Search results

In an attempt to gain insight into the effects of transparent communication on critical performances, this paper aims to explore performance measures and communication of a large‐scale service organization, i.e. the Dutch Railways (Nederlandse Spoorwegen, (NS)).

Semi‐structured interviews with employees of NS and external stakeholders were analyzed to study which performances are measured by NS, why they are measured, and how they are communicated to the employees and stakeholders.

An ambiguous view on transparency was observed. Although transparency is advocated by most employees and stakeholders, this study revealed the complexity of performance communication of a service organization. In this case, NS used to fully disclose performances but emphasized positive performances. This transparent communication strategy seemed to backfire and yielded a counterbalanced societal response from customer organizations which resulted in a strained relationship.

The findings are based on qualitative data of a limited number of interviews. Several types of actors were interviewed but not passengers of NS themselves.

From a communicative point of view, it might be wise to publish negative aspects as well as the positive ones to promote trust and corporate credibility. Building trust involves investing in positive experiences for customers and promotion of realistic expectations. To enhance trust, organizations must not only inform stakeholders and citizens about their performances but also invest in direct communication with their stakeholders.

This study explores performance communication of a service organization, and the ambivalent role of transparency of (internal and external) performance communication.

Non-traditional procurement is thought to offer enhanced benefits over traditional contracts. However, several factors significantly impacting the optimization of the benefits have been suggested. Even though effective communication is ranked high among these factors, not enough empirical insights have been given to the nature of communication performance in non-traditional procurements in construction project delivery. The purpose of this paper is to focus on understanding the taxonomy of communication performance in non-traditional procurements in the South African Construction Industry, given the centrality of communication to team effectiveness, performance, project success and managerial efficiency.

Adopting a deductive research approach, an empirical questionnaire survey was conducted drawing on the practical communication experience of project teams engaged in projects using non-traditional procurement systems.

Using aggregated mean scores and inter-rater agreement index and Mann‒Whitney tests, the results revealed inaccuracies, barriers and procedural challenges as frequently occurring in the interpersonal and organizational communication in the adopted non-traditional procurement systems. Additionally, untimeliness and distorted information were noted to be occurring occasionally, whereas incomplete communication, misunderstood information and gatekeeping rarely occurred. Lastly, protocol-related communication challenges were deemed to have never occurred in their interpersonal and organizational communication in their project delivery. In the assessment of communication performance, the less frequently occurring assessment indicator is a testament to good communication performance, whereas the frequently occurring indicator represents a poor performance in the communication.

This systematic approach toward understanding the taxonomy of the interpersonal and organizational communication performance in non-traditional procurement is very significant toward communication performance improvement in the industry. The insight given by the findings may help construction project practitioners to focus their attention on the necessary aspects of communication in non-traditional procurements to optimize their benefits over traditional procurement models.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an insight into performance communication from an important public service, i.e. the Belgian Railway, towards its employees (internal) and stakeholders (external).

A qualitative research approach was taken in the form of 11 in‐depth interviews among spokespersons, quality engineers, politicians, journalists, Ombudsman, and consumer organizations.

The research found that performance communication focuses too much on positive aspects. Although both insiders and outside stakeholders admit that the frequency, amount and quality of performance communication in the Belgian situation are insufficient, this situation seems to result in utilizing additional media types.

There is seemingly a lack of research on (public) performance communication. This paper puts the most relevant literature together and presents the results of a qualitative study.

The purpose of this paper is to explain one of the most important collective communication patterns used in scientific applications which is the complete exchange, also called All‐to‐All. Although efficient algorithms have been studied for specific networks, general solutions like those available in well‐known MPI distributions (e.g. the MPI_Alltoall operation) are strongly influenced by the congestion of network resources.

In this paper we present an integrated approach to model the performance of the All‐to‐All collective operation, which consists in identifying a contention signature that characterizes a given network environment, using it to augment a contention‐free communication model.

This approach, assessed by experimental results, allows an accurate prediction of the performance of the All‐to‐All operation over different network architectures with a small overhead.

The paper discusses the problem of network contention in a grid environment, studying some strategies to minimize the impact of contention on the performance of an All‐to‐All operation.

The approach used, assessed by experimental results, allows an accurate prediction of the performance of the All‐to‐All operation over different network architectures with a small overhead. Also discussed is the problem of network contention in a grid environment and some strategies to minimize the impact of contention on the performance of an All‐to‐All operation.

Drawing on the political theory of leadership and the input‐process‐output model the purpose of this paper is to examine the link between leader political skill and team performance by focusing on the mediating role of team communication and the moderating role of team task interdependence.

The authors collected three waves of data from 80 teams across four business units and employed hierarchical regression modeling and the moderated path analysis approach suggested by Edwards and Lambert to test the moderated mediation model.

Leader political skill was found to positively influence team performance via promoting the quality of team communication. Moreover, team task interdependence moderates the relationship between leader political skill and team communication, such that the relationship is stronger when team task interdependence is high rather than low.

First, the paper adopts the measuring scales developed in the western organizational context to investigate the relations and phenomena existing in the Chinese organizational context. Future research should adopt the indigenous measuring scales to investigate the relations and phenomena existing in the Chinese organizational context. Second, both political skill and team performance were reported by the team leader, which might lead to common source bias. Future research should allow team members to rate leaders' political skill and the team leaders' supervisors to provide evaluation of team performance.

Owing to its importance to team performance, political skill is one of the critical skills that leaders should make efforts to develop. When companies recruit leaders for work teams, they should put more attention on the political skills of the candidates. Moreover, companies should cultivate a cooperative team climate to facilitate team communication.

Although Ahearn et al. suggested that leader political skill has positive effect on team performance, they did not empirically examine the specific process and mechanism through which the positive effect occurs. This study argues team communication is a critical mechanism that bridges leader political skill and team operations and outcomes as well. The study adopts longitudinal research design and collects multi‐source data to test the authors' model. The study also complements past research by investigating both the mediating and moderating mechanisms in the leader political‐team performance linkage.

During the service period of communication satellite systems, their performance is often degraded due to the depletion mechanism. In this paper, the grey system theory is applied to the multi-state system effectiveness evaluation and the grey Lz-transformation ADC (availability, dependability and capability) effectiveness evaluation model is constructed to address the characteristics of the communication satellite system such as different constituent subsystems, numerous states and the inaccuracy and insufficiency of data.

The model is based on the ADC effectiveness evaluation method, combined with the Lz transformation and uses the definite weighted function of the three-parameter interval grey number as a bridge to incorporate the possibility of system performance being greater than the task demand into the effectiveness solution algorithm. At the same time, using MATLAB (Matrix laboratory) to solve each state probability, the same performance level in the Lz transform is combined. Then, the system effectiveness is obtained by Python.

The results show that the G-Lz-ADC model constructed in this paper can accurately evaluate the effectiveness of static/dynamic systems and certain/uncertain system and also has better applicability in evaluating the effectiveness of the multi-state complex system.

The G-Lz-ADC effectiveness evaluation model constructed in this paper can effectively reduce the complexity of traditional effectiveness evaluation models by combining the same performance levels in the Lz-transform and solving the effectiveness of the system with the help of computer programming, providing a new method for the effectiveness evaluation of the complex MSS. At the same time, the weaknesses of the system can be identified, providing a theoretical basis for improving the system’s effectiveness.

The possibility solution method based on the definite weighted function comparing the two three-parameter interval grey numbers is constructed, which compensates for the traditional calculation of the probability based on numerical values and subjective preferences of decision-makers. Meanwhile, the effectiveness evaluation model integrates the basic theories of three-parameter interval grey number and its definite weighted function, Grey−Markov, grey universal generating function (GUGF), grey multi-state system (GMSS), etc., which is an innovative method to solve the effectiveness of a multi-state instantaneous communication satellite system.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between work values (cognitive, instrumental, social, and prestige), communication satisfaction (informational and relational), and employee job performance (task and contextual) in the context of international joint ventures (IJVs) in Iran.

Validated measurement items for study variables were adopted from previous studies. Data were collected through surveys using a random sample of employees and their direct supervisors from the two largest IJVs in Iran’s automobile industry.

According to the results, cognitive, instrumental, and prestige work values had significant effects on informational communication satisfaction. All dimensions of work values (cognitive, instrumental, social, and prestige) were significantly related to relational communication satisfaction. Both dimensions of communication satisfaction (informational and relational) were significantly related to both dimensions of employee job performance (contextual and task).

Data were collected from two IJVs in Iran, which may limit the generalization of results to non-IJVs in Iran. The results have important implications for IJV managers by providing valuable insights into adopting various effective tools in the workplace.

Previous studies have generally considered work values as a two-dimensional construct. This study extends the literature by conceptualizing work values based on four dimensions (cognitive, instrumental, social, and prestige). No study has taken into consideration social and prestige values in an Asian context. In addition, few studies have investigated the relationships between work values and communication satisfaction.

In recent years, rapid changes in the economic situation and high levels of competition have increased the need for innovation in order to gain success. In such circumstances, organizational strategists are considered as critical in determining the success or failure of organizations. Using innovation in various aspects of organizational operations is the most important factor to achieve sustainable competitive advantages in industry. As a result, analyzing the effective factors involved in promoting the efficiency of innovative activities in the organization and ways of achieving it are of utmost importance. Thus, this paper examines the relationship between communication and innovation performance with respect to the intermediary role of strategic decision-making process speed.

The present study has used quantitative methodology and questionnaire to collect data from 450 managers and members who are involved in the decision-making process in 150 companies operating in the food-industry sector. Data analysis was done by using structural equation modeling and AMOS software.

The results of the data analysis suggest that communication and strategic decision-making speed possess a significant positive impact on innovation performance. Also, strategic decision-making speed has sufficiently played the intermediary role between communication and innovation performance.

This survey specifies the effects of communication on the success of making fast strategic decision and innovation performance which aid Iranian food companies to tackle one of the managerial challenges: postponing strategic decisions due to lack of efficient communication to get information. In addition, to the best of the authors' knowledge, this essay is a first in Iran.

Effective cooperative communication and knowledge management capabilities are particularly important in the cross-team cooperation. Based on the social exchange theory, this paper aims to further explore the role and influence mechanism of cooperative communication and knowledge sharing on co-innovation performance in open innovation projects (OIPs).

This paper takes China’s high-tech enterprises as the research object by using a paired questionnaire survey based on 168 pairs of OIPs. Hayes’ PROCESS programme and the bootstrap technique are used to test the hypothesis model and the significance of the mediation effect.

This study finds that cooperative communication is an effective mechanism for the internal and external interaction of OIPs. Knowledge sharing plays an intermediary role in the relationship between cooperative communication and co-innovation performance; both explicit knowledge sharing and tacit knowledge sharing have a significant positive impact on co-innovation performance. And the impact of cooperative communication on co-innovation performance is based on effectively promoting the knowledge sharing of partners.

This research incorporates cooperative communication, knowledge sharing and co-innovation performance into a unified research framework to study the co-innovation at the project level, enriches the research scenario on the mechanism of cooperative behaviour, deepens the understanding of the role and influence mechanism of cooperative communication and knowledge sharing on co-innovation performance in OIPs, verifies the mediating role of knowledge sharing to co-innovation, and also helps extend the social exchange theory to a new research setting.

Advances in information technology (IT) have resulted in the development of various computer‐mediated communication (CMC) and social networking tools. However, quantifying the benefits of utilizing these tools in the organizational context remains a challenge. In this study, the authors aim to investigate the effects of three specific tools, viz. instant messenger, email and knowledge forum, on facilitating the communication and social network at work, and their subsequent influence on individuals’ work performance. Together with a social network diagram, the proposed model is validated by a survey of 59 employees of a company which embeds these three CMC and social networking tools in the work process. The key findings, implications and future research are discussed.

The authors verify the research model with data from the Hong Kong office of an international bank headquartered in London, UK. They also collected the data on the social networks of 59 employees to draw a network diagram of the respondents using the social network analysis software UCINET.

The research model is fully supported by the survey data. Meanwhile, the social networks analysis also suggests the linkage of using IM at work and the high level of degree and high level of closeness.

This study provided an empirical verification of media performance theories, evidenced by interactive tools such as IM and email. This research also directly linked the elements of social network, viz. degree, closeness and betweenness, with the CMC and social network tools, the communication, interactivity, relationship, and work performance.