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This study examines whether learning climate relates to employability competences through social informal learning (i.e. feedback, help and information seeking).

Multiple regression analyses and structural equation modeling were used to test direct and indirect effects in a sample of 372 employees working in two Dutch governmental institutes.

The analyses confirmed that learning climate has an indirect effect on employability competences through feedback, help and information seeking. More specifically, the findings suggest that learning climate is important for employees' engagement in proactive social informal learning activities. Engaging in these learning activities, in turn, relates to a higher level of employability.

This study employs an integrative approach to understanding employability by including the organization's learning climate and employees' social informal learning behavior. It contributes to the extant literature on professional development by unraveling how proactive social informal learning relates to employability competences. It also provides new insights on learning climate as a determinant for social informal learning and employability.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the position of employees in the organizational hierarchy is important in explaining their feedback seeking behaviour.

This study takes a social network perspective by using an ego-centric network survey to investigate employees ' feedback seeking behaviour within their professional networks. Data were collected from an online questionnaire among 243 employees working in a large multinational organization located in The Netherlands.

Results indicate that employees frequently seek feedback from colleagues within the same department. However, managers or leaders seek significantly less feedback from colleagues in the same department and from coaches, as compared to others. Furthermore, employees perceive the feedback they receive from managers/leaders, coaches, and colleagues in the same department as useful.

The study findings extend the existing literature on the dynamics of feedback seeking of employees across different hierarchical levels. Methodologically, an egocentric network survey was used to investigate the employees ' relationships within their professional network. The findings suggest that this approach, novel in research on feedback seeking, is valuable and promising.

The lateral feedback seeking literature has primarily examined lower-level employees’ feedback seeking from peers. Thus, the authors still know very little about feedback seeking when the leader is the “seeker” and peers are the “targets” of such seeking. The purpose of this paper is to expand existing discussions on lateral feedback seeking by discussing the types of feedback leaders may seek out from their peers.

The views presented here have been derived from the authors’ personal opinions on the topic of feedback seeking and a review of the academic and practitioner literature on feedback seeking.

The viewpoint suggests that leaders may engage in two forms of feedback seeking from peers – performance and growth feedback seeking – with each type of feedback seeking holding relevance to leader effectiveness.

Challenging previous research that argues that leaders may avoid seeking feedback from peers, this viewpoint suggests that leaders may seek feedback from peers because they stand to benefit from doing so.

Organizations have widely adopted enterprise social media (ESM) to improve employees' creativity. This study applies self-regulation theory to explore the role of feedback seeking in mediating the effects of work-oriented and social-oriented ESM usage on employee creativity.

A questionnaire was conducted on 219 working professionals in China – professionals that use ESM in respective organizations.

Results show that both work-oriented and social-oriented ESM usage are positively associated with employee feedback inquiry and, subsequently, increased employee creativity. The findings also suggest that social-oriented ESM usage is positively related to employee monitoring, whereas employee feedback monitoring is not related to employee creativity.

Practitioners and/or managers need to pay greater attention to the impact of work-oriented and social-oriented ESM usage on employee feedback seeking strategies and creativity. The low response rate is one of the limitations in this study, although the results of the test suggest that non-response bias is not a critical issue in this study.

This study contributes to the knowledge of feedback inquiry in explaining the effect of work-oriented and social-oriented ESM usage on employee creativity. The current study helps to extend the intervening mechanism in the relationship between ESM usage and employee creativity.

Drawing on the work design growth model (WDGM), this paper aims to explore the relationship between job complexity and employee creativity through feedback-seeking and the moderating effect of team leaders with a growth creative mindset.

The authors used an online survey to test the hypotheses. Data was collected in three waves from 74 supervisors and 349 paired employees in China.

Job complexity had a positive association with employees’ feedback-seeking, which further linked to employee creativity. This indirect effect was stronger in work teams with leaders endorsing a growth creative mindset.

Job complexity has become prevalent in organizations today. Taking daily complexity as a resource for nurturing employee creativity may balance organizations’ costs on formal training and give them more initiatives in long-term development. In addition, as the growth creative mindset is relatively easy to assess and change, it may bring insights in terms of creativity development.

By empirically testing the behavioural mechanism of WDGM, the learning and development perspective of work design offers a new explanation of the relationship between job complexity and employee creativity. The authors further extend WDGM by identifying leaders’ growth creative mindset to be a boundary condition.

Scholars in the feedback seeking domain have predominantly focused on subordinate feedback seeking. The authors still know very little about feedback seeking when the leader is the “seeker” and subordinates are the “targets” of such seeking. This paper aims to develop a theoretical framework that explores the potential benefits and costs of leader feedback seeking, specifically, leader feedback inquiry for subordinates.

The authors draw upon the transactional theory of stress to propose a framework in which leader feedback inquiry influences two subordinate behaviors (in-role and proactive skill development behaviors) via appraisal processes (challenge and threat appraisals). With insights from regulatory focus theory, the authors propose that individual characteristics, namely, the regulatory focus of subordinates (promotion and prevention focus), determine the appraisals of leader feedback inquiry, subsequently influencing subordinate behavioral outcomes.

The authors contend that leader feedback inquiry can be appraised as a challenge which then produces beneficial subordinate behaviors (i.e. higher in-role and proactive skill development behaviors). However, leader feedback inquiry can also be appraised as a threat which then elicits detrimental subordinate behaviors (i.e. lower in-role and proactive skill development behaviors). The authors then argue that subordinates with a high promotion focus appraise leader feedback inquiry as challenging, thereby enabling beneficial behaviors. Subordinates with a high prevention focus, by contrast, appraise leader feedback inquiry as threatening, thereby prompting detrimental behaviors.

The authors shed light on the benefits and costs of leader feedback seeking for subordinates. The resulting framework underlines the importance of including individual characteristics and cognitive appraisal processes in research investigating the effects of leader feedback inquiry on subordinate outcomes.

This article examines a structured redesign of one academic library's offering of its online learning objects. This process considered both improving the online learning objects and developing a feasible workflow process for librarians. The findings for both processes are discussed.

The scholarship on online library learning objects and web tutorials, beginning with Dewald's seminal study, was examined for trends, patterns, and best practices. From this research, informal interviews were conducted with library faculty members. Once this information had been collected, other public university libraries in the state of Michigan – 14 in all – were considered in terms of if, and how, they offered online learning objects and web tutorials. These three areas of inquiry provide a foundation for the best practices and workflows developed.

Based on the scholarship, librarian feedback, and informal assessment of other public university libraries' practices, best practices were developed for web tutorial evaluation and creation. These best practices are to make online learning content: maintainable, available, geared at users, informative, and customizable. Workflows for librarians around these best practices were developed. Also, using these best practices, the library redesigned its tutorials web page and employed a different content management tool, which benefitted both librarians and users with increased interactivity and ease of use.

This article shares best practices and library workflows for online learning objects in ways that are not commonly addressed in the literature. It also considers the library's online instructional presence from the perspectives of both user and librarian, and works to develop structures in which both can function effectively. This article is also of value because of the practical implications it offers to library professionals.

The purpose of this paper is to outline findings from practitioner research with a university faculty learning community (FLC) that organized itself to effect bottom-up change. The study explores beliefs about the efficacy of collaboration among members of the FLC and serves as a best case of grassroots faculty collaboration during a period of institutional change.

This is a case study using semi-structured interviews with FLC members and document review of short-term learning data from students who participated in workshops offered by the FLC.

Creative faculty responses to challenges posed by large-scale institutional transformation improved the teaching and learning environment for faculty and students. This case study highlights four characteristics that were crucial to the success of this FLC and which could provide a helpful starting point for faculty collaboration at other institutions.

This is a preliminary, self-reflective study with a small number of participants working at a unique institution. Findings are presented not as strictly generalizable truths about faculty collaboration in higher education, but as “lessons learned” that may be valuable to other faculty seeking to take a more proactive role in contexts of institutional change.

This case study highlights four characteristics that were crucial to the success of this FLC and which could provide a helpful starting point for faculty collaboration at other institutions.

This study illustrates how bottom-up, faculty-led collaboration can address institutional problems in a university setting. Creative faculty responses to challenges posed by large-scale institutional transformation can improve the teaching and learning environment for faculty and students.

This study documents one FLC’s innovative responses to institutional challenges and shifts the conversation about university-based teaching and learning away from bureaucratic mandates related to faculty interactions and productivity and toward faculty’s organic responses to changing institutional conditions.

Healthcare service quality in the USA has gained importance under value-based payment models. Providing feedback to front-line staff is a vital component of managing service performance, but complex organizational dynamics can prevent effective communication. This work explored the performance management of appointment desk staff at Mayo Clinic Arizona, identified barriers to effective management and sought to standardize the process for monitoring service performance.

Multiple data sources, including qualitative inquiry with 31 employees from the primary care and surgery departments, were used. The research was conducted in two phases – facilitated roundtable discussions with supervisors and semi-structured interviews with supervisors and staff six months after implementation of service standards. Participants were probed for attitudes about the service standards and supervisor feedback after implementation.

While all staff indicated a positive work environment, there was an unexpected and pervasive negative stigma surrounding individual feedback from one’s supervisor. Half the participants indicated there had been no individual feedback regarding the service standards from the supervisor. Presenting service standards in a simple, one-page format, signed by both supervisor and the patient service representative (PSR), was well received.

Combining rapid-cycle quality improvement methodology with qualitative inquiry allowed efficient development of role-specific service standards and quick evaluation of their implementation. This unique approach for improving healthcare service quality and identifying barriers to providing individual feedback may be useful to organizations navigating a more value- and consumer-driven healthcare market.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of ethical leadership on negative feedback-seeking behavior (NFSB). In addition, it sought to investigate the mediating role of psychological safety and job involvement in this relationship.

The sample for this study comprised 238 primary and secondary school teachers who were selected from three private sector schools operating in Pakistan. Structural equation modeling was used to test the research hypotheses.

Results revealed that as expected, psychological safety and job involvement fully mediated the effects of ethical leadership on NFSB.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study that has empirically established a connection between ethical leadership and NFSB. Furthermore, it uncovers two distinct mechanisms in the form of psychological safety and job involvement through which ethical leadership can influence NFSB.