Search results

Addresses the standardization of the measurements and the labels for concepts commonly used in the study of work organizations. As a reference handbook and research tool, seeks to improve measurement in the study of work organizations and to facilitate the teaching of introductory courses in this subject. Focuses solely on work organizations, that is, social systems in which members work for money. Defines measurement and distinguishes four levels: nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio. Selects specific measures on the basis of quality, diversity, simplicity and availability and evaluates each measure for its validity and reliability. Employs a set of 38 concepts ‐ ranging from “absenteeism” to “turnover” as the handbook’s frame of reference. Concludes by reviewing organizational measurement over the past 30 years and recommending future measurement reseach.

The information sources employees in one Fortune 100 organization draw on to learn about sustainability are identified. The linkages between knowledge about sustainability, perceptions of the organization's involvement in sustainability initiatives, and interest in learning more about sustainability are investigated.

Employees (n=1,952) completed an online survey investigating what they knew and thought about sustainability, and the sources of their information. The information sources investigated included external association sources, media sources, supply-chain sources, interpersonal sources, and intraorganizational sources.

Important external information sources include professional/industry associations, faith-based institutions, and supply-chain partners. Important internal sources include supervisors, company meetings, and the company sustainability report. Those who think sustainability is important to their organization's long-term success were interested in learning more about sustainability. Awareness of the organization's sustainability initiatives is related to the belief sustainability is important to the organization's success.

Limitations include a cross-sectional study, single-item measures, and nominal data.

Companies launching sustainability initiatives need to understand and manage the information sources their employees utilize.

This is a large empirical study that focusses on information sources and employee perceptions involving sustainability.

Much of the literature in organizational change has taken a single approach to explain employee expectation formation regarding the outcomes of a change event. A conceptual model is developed to integrate two existing streams of research (the information effects approach and the social effects approach) and to develop a comprehensive picture of outcome expectation formation. We propose that information and social effects function simultaneously to shape an employee's outcome expectations. The strength and content consistency of information and social effects jointly determine what people expect regarding change outcomes and how confident they feel about those expectations. Implications are discussed in terms of setting the boundaries for information and social effects as well as future research directions.

This article aims to investigate how R&D employees use their social networks to acquire user information and how this information is used in the development of new products.

A single case study was conducted within a business unit at a multinational medical technology company. Data were collected through a mixed method.

The results show that many R&D employees lack social networks through which they can acquire information about the users’ needs. However, some R&D employees establish cost-efficient relationships to people with a direct experience of using the company’s products. These relationships are established over time and are often used in a rather informal way to acquire user information. Moreover, the results show how R&D employees are purposefully complementing these relationships with more occasional interactions with people who hold direct and indirect use experiences.

As with most single-case studies, it will be important to replicate this investigation in other contexts to clarify the generalizability of the findings.

The article shows how important it is that management provides R&D employees with opportunities to establish, nurture and utilize relationships conducive to information about the users’ needs. The article provides some advice on how this can be accomplished.

This is one of the first articles that clearly explain how R&D employees use their social networks to acquire user information for the development of new products.

Communicating with employees is an aspect of management which is today being subjected to new pressures and ideas. Trade unions have new disclosure rights. A growing number of managers believe that employees have a right to know about company matters, or see employee communications as an essential adjunct to involving employees in managerial decisions through consultation or participation.

Over the past decade, the rapid evolution of social media has impacted the field of human resource management in numerous ways. In response, scholars and practitioners have sought to begin an investigation of the myriad of ways that social media impacts organizations. To date, research evidence on a range of HR-related topics are just beginning to emerge, but are scattered across a range of diverse literatures. The principal aim of this chapter is to review the current literature on the study of social media in HRM and to integrate these disparate emerging literatures. During our review, we discuss the existent research, describe the theoretical foundations of such work, and summarize key research findings and themes into a coherent social media framework relevant to HRM. Finally, we offer recommendations for future work that can enhance knowledge of social media’s impact in organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the hitherto unexplored relationship between employees’ perceptions of informational injustice with respect to change and their negative workplace emotions, as well as how this relationship might be mitigated by structural and relational features of the organizational context.

The paper draws on quantitative data collected through the 2011 Workplace Employment Relations Survey. The hypotheses are tested with ordered probit analysis using random effects.

The findings show that informational injustice enhances the development of negative workplace emotions, yet this effect is attenuated at higher levels of job influence, reward interdependence, trust, and organizational commitment.

The findings contribute by identifying several contingencies that attenuate the harmful effect of informational injustice with respect to change on negative workplace emotions. The limitations of the study include the lack of data on change-specific outcomes and the reliance on the same respondents to assess the focal variables.

The study suggests that organizations facing the challenge of sharing complete information about internal changes can counter the employee stress that comes with limited information provision by creating appropriate internal environments.

The study adds to research on organizational change by providing a better understanding of an unexplored driver of negative workplace emotions (i.e. informational injustice with respect to change) and explicating when such informational injustice is more or less likely to enhance these emotions.

We present a model of organizational monitoring that integrates organizational justice and information privacy. Specifically, we adopt the position that the formation of invasiveness and unfairness attitudes is a goal-driven process. We employ cybernetic control theory and identity theory to describe how monitoring systems affect one's ability to maintain a positive self-concept. Monitoring provides a particularly powerful cue that directs attention to self-awareness. People draw on fairness and privacy relevant cues inherent in monitoring systems and embedded in monitoring environments (e.g., justice climate) to evaluate their identities. Discrepancies between actual and desired personal and social identities create distress, motivating employees to engage in behavioral self-regulation to counteract potentially threatening monitoring systems. Organizational threats to personal identity goals lead to increased invasiveness attitudes and a commitment to protect and enhance the self. Threats to social identity lead to increased unfairness attitudes and lowered commitment to one's organization. Implications for theory and research on monitoring, justice, and privacy are discussed along with practical implications.

This paper aims to study corporate response to intellectual capital and social responsibility disclosure recommendations regarding employees. Such an analysis would reveal which forms of corporate interest induce a company to disclose: reflecting the firm’s value to satisfy priority shareholders’ needs of information or improving the corporate social image to meet the demands of stakeholders other than capital providers.

The paper quantify the extent to which 105 Spanish listed companies present in their annual reports information about employees. Human resource disclosure attending the recommendations of social disclosure and information linked to value creation following the information included in the intellectual capital models are distinguished. A content analysis of 105 companies’ annual reports was conducted. Once the information was quantified, the author considers which theoretical arguments of voluntary/social disclosure motive that a company follows have different recommendations about human resource disclosure.

The findings reflect the existent recommendations are not enough for companies to disclose about human resources. Spanish companies pay more attention to social issues about employee than to others human capital aspects usually integrated in the intellectual capital.

It would be interesting to extend the period of analysis to study the trend in human resource disclosure and to use an alternative measure of disclosing as the information quality.

These findings concluded that the fundamental aim of Spanish companies is to reflect social behaviour regarding employees. Less important appears to be to inform about business capacity, through human element, for creating value. The necessity of explicit disclosure requirements to Spanish companies’ disclosure on human resources is also detected.

Some studies have been carried out to analyse disclosure on intellectual capital or on social issues but not since a broad perspective. Furthermore, these studies have not been done in Spain. The author may confirm that the influence of some stakeholders in this country is conditioning corporate disclosure.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of human resource disclosure on corporate image.

The information about human resources presented in their annual reports by 105 Spanish listed companies was grouped in three categories, previously defined in literature. We distinguish information about human capital (items usually included as human capital in Intellectual Capital reports), social information about employees and information about ethics questions relative to employees. A content analysis of these 105 annual reports was conducted to measure human resource disclosure and a regression analysis was carried out to study the impact of this information on company image.

The findings reflect the significant effect of the three categories of human resource disclosure on corporate image.

This study might encourage firms to improve their disclosure policy on issues related to human capital, such as training, and on social and ethical aspects of employees, such as health and safety at work and working rights.

This paper contributes to research on human resources by confirming the impact not only of information about human capital, which is mainly oriented to shareholders, but of social and ethical information about employees, oriented as well as to stakeholders, on corporate reputation.