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The aim of this study was to understand the relationship between organizational structure and lean implementation success and to explore the impact of a lean implementation on the development of employee problem-solving skills. Organizations that implement lean manufacturing strategies experience widely differing results, with unexpected outcomes for some organizations.

This study was conducted using qualitative research methodologies. Specifically, a case study was performed at an electronics manufacturer in the northwestern USA over a three-month time period. The researchers collected data from a variety of sources at the manufacturing site.

Two significant findings emerged. First, the lack of dedicated personnel for the lean implementation inhibited the widespread adoption of lean practices. Second, evidence supported the role of the lean implementation in positively affecting employee problem-solving skills.

This paper is relevant to most manufacturing organizations; however, lean implementations are likely as unique as the organizations themselves. Given that the study used a single-site case study, utilizing qualitative methods, additional research is needed to confirm the findings for a larger range of manufacturing organizations. The results do indicate, however, that an organization with fewer resources to dedicate to the lean effort may find the transformation process slow and may experience fewer performance benefits. Likewise, further empirical study would help strengthen the findings regarding the relationship between the lean implementation and noticeable improvement in employee problem-solving skills.

The literature stream for lean manufacturing provides examples of how lean implementations have not only noticeably affected tangible metrics related to profits and expenses but have also helped positively influence factors such as employee safety, morale and empowerment. For some organizations, considering the effect of these intangible factors before committing to a new manufacturing approach may prove useful. This study focused on exploring, in a much deeper way, through qualitative methods, how organizational structure can impact a lean implementation and how it ultimately acts as a catalyst for the increased development of employee problem-solving skills.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a theory of information security intelligence and examine the effects of managers’ information security intelligence (MISI) on employees’ procedural countermeasure awareness and information security policy (ISP) compliance intention.

A survey approach and structural equation modeling is utilized. Partial least squares (WarpPLS 6.0) and nonlinear algorithm are employed to analyze and examine the hypotheses. In total, 324 employees from companies in South Korea participated in the survey, which was conducted by a professional survey service company.

MISI positively affects employees’ awareness of information security procedural countermeasures; information security knowledge and problem-solving skills have positive effects on procedural countermeasures awareness; MISI increases employees’ compliance intention through procedural countermeasure awareness; and information security procedural countermeasures positively affect employees’ ISP compliance intention.

This study proposes a theory of information security intelligence and examines its impacts on employees’ compliance intentions. The study highlights the mediating role of information security procedural countermeasures between information security intelligence and employees’ compliance intentions.

Managers should improve and explicitly demonstrate information security knowledge and problem-solving skills to increase employees’ ISP compliance intention. To protect the organization’s intellectual capital, managers should champion the development and promotion of PCM, rather than leave these functions to the information security group.

This is the first empirical study to propose and validate MISI.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between customer service skills and customers' loyalty through examining the mediation effect of customer satisfaction dimensions in Jordan's mobile service operators.

To achieve the research objectives, data were collected from 1,350 subscribers in Jordan from which 1,007 were valid for the analysis. Utilizing structural equation modeling, and after a series of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, the authors tested an integrated model of customer service skills and customer loyalty through examining the meditational effects of customer service satisfaction dimensions on the relationship between customer service skills and customer loyalty.

It was found that three of customer service skills components, namely; reputation building skills, nonverbal communication skills, and customer service culture have positive relationships with customer service satisfaction dimensions (overall, functional, and technical customer satisfaction). Also, overall customer service satisfaction and technical customer service satisfaction dimensions fully mediated the relationships between customer service skills and customer loyalty.

This is the first attempt to investigate the relationship between customer service skills and customer loyalty through customer service satisfaction dimensions as mediators, either in Jordan or other developing countries. The authors' results also provide significant managerial implications on how to acquire and retain loyal customers in today's highly competitive telecommunications market, and the vital role of customer service satisfaction dimensions on the relationship between customer service skills and customer loyalty.

Higher education institutions play an important role in the economic growth of any country, through skills and productivity of their graduates. Employers have some expectations about the skills the graduates possess when they graduate out of universities. The purpose of this paper is to examine the skills employers look for in graduates before they hire them.

Using a structured survey instrument, this paper gathered data from 50 organizations employing over 50 people. The data consisted of 21 skills the employers rate as important. These skills were categorized into four dimensions: analytical skills, career professional and readiness skills, communications skills, and personality, leadership skills and team/group work. After checking the reliability of the scale, χ² test and rank correlation were used to analyze the importance of these skills.

The findings from a study of employers in the northeastern part of USA suggest that the top six skills and competencies rated with highest importance by employers were: interpersonal skills/works well with others; critical thinking/problem-solving skills; listening skills; oral/speech communication skills; professionalism; and personal motivation. Of all 21 skills, the highly ranked skills needed were interpersonal skills followed by critical thinking and problem solving and listening.

The present research is based on self-report measures and, hence, the limitations of social desirability bias and common method bias are inherent. However, adequate care is taken to minimize these limitations. The research has implications for the higher educational institutions and researches in the field of education.

In addition to the employers, this study contributes to higher educational institutions. The study suggests that employers look for interpersonal skills and problem-solving skills before making hiring decisions. Educational institutions need to focus on enhancing these skills in classrooms by emphasizing the teamwork. The implications for both academicians and practitioners are discussed in the paper.

The findings from the study help in creating a fruitful social environment in organizations.

This study provides new insights about the changing pattern of skills students need to secure before seeking employment.

Organizations are constantly striving to develop and enhance knowledge of employees who involve in strategic business processes by which they aim for an organizational knowledge creation to achieve a competitive advantage. Accordingly, they encourage employees to involve in basic knowledge management (KM) processes and establish infrastructure, particularly, supportive culture and communication facilities for knowledge acquisition and sharing in order to broaden both human capital and organizational knowledge base. In this direction, the purpose of this paper is to develop a hierarchical structure of KM that aims to develop or create human capital in an organization and empirically analyzes the model fit with the data.

Data are collected from 401 employees of Indian manufacturing firms. Factor analyses for identifying and validating the structure of KM and regression analysis for examining the associations of KM dimensions with certain demographic characteristics of employee and organization are performed.

Organizations show KM concepts' demonstration on developing human capital through tactical KM process and problem‐solving approach, communication‐oriented culture, and innovation‐supportive culture. The results confirm the theoretical hierarchical structure of KM with data. In addition, these dimensions are moderately associated with certain characteristics of employees and organizations.

Firms, which are small and medium in size and particularly private‐owned, create human capital through a hierarchical KM structure.

This paper analyzes the instruments of KM in view of creating human capital.

Investigates conflict in the workplace and states that mediation is beneficial to both employees and employers. Suggests that managers should cultivate team communication, and collaborative problem‐solving skills in employees who serve on problem‐solving teams. Summarizes that managers who serve as mediators can learn the root cause of conflicts in organizations, and aid employees to deal with the problems.

The ISO 14001 environmental management system (EMS) standard has been designed to help organizations in the creation of structured mechanisms for continuous improvement in environmental performance. This paper evaluates how ISO 14001 EMS and EMS‐like standards aid organizations in operating continuous source reduction programs by exploring some critical elements for program success. The ISO 14001 standard helps organizations define important EMS elements for continuous source reduction. However, adopting these elements may necessitate cultural changes, the core elements of which are embodied by TQM principles. The cultural changes support complex operational activities aimed at source reduction. Three case study firms are used to evaluate these critical EMS elements. Each firm showed substantially idiosyncratic situations attributable to each organization’s size, history, corporate culture, and technology. Despite the differences, however, the cases highlighted one critical point: employee empowerment, their willingness to make suggestions for improvement, and management’s effort to create employee participation in decision making are critical elements in managing continuous source reduction programs. These initial empirical observations provide some insight into how this cultural change may occur.

This study aims to examine psychological mechanisms underlying tacit knowledge-sharing behaviours. The personality trait of conscientiousness is tested in relation to knowledge sharing, and the effect of eagerness and subjective norm on the intention to share is measured in the context of local and multinational knowledge-intensive enterprises in Croatia.

The quantitative study was conducted on a sample of 288 employees of small and medium-sized companies working on knowledge-intensive tasks. The purposive sampling technique and a survey strategy were used in the study. Organizational affiliation, as it was presumed that these individuals possess a higher degree of tacit knowledge. The data collection was conducted in October 2019. Respondents worked in science and technology companies in Croatia on assignments involving information technology, electronics, petrochemicals, medicine and biochemistry. Statistical product and service solutions analysis of a moment structures software was used to perform confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling.

The findings suggest that the personality trait of conscientiousness has a positive impact on tacit knowledge sharing behaviour. An attitude of eagerness and subjective norm were also confirmed as predictors of tacit knowledge sharing behaviour. Furthermore, conscientiousness influences the eagerness to share knowledge. A significant association between subjective norm and conscientiousness was also established. Finally, the mediating effects were identified, indicating that subjective norm and eagerness mediate the relationship between conscientiousness and tacit knowledge sharing.

Explaining the relationship between personality and attitude in the context of knowledge sharing will result in a better understanding of factors that should be nurtured within individuals. Accordingly, distinct management initiatives are to be developed to suit these factors. Furthermore, to intensify the knowledge exchange when working on knowledge-intensive tasks of significant economic value, organizations tailor a more particularistic application to suit the individual in the domain of leadership, staffing decisions, work organization and incentive systems.

This study provides an in-depth analysis and theoretical understanding of factors salient for knowledge-sharing behaviour. The authors provide an overview of how knowledge sharing evolves during social interaction through intensive problem-solving sessions and teamwork. The authors render the explanation on how the personality trait of conscientiousness, conjoint with the attitude of eagerness to share know-how in the expert surrounding, is conducive to the generation of tacit knowledge sharing. Underpinning this study are employees’ psychological motives and internal drives to communicate individual cognitive capital outweighing the potential negative consequences, such as losing the competitive advantage over the colleagues.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of increasing employees’ level of continuous improvement (CI) empowerment, i.e. employees’ knowledge and understanding of CI, the possibility of open communication and support from the work environment regarding CI, in the implementation of CI over time.

Based on the theory of structural empowerment, the authors test the research question using evidence from a case study in a European financial services provider. Data are gathered with questionnaires on a team level and cover a period of 2.5 years including 780 participants.

The findings show that after conducting a CI programme in the case, there is a significant increase in employees’ CI empowerment over time, which has a positive but time-lagged relationship with the level of CI implementation.

Implications are that CI empowerment can be created sustainably and is an important factor in establishing CI in a company, but that it takes time until empowerment leads to changes in behaviour. However, it has to be considered that these implications are solely derived from empirical results from a single company.

Financial service providers should invest in establishing CI empowerment and consider a delay in realising measurable benefits in terms of the level of CI implementation.

This paper is the first empirical study to examine the relationship between employee CI empowerment and the implementation of CI from a longitudinal perspective.

Businesses worldwide are beginning to explore new areas of workplace change. Gone are the days of changing an element in one department and expecting results throughout the entire firm. The latest trend is the high performance work system. The implementation of such a system is not based around one department, but focuses on firm‐wide change. Key elements are workplace restructuring, retraining of workers and adding new technology. It has been found that by improving the flow of information through workplace redesign, using state of the art technology and empowering employees by training them to be daily decision makers, productivity and overall quality of production increases significantly. The implementation of a high performance work system can be risky and costly but the US Government is currently developing ways to aid companies so that they can take advantage of the benefits that can result from the implementation of such a successful system.