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Traditional Reduction In Force (RIF) methods have been unpopular, damaging to morale, dysfunctional, probably too expensive and, in some cases, indefensible. The article describes an innovative and democratic solution to RIF decisions. In a steel company a productivity group was instituted to plan the means of managing RIF — fairness to employees being the most important consideration. Participative management appears to be the key to success.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

Takes a detailed view of the scientific community in Chile regarding network implementation and use. Argues that since Chile has many characteristics in common with other nations in this regard, the methodology is replicable elsewhere. Makes generalizations based on a statistically significant sample of scientific network users, under such headings as research discipline, education level, computer access and other variables. Develops hypotheses using the literature of Computer Mediated Communication Systems (CMCS). Discusses the potential of using the current methodology as well as the insights of previous CMCS to give better information in the planning process for research networks of all kinds.

Improvement in performance appraisal systems are necessary because current methods are neither accurate nor fair. Recent attempts to improve performance appraisals by training raters has been shown to have the opposite effect‐actually decreasing the accuracy of the performance measures. Multiple rater performance appraisal systems (MRPAS) provide an opportunity to increase appraisal accuracy by combining judgements of individual raters. However, before MRPAS are used, numerous objections must be overcome including system acceptance, finding raters, system design, desire to participate, and the potential use of too much management time. The Objective Judgement Quotient (OJQ) performance appraisal process is used as a demonstration method that has developed solutions to each of these objections. When MRPAS are used effectively, the fairness and usefulness of multiple rater systems compared to single rater systems are so clearly superior that users of MRPAS are likely to adopt the view that single rater systems are obsolete.

We examine how interpersonal behavior and social interaction influence team sensemaking and subsequent team actions during a hospital-based health information technology (HIT) implementation project.

Over the course of 18 months, we directly observed the interpersonal interactions of HIT implementation teams using a sensemaking lens.

We identified three voice-promoting strategies enacted by team leaders that fostered team member voice and sensemaking; communicating a vision; connecting goals to team member values; and seeking team member input. However, infrequent leader expressions of anger quickly undermined team sensemaking, halting dialog essential to problem solving. By seeking team member opinions, team leaders overcame the negative effects of anger.

Leaders must enact voice-promoting behaviors and use them throughout a team’s engagement. Further, training teams in how to use conflict to achieve greater innovation may improve sensemaking essential to project risk mitigation.

Health care work processes are complex; teams involved in implementing improvements must be prepared to deal with conflicting, contentious issues, which will arise during change. Therefore, team conflict training may be essential to sustaining sensemaking.

Future research should seek to identify team interactions that foster sensemaking, especially when topics are difficult or unwelcome, then determine the association between staff sensemaking and the impact on HIT implementation outcomes.

We are among the first to focus on project teams tasked with HIT implementation. This research extends our understanding of how leaders’ behaviors might facilitate or impeded speaking up among project teams in health care settings.

We discuss the impact of complexity science on the design and management of health care organizations over the past decade. We provide an overview of complexity science issues and their impact on thinking about health care systems, particularly with the rising importance of information systems. We also present a complexity science perspective on current issues in today’s health care organizations and suggest ways that this perspective might help in approaching these issues.

We review selected research, focusing on work in which we participated, to identify specific examples of applications of complexity science. We then take a look at information systems in health care organizations from a complexity viewpoint.

Complexity science is a fundamentally different way of understanding nature and has influenced the thinking of scholars and practitioners as they have attempted to understand health care organizations. Many scholars study health care organizations as complex adaptive systems and through this perspective develop new management strategies. Most important, perhaps, is the understanding that attention to relationships and interdependencies is critical for developing effective management strategies.

Increased understanding of complexity science can enhance the ability of researchers and practitioners to develop new ways of understanding and improving health care organizations.

This analysis opens new vistas for scholars and practitioners attempting to understand health care organizations as complex adaptive systems. The analysis holds value for those already familiar with this approach as well as those who may not be as familiar.

Investigates whether faculty who use computer mediated communication (CMC) achieve greater scholarly productivity as measured by publications and a higher incidence in the following prestige factors: receipt of awards; service on a regional or national committee of a professional organization; service on an editorial board of a refereed journal; service as a principal investigator on an externally funded project; or performance of other research on an externally funded project. Also investigates whether faculty who use CMC at less research‐oriented institutions realize disproportional benefit from their use of CMC. Data were collected in Fall 1994. A positive relationship was found between the frequency of use of CMC and publications, including coauthored publications. CMC users also had a higher incidence of prestige factors. In addition to statistically significant relationships between CMC use and productivity measures, faculty judged CMC to be of some utility to their productivity. Nevertheless, there did not appear to be a “democratizing effect” which would yield disproportionate benefit to those from less research‐oriented institutions.

Set against a background of rapid growth in the dieting industry and increasing trends towards eating disorders (EDs) in Western societies, this study examines the impact of fashion marketing on the development of EDs in young women. Using a phenomenological approach, a qualitative exploratory study was carried out by making use of electronic questionnaires administered to a sample of ED sufferers recruited through Internet chatroom contacts, as well as to a control group of young women not affected by the condition. The study revealed that the psychological pressures inflicted by society, in particular through fashion marketing images, were felt to be very powerful influences on respondents’ self‐image and dieting habits. Where the eating disorder victims were able to use the industry’s messages as a mechanism for fuelling their illness, the control respondents showed dangerously similar signs of allowing themselves to be consumed by the same feelings and behaviours. The study also found that all respondents came across as relying very heavily on social acceptance as the prime bearer of how they felt comforted in their social surroundings, and believe the acceptance is dependent on how thin they are.

Employees’ emotional competencies (EEC) are skills, based on emotional intelligence, used to perceive, understand and regulate customer emotions during a service encounter. In the context of service recovery, these skills are especially important and allow employees to influence consumers’ attitude and behaviours. The purpose of this study is to assess the direct and indirect impacts of EEC in post-recovery satisfaction, trust, word-of-mouth and repurchase intention, considering the moderating role of service (level of employee-customer contact) types.

A total of 355 customers who experienced a service failure and subsequent recovery were surveyed using a self-administered questionnaire. EEC was specified as a formative construct, determined by its perceiving, understanding and regulating dimensions. To measure EEC and its impact on selected outcomes, PLS-SEM was used. A multi-group analysis was performed to analyse the moderating role of service type.

Results confirm EEC as a formative construct, with a positive direct impact on post-recovery satisfaction, particularly in high-contact customized services. Findings also reveal the mediating role of satisfaction on selected outcomes, and the significant direct impact of EEC on trust, even when controlling for satisfaction.

EEC remains unexplored in the service recovery literature, and most research fails to understand how EEC role may vary given contextual differences. This study adopts a consumer perspective of EEC in the emotionally charged situation of service recovery, considering the moderating role of service type. The authors further contribute to both literature streams while examining the impact of EEC on post-recovery evaluations. Companies should consider these findings in the recruitment and training of front-line employees to develop better service recovery strategies.

Previous research in sociology, psychology and fashion studies has investigated the concept of diversity in the fashion context, but the topic remains largely understudied within the realm of consumer research. This study aims to examine the reactions of underrepresented women to the fashion industry’s lack of diversity.

A total of 38 semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted among a sample of female consumers who were diverse with respect to racial and ethnic background, socioeconomic class, religion, sexual orientation, age, body type and physical appearance.

Using Bourdieu’s forms of capital – social, cultural, economic and symbolic – the findings shed light on the process of virtual community formation on social media in response to the lack of diversity in fashion; reveal fashion consumers’ power to enact institution-level change, compelling the industry to become more diverse and inclusive; demonstrate the outcomes of capital accumulation and illustrate how all forms of capital are produced by and reproduce each other.

This study proposes a new outcome of capital accumulation on virtual communities, termed “transformative value,” in addition to the social and information values identified in earlier scholarship.