Search results

The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of interaction in the process of leadership. Interaction has been claimed to be a leadership competence in earlier research into leadership in the Royal Navy. The aim of this research is to define how interaction works within naval teams.

The research uses Grounded Theory. Following a series of leadership discussions in separate focus groups, discussion topics were coded and subjected to recursive qualitative analysis. The grounded approach is used to synthesise and develop existing leadership theory strands as well as to extend the trait-process approach to leadership.

The research discovers the key interaction behaviours of engagement, disengagement and levelling. Our findings support recent developments in follower-centric perceptions of leadership and in interaction specifically. The authors develop engagement theory by combining it with the less well researched area of leadership resistance. The authors then re-frame resistance as social levelling, a more comprehensive interaction mechanism.

The research is highly contextual because of its qualitative approach. Some of the detailed reactions to leadership behaviours may not found in other naval or military teams and are unlikely to be generalisable to non-military environments. However, the mechanism described, that of engagement, disengagement and levelling is considered highly generalisable if not universal. Rather than develop new theory fragments in an already confusing research environment, the authors fuse engagement and resistance theory to extend trait-process theories of leadership. The result is a coherent and integrative model of leadership dynamics which frames leadership in the mundane interaction of leaders and followers.

Interaction as a competence is strongly supported as is the encouragement of cultures which promote interaction. Selection procedures for future leaders should include interaction skills. The use of subtle methods of resistance are highlighted. Such methods may indicate poor interaction long before more overt forms of resistance are apparent.

The continual monitoring of leaders and implied ambivalence towards leadership could be critical to our understanding of leadership. A dynamic feedback circle between leaders and followers may be a more useful paradigm for the characterising of leadership throughout society. A better understanding of the power of followers to frame and re-frame leadership would help to manage the expectations of leaders.

This research uniquely uses Grounded Theory to extend current theories (competence based leadership and trait-process theories of leadership), explaining the complexity of leadership interaction. The research also synthesises and develops engagement and levelling (resistance to leadership) theories for the first time. As such the project suggests a full range model of follower response to leadership including subtle forms of resistance to power. The value of group-level analysis using focus groups is recommended, especially for other collective leader-follower approaches to leadership. The research is of interest to those studying leadership process theories, competencies, leader-follower traditions, engagement and power/resistance research.

Jarring events, be they global crises such as COVID-19 or technological events such as the Cambridge Analytica data incident, have bullwhip effects on billions of people's daily lives. Such “shocks” vary in their characteristics. While some shocks cause, for example, widespread adoption of information systems (IS) as diverse as Netflix and Teams, others lead users to stop using IS, such as Facebook. To offer insights into the multifaceted ways shocks influence user behavior, this study aims to assess the status quo of shock-related literature in the IS discipline and develop a taxonomy that paves the path for future IS research on shocks.

This study conducted a literature review (N = 70) to assess the status quo of shock-related research in the IS discipline. Through a qualitative study based on users who experienced shocks (N = 39), it confirmed the findings of previous literature in an illustrative IS research context. Integrating the findings of the literature review and qualitative study, this study informs a taxonomy of shocks impacting IS use.

This study identifies different ways that shocks influence user behavior. The taxonomy reveals that IS research could profit from considering environmental, private and work shocks and shedding light on positive shocks. IS research could also benefit from examining the urgency of shocks, as there are indications that this influences how and when individuals react to a specific shock.

Findings complement previous rational explanations for user behavior by showing technology use can be influenced by shocks. This study offers a foundation for forward-looking research that connects jarring events to patterns of technology use.

The purpose of this study is to draw on multiple streams analysis (MSA) and to investigate how policy change emerged from two inquiries into allegations of abusive hospital care in National Health Service (NHS) hospitals in the United Kingdom (UK) in the 1960s.

The methodology of this study is regarding a historical case study of two inquiries.

The Sans Everything and Ely inquiries had the same legal standing and terms of reference, but the second put psychiatric hospital reform on the agenda, while the first did not. The main factor making Ely rather than Sans Everything the turning point seems to have been concerned with “agency”, linked with a few key individuals.

A study of 1960s event necessarily relies heavily on documentary and archival sources, and cannot draw on interviews which are an important ingredient of many case studies.

The originality of the study is to examines inquiries, which have been largely neglected in MSA, despite their obvious potential role in placing issues on the agenda. Previous studies of MSA have devoted little attention to the ability of the media to provide the focus on “focusing events”.

Despite the well-established association between workplace bullying and turnover intentions, the mechanisms underlying this relationship and its boundary conditions remain understudied. The purpose of this paper is to examine employee affective well-being as a mediating mechanism by which exposure to workplace bullying may trigger employee intentions to leave the workplace. It also aims to explore the role of national culture in moderating the effects of workplace bullying on employee well-being and turnover intentions.

This research is conducted through a cross-cultural analysis of data obtained from 627 Australian and Pakistani employees.

The findings reveal that exposure to workplace bullying triggers turnover intentions through its negative effect on affective well-being in cross-cultural/national contexts. However, national culture moderates these effects such that the effects of workplace bullying on well-being and turnover intentions are weaker for Pakistanis than for Australians.

This paper reports original research that deepens the understanding of how, why and when exposure to workplace bullying will prompt employees to leave the workplace in a cross-national context. The research findings will assist international organisations in designing strategies tailored to the national culture in order to mitigate the adverse effects of workplace bullying on staff turnover.

In this chapter, the authors build on the voluntary turnover model posited by Allen, Bryant, and Vardaman (2010) with reference to turnover and retention within the United Kingdom. After providing important contextual material about the United Kingdom, the authors explore turnover drivers such as work precarity, as well as the effect of Brexit, which compounds the political and economic uncertainty engendered by the pandemic. Reflecting on the role of external shocks in precipitating withdrawal processes, the authors go on to examine the extent to which job embeddedness impacts on employee turnover, and how alternative opportunities in a UK context may shape the decisions people make to stay with or leave their organizations. Central to our argument is that human resource (HR) practices as perceived by employees play a critical role in shaping attitudes such that people wish to stay in the organization. Cultural values posited by Hofstede and others are likely to significantly impact the way in which employees respond to the HR practices they perceive. Hence, leaders and HR specialists in the United Kingdom need to deploy HR practices which speak to cultural values that stand out in that context, considering that the United Kingdom is characterized by relatively low levels of power distance, low uncertainty avoidance, high individualism and higher than average indulgence.

Taken together, the model provides an overview of key internal and external factors that influence employees’ attitudes at work, their withdrawal behaviors and the ensuing turnover at the organizational-level. The authors conclude by highlighting key research questions raised by the analysis of the model within a UK context, considering where empirical research will add to understanding about turnover and retention in the United Kingdom.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the ways in which social media content via social contagion may affect the job behaviors of employed individuals. Specifically, by integrating the unfolding model of voluntary turnover and social comparison theory, this paper explores whether receiving an update about a peer’s career advancement on professional social networking sites (SNSs) increases an individual’s propensity to engage in job search.

In this analysis, the authors matched individuals’ survey data (n=125) with information received from a recruiting agency on employees’ subsequent job search behavior (i.e., sending a resume to the agency).

The results indicate that the relationship between career advancement updates on SNSs and job search behavior was stronger for employees with higher perceived employability and, contrary to our hypothesis, for those more embedded within the organization.

More employable and more embedded individuals perceive social cues from social media, and these cues positively relate to their job search behaviors. To address this trend, organizations could develop a social media strategy and implement retention measures to prevent the job search (and thus potential turnover) of employable and embedded individuals.

This research contributes to the job search literature by examining the role of professional SNSs in driving job search behavior among employed individuals.

The issue of customer mistreatment in food and retail sectors has come under the spotlight during the COVID-19 crisis. The purpose of this paper is to examine the problem in the COVID-19 pandemic context and study its implications for employee counterproductive behavior in the workplace. Specifically, this study aims to investigate the relationship between customer mistreatment and employee counterproductive behavior by considering the mediating role of cognitive rumination and moderating role of servant leadership at coffee cafés that operated during the COVID-19 smart lockdown period.

Structured questionnaires were distributed to 479 frontline staff working at cafés and coffee shops located in two large cities of Pakistan. The questionnaire data were analyzed by using bootstrapped regression procedures to determine how the investigated variables influenced counterproductive work behavior during the pandemic.

The findings revealed a positive influence of customer mistreatment on counterproductive work behavior both directly as well as indirectly in the presence of employee rumination as a mediator. Furthermore, the presence of servant leadership at cafés and coffee shops was found to moderate the impact of customer mistreatment during the pandemic.

The study offers a novel insight into the relationships between mistreatment by customers, counterproductive work behavior, employee rumination and servant leadership in the COVID-19 pandemic context, hitherto unexplored.

The purpose of this study is to examine the development of a protean career orientation. In doing so, the paper also aims to assess how work experience, parents and peer networks co‐influence the development of a protean career orientation.

The paper uses semi‐structured interviews with young adults and explores their past, present and future work and career experiences. They were also asked them to explain what career success meant to them. Interview transcripts were reviewed and coded based on two main categories representing protean orientation: self‐directed career management and the expression of personal values as a mechanism for career decisions. The paper also process mapped how a protean career orientation developed in the interviewees. Those who reported a protean career orientation were interviewed two‐and‐a‐half years later so as to further explore their career experiences and the extent to which self‐directedness and value congruence influenced career decisions.

Results suggest that some reported a protean career orientation and of those that did they reported experiencing an image violation based on their personal values. Two types of personal values appeared important to the protean group, they were, making a contribution to society and maintaining work‐life balance. Those that were categorised as having a protean orientation also engaged in critical reassessment by interrogating the basis of their career values and strategies and this distinguished them from the rest of the interviewees who exhibited a more traditional career orientation. These findings are consistent with image theory's concept of a progress decision. This concept encapsulates the idea that individuals decide whether a career plan is moving them towards achievement of a career goal and if it is not, new or modified plans need to be taken up.

The exploratory findings have important implications for understanding the career strategies of protean careerists. Specifically, they elucidate how violations of values, goals and plans lead to career reappraisals. This paper provides important insights into reframing career choice and change in terms of image violations.

The paper provides a process map of the mechanisms that contribute to the development of a protean career orientation. Specifically, it focuses on image violations that appear to distinguish protean careerists from the remainder of the interviewees. Thus, the paper links protean careers with image theory as a means of understanding the underlying processes involved in early career decision making.

This research expands the scope of the exploitation/exploration literature which has generally embraced a firm-level perspective by showing the theoretical and practical relevance of this framework for the study of entrepreneurial behaviour from an individual-level perspective. The study exemplifies specific instances where explorative or exploitative aspects of behaviour are likely to be manifested as a response to specific types of shocks that precede and impact the decision to quit and start one’s own business. Different types of shocks or entrepreneurial events displace the individual from the inertia of existing behaviour and pave the way for the consideration of a new set of opportunities; a new set of opportunities where entrepreneurial initiatives are perceived to be both feasible and desirable (exploitation–exploitation). Drawing upon 80 semi-structured and longitudinal interviews with entrepreneurs who quitted their ‘salaried job’ in order to start their own business, the study: (a) provides an inventory of events/shocks found to precipitate the interviewees’ decision to quit, and (b) links the various types of shocks with the prospective explorative and/or exploitative entrepreneurial initiatives. In this respect, the dynamics that underlie the effects of shocks on entrepreneurial behaviour are illustrated, while blurriness and interrelatedness of exploitative and explorative aspects of entrepreneurial behaviour are exemplified. Such a detailed list of shocks may serve as reference tool for both prospective entrepreneurs who wish to make an entrepreneurial shift in their career, as well as managers who wish to be proactive in avoiding or encouraging entrepreneurial employee turnover.

The study explores career shocks in the Indian context and examines their impact on the career development of people with MBAs.

In-depth, semi-structured interviews with 41 Indian MBA graduates were thematically analysed to identify career shocks that resulted in different types of transitions. Eight themes were identified based on ongoing and iterative comparison of these instances.

Outcomes relating to competitive examinations that determined entry into various occupations were the first career shock experienced by participants. Geographical considerations were salient in the deliberations involving events relating to marriage, eldercare and spouse relocation. Events at the workplace that signalled uncertainty, a fall-out with one's boss or a request to relocate, prompted participants to switch employers. Some of the observed differences were gender based. While female MBA graduates adapted to handle both spousal and parental responsibilities, male MBA graduates did the same to shoulder eldercare responsibilities.

The study's retrospective design could have led to concerns regarding memory recall. The use of open-ended questions partially mitigated this, by giving participants the freedom to recount their experiences, to the extent that they could remember.

Organisations in India could customise and strengthen policies to support employees who have maternity and eldercare responsibilities. Managers should make greater efforts to have open communication with their subordinates to overcome the challenges of operating in a culture with high power distance and indirect communication styles.

This study explored different types of career shocks and associated transitions. The Indian context, with its growing economy, large population, collectivistic culture and strong influence of family on careers, enabled a deeper examination of novel career shocks. The study also highlighted the dissimilar impact of career shocks for men and women and people at different career stages.