Search results

Work intensity causes employee stress. This paper demonstrates that off-the-job embeddedness (OffJE), a potential source of social support resources, buffers the negative effect of work intensity on employee stress.

Guided by conservation of resources (COR) and job embeddedness theory (JET), this paper reports on the moderated regression analysis of the survey responses of 385 adult employees from a variety of industries in Queensland, Australia, using a student-recruited sampling strategy.

Higher levels of work intensity were found to be associated with higher levels of employee stress. However, this effect was weaker for employees who had higher OffJE. In this sample, work intensity has no relationship with stress for employees who report OffJE beyond the 70th percentile.

This paper demonstrates the positive role of outside workplace relationships embodied in OffJE on workplace employee experience, justifies employer work-life balance initiatives and community involvement, demonstrates the potential positive return for employer involvement in helping employees manage the experience of work intensity and contributes to the social support, COR and job embeddedness literature studies.

In this chapter, we propose and discuss a framework to organise some of the individual difference constructs which have appeared consistently in the business ethics literature. Although many constructs have appeared in both conceptual and empirical work in the major business ethics journals, there has been little effort to categorise such constructs in accord with recognised frameworks. In our work, we rely on the industrial/organisational psychology literature to provide a starting point for categorising individual differences. Using the business ethics literature, we then develop a framework composed of three broad categories: cognitive skills, moral volition and personal values. We then provide examples within each category of the framework, and map these examples onto subcategories under each of the major categories. Finally, we organise the complete framework into a comprehensive table and we discuss several implications that may inform future research.

This study aims to examine preferences for both transformational and transactional leadership behavior for gender‐ and age‐based cohort differences. The purpose of this research is to enhance leadership and organizational change initiatives in Romania via the identification of age cohort and gender effects with respect to attitudes towards common leadership behaviors.

The research is conducted via a survey through the administration of questionnaires. The sample consists of 324 managers from commercial and service organizations in Romania, a country in which this issue has not previously been investigated.

The findings reveal that there are differences in preferences for leadership behavior based on age cohorts that reached maturity before or after the fall of Ceauşescu during the 1989 revolution. Also, female participants displayed a greater preference for transformational leadership behaviors relative to transactional leadership behaviors.

This is the first study to examine the effects of leadership preference based on age cohorts in Romania. The study also is one of the first to empirically examine the effects of age cohorts on leadership after the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. As such, these findings offer guidance in the development and implementation of leadership development initiatives and change management interventions for organizations operating in Romania, and present one example of cohort‐based and leadership‐specific attitude change in a country that is transitioning from communism to a free market system.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of ethical climate and organizational justice perceptions on the quality of manager‐employee relationships via leader‐member exchange (LMX). It also aims to explore differences between distributive justice, procedural justice, and interactional justice perceptions as related to LMX. The purpose of this research was to investigate the relative strength of connections between ethical climate, these three types of justice perceptions, and LMX.

The research was conducted via survey administration of questionnaires. The sample consisted of 105 working adults in an Israeli telecommunications company.

It was found that there was a significant positive relationship between perceived interactional justice and levels of LMX. No significant relationships were present between LMX and the other types of justice perceptions. Furthermore, it was discovered that there was a significant positive relationship between ethical climate and LMX. As an important, unexpected finding the study discovered a significant negative relationship between ethical climate and procedural justice.

This is one of the few studies to examine the effects of justice perceptions together with ethical climate perceptions on LMX. As such, these findings offer guidance in the development and implementation of further studies to examine the linkages between these constructs. In particular, it suggests that these findings provide a framework for examining the potential moderating role of ethical climate in the relationship between interactional justice perceptions and LMX.

This chapter proposes the development of a compound personality trait termed “goal propensity”. Motivation is a key determinant of performance in virtually all contexts, and personality has long been viewed as an important influence on motivation. Despite the long history of exploring how personality influences motivation, we do not have a clear understanding of the linkage between individual differences in personality and work motivation or the tools to reliably and accurately predict individual differences in motivation. Advances in our understanding of personality and the convergence of motivation theories around models of self-regulation present the opportunity to achieve that understanding and predictive efficacy. Goal propensity would be a theoretically derived trait that would explain the role of personality in self-regulation models of motivation as well as allow the prediction of tendencies to engage in self-regulation. This chapter provides the rationale for the development of this construct, articulates the nature of the proposed goal propensity construct, and explores the value of such a construct for theory, future research, and human resource practice.

Peter Bowden's background is in institutional strengthening. Formerly Professor of Administrative Studies at the University of Manchester, he has been Advisor and Consultant to a number of international agencies including the World Bank and the United Nations. He has, since 2003, used this background in teaching and research on ethical practices. Currently Research Associate in the Department of Philosophy and Lecturer in Ethics in the Faculty of Engineering, at the University of Sydney, he is also Secretary to the Australian Association for Professional and Applied Ethics. His edited book, Applied Ethics, is to come out by mid-2012.

This volume is dedicated to the memory of Patrick Primeaux. Of your editors, Michael knew him well, Howard knew his work. We both recognise his enormous contribution. Patrick was a very special individual who was unfortunately with us for far too short a time, but who in that time made a very unique contribution. The first three essays in this issue comprise a mini-festschrift issue to honour Patrick. They are by his American colleagues and good friends who knew Patrick well. A mini-festschrift seems particularly germane to Patrick. The festschrift or commemorative volume is deeply rooted in the culture of the Germanic universities, and Patrick, although having many attributes, could certainly not be construed as Germanic. We have no doubt that he would be as honoured by a mini-festschrift issue as he would be embarrassed by a full festschrift issue. The other essays are the result of the Australian Association for Professional & Applied Ethics 18th annual conference which was held in June 2011 at the University of Tasmania. The authors of these essays are academics in Australian universities who might not have known Patrick, but, as is discussed below, their essays reflect Patrick's contribution to applied ethics. There seems something very fitting about that conference being held at the University of Tasmania because their campus is in Hobart which is as far south as Australia goes. Patrick often spoke of visiting Australia but always ultimately dismissed it as too long a flight. It would, admittedly, have been a particularly long flight for Patrick who was a very heavy smoker. Nonetheless, we have no doubt that if Patrick had been able to embark upon the flight to Hobart and attended the conference, he would have enjoyed it. As it was his spirit was very much with us and pervaded many of our discussions about applied ethics.