conflict in startup teams. Moreover, it takes a comprehensive perspective by including coping strategies conceptually related to conflict behaviors at both individual and teamlevel, as moderators in this relationship. The results of this study provide practical recommendations for entrepreneurs on how to prevent conflict escalation via conflict-oriented behaviors and more general coping strategies.
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Helen L. Bruce and Emma Banister
The spouses or partners of serving members of the UK Armed Forces are often subject to similar constraints to those of enlisted personnel. This paper aims to examine the…
Abstract
Purpose
The spouses or partners of serving members of the UK Armed Forces are often subject to similar constraints to those of enlisted personnel. This paper aims to examine the experiences and wellbeing of a group of army wives. In particular, it focuses on their shared experiences of consumer vulnerability and related challenges, exploring the extent to which membership of military wives’ communities can help them to cope.
Design/methodology/approach
Using an interpretivist approach, data were collected through four focus group discussions involving 30 army wives, and seven individual in-depth interviews.
Findings
The paper highlights shared experiences of consumer vulnerability and demonstrates how army wives’ approaches to coping incorporate both individual and community-based approaches. It proposes that communities of coping develop within the army wives community, providing women with both practical and emotional support.
Research limitations/implications
The paper acknowledges that there is a range of factors that will impact military spouses’ experiences of consumer vulnerability and strategies for coping. This heterogeneity was difficult to capture within a small exploratory study.
Practical implications
The UK Government should consider their duties towards military spouses and children. This would entail a significant cultural shift and recognition of military personnel’s caring responsibilities.
Originality/value
This research contributes to understandings regarding the potentially shared nature of both consumer vulnerability and coping strategies. The study introduces the relevance of communities of coping to consumer contexts, highlighting how members can benefit from both practical and emotional support.
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Successful teams tend to be highly cohesive and team cohesion to be particularly helpful in allowing teams and their members to sustain their success even in the most challenging…
Abstract
Successful teams tend to be highly cohesive and team cohesion to be particularly helpful in allowing teams and their members to sustain their success even in the most challenging times. One disillusioning consequence of this reciprocity between cohesion and performance would suggest that failures made by teams and/or their members likely jeopardize their success by preventing them from capitalizing on such virtuous circles associated with team cohesion. Yet, many teams uphold their performance despite the failures they have to cope with, suggesting that the potential vicious circles can be overcome. This chapter aims at illuminating the vicious and virtuous circles associated with team cohesion that are induced by either collective failures of teams or individual failures of their members. It therefore offers a multilevel perspective not only on the emergence and diffusion of failures at the individual and team levels, but also on the critical role that team cohesion plays for a team’s (dys)functional coping across these levels. It is theorized that collective failures triggered exogenously can help build team cohesion, and that whether endogenously-triggered collective failures bring about the vicious or the virtuous circles of team cohesion depends on whether the individual failures developing into collective failures are triggered endogenously or exogenously. The implications of this conceptual work are discussed in light of the literatures on error/failure management and group cohesiveness.
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Ronan de Kervenoael, Alexandre Schwob, Mark Palmer and Geoff Simmons
Chronic consumption practice has been greatly accelerated by mobile, interactive and smartphone gaming technology devices. The purpose of this paper is to explore how chronic…
Abstract
Purpose
Chronic consumption practice has been greatly accelerated by mobile, interactive and smartphone gaming technology devices. The purpose of this paper is to explore how chronic consumption of smartphone gaming produces positive coping practice.
Design/methodology/approach
Underpinned by cognitive framing theory, empirical insights from 11 focus groups (n=62) reveal how smartphone gaming enhances positive coping amongst gamers and non-gamers.
Findings
The findings reveal how the chronic consumption of games allows technology to act with privileged agency that resolves tensions between individuals and collectives. Consumption narratives of smartphone games, even when play is limited, lead to the identification of three cognitive frames through which positive coping processes operate: the market-generated, social being and citizen frames.
Research limitations/implications
This paper adds to previous research by providing an understanding of positive coping practice in the smartphone chronic gaming consumption.
Originality/value
In smartphone chronic gaming consumption, cognitive frames enable positive coping by fostering appraisal capacities in which individuals confront hegemony, culture and alterity-morality concerns.
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Stress damages us and our performance. It is a real part of most manager's experience and can be said to occur when significant demands exceed perceived management…
Abstract
Stress damages us and our performance. It is a real part of most manager's experience and can be said to occur when significant demands exceed perceived management responsibilities and routines. Stress can be the essence of working life, and certainly need not always be damaging to us. But when it becomes excessive, it is something unwanted.
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Mariavittoria Cicellin, Mario Pezzillo Iacono, Alessia Berni and Vincenza Esposito
The purpose of this paper is to interpret employees’ resistance using the perspective of a Foucaultian/post-structuralist approach in critical management studies. The authors…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to interpret employees’ resistance using the perspective of a Foucaultian/post-structuralist approach in critical management studies. The authors examine the relationship between management of diversity, based on employment contract, emotional construction of identity and processes of resistance. The authors explore the ways in which temporary agency nurses understand and experience their contract, respond to tensions regarding temporary employment, develop collective emotions and show processes of resistance.
Design/methodology/approach
The study adopted an interpretive and qualitative approach. The authors analysed empirical material collected in the Haematology Department of a hospital in Naples, Italy, to illustrate actual experiences in the workplace.
Findings
Fear turns out to be the discursive resource through which resistance is actually exerted. Through emotions, temporary nurses build a community of coping and enhance their collective identity. They use fear to develop solidarity and to mobilize collective resistance in the workplace. Although no traditional resistance behaviours are reported, they aim to undermine the reputation of top managers and challenge and re-write the prevailing discourses of the organization.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to the critical literature because the authors analysed a relationship that is rarely theoretically and empirically examined in literature, that between employment contract, collective identity-building dynamics and processes of resistance. We showed that the creation of a community of coping enabled minorities to voice their distance from and opposition to management.
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Mahesh Subramony, Karen Ehrhart, Markus Groth, Brooks C. Holtom, Danielle D. van Jaarsveld, Dana Yagil, Tiffany Darabi, David Walker, David E. Bowen, Raymond P. Fisk, Christian Grönroos and Jochen Wirtz
The purpose of this paper is to accelerate research related to the employee-facets of service management by summarizing current developments in multiple research streams…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to accelerate research related to the employee-facets of service management by summarizing current developments in multiple research streams, providing propositions, and articulating new directions for theory and empirical inquiry.
Design/methodology/approach
Seven scholars provide short reviews of the core topics and findings from four employee-related research streams – collective turnover, service climate, emotional labor, and occupational stress; and generate propositions to guide future theoretical and empirical work. Four distinguished service scholars – David Bowen, Ray Fisk, Christian Grönroos, and Jochen Wirtz comment upon these research streams and provide future directions for accelerating employee-related research in service management.
Findings
All four research-streams yield insights that have the potential to advance service management research. Commentaries from the distinguished scholars further integrate this work with key concerns within service management including technology-enablement, transformative services, and service strategy.
Originality/value
This paper is unique in its scope of coverage of management topics related to service and its aim to promote interdisciplinary dialog between service management scholars and researchers conducting employee-related research relevant to services.
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Pia Charlotte Faeth and Markus G. Kittler
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the differing perceptions of fear of expatriates operating in terror-exposed Nairobi and the high-crime environment of Johannesburg and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the differing perceptions of fear of expatriates operating in terror-exposed Nairobi and the high-crime environment of Johannesburg and its impact on stress and well-being. It illustrates how expatriates cope with the challenges associated with these two regions.
Design/methodology/approach
Following an interpretative and inductive research approach, qualitative content analyses were conducted using evidence from in-depth interviews with 12 expatriates in senior management or officer positions within a large global organisation, with respondents based in South Africa and Kenya.
Findings
Data suggest that expatriates in the more terrorism-exposed context perceive fear less strongly than expatriates in environments categorised by high degrees of conventional crime. Fear seems to relate to physical well-being via restricted freedom of movement, but there is little evidence that fear affects mental well-being. The study finds that respondents in terror-exposed Nairobi tend to engage more in avoidance-oriented coping strategies, whereas their counterparts in the high-crime environment of Johannesburg predominantly rely on problem-focused coping.
Practical implications
The qualitative design allows practitioners to better understand expatriates’ perceptions of fear, its consequences for stress, and well-being and potential coping strategies expatriates employ. It discusses a set of practical recommendations focussing on the deployment of expatriates assigned to dangerous locations.
Originality/value
This study develops a distinction between terror and conventional crime and contributes with practical insights for assignments into dangerous work environments. The geographic lens of the study provides an in-depth look at expatriation challenges in an arguably neglected regional context.
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