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21 – 30 of 43Over the past decades the devastating issue of workplace bullying and its “cancerous” impact on workplace emotions has seen “today's costliest secret” become exposed (Einarsen…
Abstract
Over the past decades the devastating issue of workplace bullying and its “cancerous” impact on workplace emotions has seen “today's costliest secret” become exposed (Einarsen, Hoel, Zapf & Cooper, 2003, p. 32; Glendinning, 2001, p. 296; Needham, 2003, p. 12). Bullying at work has become so prevalent within today's workplace that 1 of the 4 of us are estimated to suffer the crippling abuse of the workplace bully, costing Australian organizations between $17 billion and $36 billion each year (Clarke, J. (2005). Working with monsters: How to identify and protect yourself from the workplace psychopath. Sydney: Random House Australia; Rayner, C. (2000). Building a business case for tackling bullying in the workplace: Beyond a cost-benefit analysis. In: Sheehan, M., Ramsey, C., & Patrick, J. (Eds), Transcending boundaries. Proceedings of the 2000 Conference, September, Brisbane). The impending doom faced by the target of the bully demeans the individual to such an extent that bullying has been associated with suicide, post-traumatic stress disorder, and even increased risk of coronary heart disease and has been demonstrated to sever “at home” relationships, with grave implications on work-life balance (Archer, 1999; Geffner, Braverman, Galasso & Marsh, 2004; Lewis, 2006). Yet despite the significant lose–lose outcomes of workplace bullying for both the individual and the well-documented consequences of decreased productivity for the organization, there seems to be little progress toward meaningfully addressing the issues that actually create, promote, and sustain workplace bullying (Bolton, 2007; Dutton & Ragins, 2007; Heames & Harvey, 2006; Peyton, 2003). Rather than narrowly concentrating on bullying and its drivers which limits workplace bullying to an occupational health and safety issue, this chapter demonstrates the practical implementation across five Victorian public sector organizations of a tool developed using the principles of positive psychology. This approach places bullying in the wider context of positive workplace emotions, allowing for consideration of the broader organizational characteristics and the subtle negative behaviors which are suggested to underlie the deep seated and pervasive nature of workplace bullying. The preliminary findings suggests that the tool was seen as valuable in creating a bully-free culture and resonates practically by offering insights into some of the issues organizations should consider to ensure such initiatives provide a genuine source of competitive advantage.
Early in one’s career in psychology, certainly starting in graduate school, if not sooner as a psych major in college, a choice point gradually emerges between seeking a career as…
Abstract
Early in one’s career in psychology, certainly starting in graduate school, if not sooner as a psych major in college, a choice point gradually emerges between seeking a career as a scholar, a scientist, and perhaps as an academic versus pursuing the life of a practitioner, one who applies the work of the former, the scholar. We faculty will often cast this choice in the form of a “tension” between science and practice. Ironically, I have never felt such tension. The purpose of this chapter is to explore choices we make in life and career, the consequences of these choices, and what we can learn in the process, that is, along the way and the implications for organization change and development.
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Mampe Kumalo and Caren Brenda Scheepers
Organisational decline has far-reaching, negative emotional and financial consequences for staff and customers, generating academic and practitioner interest in turnaround change…
Abstract
Purpose
Organisational decline has far-reaching, negative emotional and financial consequences for staff and customers, generating academic and practitioner interest in turnaround change processes. Despite numerous studies to identify the stages during turnarounds, the findings have been inconclusive. The purpose of this paper is to address the gap by defining these stages, or episodes. The characteristics of leaders affect the outcome of organisational change towards turnarounds. This paper focusses, therefore, on the leadership requirements during specific episodes, from the initial crisis to the full recovery phases.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of 11 semi-structured interviews were conducted with executives from the public sector in South Africa who went through or were going through turnaround change processes and 3 with experts consulting to these organisations.
Findings
Contrary to current literature in organisational change, this study found that, in these turnaround situations, leadership in the form of either an individual CEO or director general was preferable to shared leadership or leadership distributed throughout the organisation. This study found four critical episodes that occurred during all the public service turnarounds explored, and established that key leadership requirements differ across these episodes. The study shows how these requirements relate to the current literature on transactional, transformational and authentic leadership.
Practical implications
The findings on the leadership requirements ultimately inform the selection and development of leaders tasked with high-risk turnaround change processes.
Originality/value
Four episodes with corresponding leadership requirements were established in the particular context of public sector turnaround change processes.
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Barrie O. Pettman and Richard Dobbins
This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.
Abstract
This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.
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Angelito Calma and Camille Dickson-Deane
This paper explores some management concepts and how applying these concepts from business to higher education can be problematic, let alone incompatible, particularly in relation…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper explores some management concepts and how applying these concepts from business to higher education can be problematic, let alone incompatible, particularly in relation to measuring quality in higher education.
Design/methodology/approach
It provides a conceptual understanding of the literature on quality in the higher education context. It does so by examining the literature on students as customers, customer expectations, customer satisfaction and other management theories that have been applied to higher education.
Findings
It argues that the current bases for perceiving quality such as meeting customer expectations, satisfying the customer, ensuring quality control, meeting standards and assessing the cost associated with poor quality are in disagreement with the principal aims and measures of quality in higher education.
Research limitations/implications
This paper can certainly benefit from many other concepts in business that have been applied in higher education, which it lacks. It only focussed on a number of key and popular ideas in management theory that have been used in higher education more broadly.
Practical implications
Student-focussed quality initiatives can be devoid of the student as customer concept. How programs, subjects and experiences are curated can be solely for the purpose of continuous improvement. Second, universities that choose to treat the student as a customer may find it beneficial to apply a relationship marketing approach to higher education. Lastly, those against the student as customer concept may focus on the long-term impact of quality initiatives such as promoting lifelong learning, building long-term relationships with alumni and employers and those that further promote academic integrity.
Originality/value
Some considerations have been offered. These considerations revisit the basic notions of teaching and learning in higher education. It puts an emphasis on sidestepping the student as customer metaphor, that learning is not expressed in dollar terms, and that the quality of the student experience cannot be measured by student evaluation alone because it is felt much later in life.
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Katalin Pádár, Béla Pataki and Zoltán Sebestyén
Change management (CM) and project management (PM) literatures examine the key roles (change agent, project manager, project or change sponsor) played during projects or changes…
Abstract
Purpose
Change management (CM) and project management (PM) literatures examine the key roles (change agent, project manager, project or change sponsor) played during projects or changes only from their respective points of view. They do so even in cases where projects and changes occur at the same time – or are so-called change projects. In such cases, effective management should utilize both scientific fields’ bodies of knowledge (BoK). The purpose of this paper is to unfold how and in which domain(s) typical roles of the two disciplines correspond to each other.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is a systematic, bi-disciplinary meta-review that simultaneously studies relevant literature on roles performed during projects and changes. The common domain of CM and PM was identified; the systematic review and comparison of role definitions followed.
Findings
This paper examines and illustrates the correspondence of 7 CM and 14 PM roles; e.g., “sponsor” refers to the same role and “change agent” and “project manager” are corresponding ones, referring to the same role up to a certain degree.
Research limitations/implications
This paper does not provide an exhaustive overview of various instances of different role (and stakeholder) interpretations.
Practical implications
Findings should facilitate the better management of changes that require CM-type and PM-type capabilities and actions.
Originality/value
As a result of the meta-review, two CM roles were re(de)fined. Linking PM and CM roles provides common ground on which practitioners of both fields can rely. A step-by-step tool for the identification of such cases in practice, when both types of roles should be played and both BoK can be utilized complementarily, was developed.
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Margaret McAllister, Donna Lee Brien, June Alexander and Trudi Flynn
The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential benefits that books, and specifically memoirs, may offer mental health students, positing that first person testimonials may…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential benefits that books, and specifically memoirs, may offer mental health students, positing that first person testimonials may make the complex experiences of a mental health challenge, in this case eating disorders (ED), accessible to learners.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper presents a pedagogical approach, based on transformative learning (TL), to assist in encouraging the development of a Recovery Approach in students. TL is a pedagogy that is interested in problematic practices that keep afflicting an area such as mental health, such as the imbalanced focus on learning illness rather than wellbeing, and in pondering and revising the educational solutions.
Findings
The paper proposes that forward movement in this area will be based on considering and developing such innovative curricula, and researching its impact.
Originality/value
By virtue of their accessibility, memoirs could offer to a large audience the benefits of universality, empathy, hope and guidance. Teachers and learners could be making use of these books in face-to-face or online activities. This paper explores the groundwork that is needed before ED memoirs can be confidently recommended as an empowering tool.
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Allan H. Church, Robert F. Hurley and W. Warner Burke
A series of interviews were conducted with 12 experiencedOrganization Development (OD) practitioners in order to explore theimpact that changes in the business world may have had…
Abstract
A series of interviews were conducted with 12 experienced Organization Development (OD) practitioners in order to explore the impact that changes in the business world may have had on the values of the field. Eight major themes emerged from these interviews: (1) OD practitioners are driven by large system change; (2) humanistic values remain at the core of OD efforts; (3) practitioners are focusing more on business effectiveness issues; (4) achieving personal goals and rewards are strong motivators; (5) practitioners sometimes project their own issues and problems onto clients; (6) some operate as fringe dwellers on the margin of commitment to organizations; (7) the OD missionary is alive but not well; and (8) training for the field is a severe problem – there are too few mentors for the number of people entering the field. Addresses implications for the field of OD.
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