Search results

The objective of this study is to investigate the role of emotional intelligence and empowering leadership in enhancing psychological empowerment and work engagement in private hospitals.

A total of 500 questionnaires were distributed to staff nurses at five private hospitals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 100 questionnaires to each hospital, with an achieved response rate of 34.8%.

The results show statistically significant positive relationships between emotional intelligence, empowering leadership, psychological empowerment and work engagement. The relationship between emotional intelligence and work engagement and psychological empowerment and work engagement were not significant.

The study found that employees who have a high level of emotional intelligence and the positive stimulus of empowering leadership demonstrate enhanced psychological empowerment and work engagement.

A better understanding of the role of EI and EL in enhancing psychological empowerment and work engagement could help hospitals reduce turnover among nurses and improve their relationships with patients, as well as maintaining competitive advantage.

The study provides evidence to support the effect of EI on empowering leadership, psychological empowerment and work engagement in private hospitals.

This study aims to investigate to role of empowering leadership and psychological empowerment on nurses' work engagement and affective commitment.

Self-administered questionnaire data from 231 nurses working in a university hospital in Saudi Arabia were analysed using a cross-sectional research design using structural equation modelling (SEM) to assess the relationship between empowering leadership (EL), affective commitment (AC) and work engagement (WE) while testing for the mediating role of psychological empowerment (PE).

SEM analysis demonstrated that EL significantly relates to AC. AC similarly significantly relates to WE. Further, the results showed that PE substantially mediates the relationship between EL and WE. There is no significant direct relationship found between EL and WE.

The study findings are essential for nursing managers. They illustrate that nurses become more committed to their organisation and, in return, more engaged with their work when they receive EL. Therefore, nursing managers could train their leaders to practice EL as increased WE has been found to result in other positive work attitudes such as reduced turnover intention.

This study corroborates the relationships between EL, AC and WE, as well as the mediating role of PE. However, this research is unique as the long-established relationship between EL and WE was not supported. It shows that the propositions of leader-member exchange theory may not hold for unique non-Western contexts, in this case, Saudi Arabia.

A conference on this theme was organised at the Cardiff Business School, 14–15th September, 1988 and a selection of abstracts of papers presented has been compiled.

Existing research on the relationship between human resources management (HRM) and worker reactions to practices rarely explore differences between occupational classes and their receptiveness to HRM initiatives. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Using data from a single case organization, the authors examine whether HRM practices apply uniformly across distinct occupational groups, and if there are differing impacts by occupational class on commitment, motivation and satisfaction.

Using occupational identity, the results indicate that different groups of employees have varied perceptions of, and reactions to, the same HRM practices.

The paper adds that human resource practice application may have a tipping point, after which distinct employee groups require different HR architectural configurations.

HRM policy and practice may be better tailored to the different specific needs of diverse occupational groups of workers.

The paper argues that existing theory and practice advocating universal or high potential HRM as a route to positive employee outcomes are potentially flawed.

This paper traces the relationship between technological changes and work organisation in coal mining and examines the present drive towards flexible working in British Coal.

In 1972, the NUM defeated Edward Heath's public‐sector incomes policy, and two years later contributed to his Government's downfall. The miners' militancy, which exploited the bargaining opportunity created by the return to industry‐wide pay determination and the oil shock of 1973, led to the tripartite agreement Plan for Coal, which appeared to guarantee a future for Britain's coal industry after 17 years of decline. From the return of the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher in 1979, however, the industry experienced further decline, which accelerated after the defeat of the 1984–85 strike. The demise of the coal industry has inevitably been accompanied by a dramatic reduction in the Union's bargaining power, but the campaign against the colliery closures announced in October 1992 suggests that an obituary for the former ‘vanguard of the labour movement’ would be premature.

The clothing industries, in common with a number of other sectors of UK manufacturing, have faced intense international competition as clothing production has expanded in less‐developed countries. In the UK, as in the USA, import penetration and fashion trends over the past two decades have stimulated a complex restructuring of clothing (Taplin and Winterton, 1990).

High-involvement work processes (HIWPs) are associated with high levels of employee influence over the work process, such as high levels of control over how to handle individual job tasks or a high level of involvement at team or workplace level in designing work procedures. When implementations of HIWPs are accompanied by companion investments in human capital – for example, in better information and training, higher pay and stronger employee voice – it is appropriate to talk not only of HIWPs but of “high-involvement work systems” (HIWSs). This chapter reviews the theory and practice of HIWPs and HIWSs. Across a range of academic perspectives and societies, it has regularly been argued that steps to enhance employee involvement in decision-making create better opportunities to perform, better utilization of skill and human potential, and better employee motivation, leading, in turn, to various improvements in organizational and employee outcomes.

However, there are also costs to increased employee involvement and the authors review the important economic and sociopolitical contingencies that help to explain the incidence or distribution of HIWPs and HIWSs. The authors also review the research on the outcomes of higher employee involvement for firms and workers, discuss the quality of the research methods used, and consider the tensions with which the model is associated. This chapter concludes with an outline of the research agenda, envisaging an ongoing role for both quantitative and qualitative studies. Without ignoring the difficulties involved, the authors argue, from the societal perspective, that the high-involvement pathway should be considered one of the most important vectors available to improve the quality of work and employee well-being.

An outline of research into temporal and industrial patterns of post‐war strike activity in Britain.

New technologies of coal production have improved machine reliability but increased technical complexity. More man shifts are now devoted to maintenance than to coalface production, so maintainability is crucial. The reorganisation of craft work, to increase labour flexibility and reduce workers′ autonomy, reveals a fundamental conflict between the production objectives of the new systems and human factors. The full productive potential of computerised systems is not being realised because of random breakdowns. The new technology has been designed to circumvent the skills and knowledge of the workforce, but its success depends on harnessing these skills. A system designed to enhance maintenance workers′ skills would avoid these contradictions, raise productivity and improve the working environment.