Search results

The predominant method by which workers in a business organization get compensated for their labour is that they earn a wage which has been guaranteed to them through an employment contract. By contrast, the earnings of the company (the firm, the owner) remains risky, since they earn the residual after making all the contractual payments to the different factors of production. The residual is a random variable because of production and market uncertainty, and the firm absorbs this risk while insuring the income risk of the workers. A modification of this payment scheme occurs when the earnings of the workers are made contingent upon either their productivity, or the profit of the company. A prominent example is the piece‐rate payment system in which the earnings of a labourer are directly related to the amount of output he or she produces. Profit sharing is another example of variable wage; in this system the workers are paid a share of the firm's profit.

This paper reports the results of two studies that examined the impact of framing negotiations in affective terms. Pursuant to the recommendations made by Clyman and Tripp (2000) for reducing risks associated with discrepant values, the objective of the first study was to determine the optimal way of representing potential outcomes in affective terms in a negotiation payoff table. Results demonstrated the superiority of happy and unhappy face icons over other representations; it also revealed a slight advantage to varying the quantity of icons, rather than size, to reflect differences in the relative values of these outcomes. In the second study, the focus was on determining to what extent, if any, framing negotiations in affective terms would differentially affect negotiators' thoughts and feelings prior to engaging in a two‐party negotiation. Results indicated that when negotiations are affectively framed, negotiators report higher levels of negotiation involvement and positive emotion and lower levels of trust, as well as a decreased likelihood of employing cooperative negotiation tactics. The implications of the findings for future research are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to address the question of what motivates leaders to engage in effective leadership behaviours by integrating transformational leadership theory and self-determination theory. The authors propose that the type of enacted leadership behaviour is related to level of self-determined motivation.

This study presents validity evidence for an 18-item scale of motivation for transformational leadership based on Gagné and Deci’s (2005) six levels of internalization. A total of 310 employees (mean age=39, 64.5 per cent female, 46 per cent formal leaders) completed the scale, other measures of leadership, and job satisfaction.

Results supported the theorized six-factor structure of the scale and provided evidence for incremental validity in the prediction of job satisfaction and transformational leadership above and beyond another measure of motivation to lead.

The lack of amotivation and the presence of autonomously controlled extrinsic motivation are predictive of effective leadership behaviour, a key finding with implications for leadership selection. The study was limited by the use of self-report data. Future studies should examine additional predictors and outcomes of the construct (e.g. subordinate attitudes or performance and leader personality), and whether it is stable over time.

Leaders’ motivation for role effectiveness is an unexplored area of research. This study suggests that type of motivation can be important for effective leadership and provides a validated scale for use in future leadership research and selection.

Employee empowerment is commonly a fundamental part of the prescriptions offered to improve business performance. However, business process improvement and many other organisational development and change initiatives tend to encapsulate the values of the societies and organisations in which they were developed – and such values are not universal. The case of a business process re‐engineering project in Hong Kong illustrates an attempt to empower team members that paradoxically resulted in their psychological enslavement. The roles of cultural differences and reward systems in producing unintended consequences are analysed while the implications of the case for both research and practice are considered.

THIS number will appear at the beginning of the Leeds Conference. Although there is no evidence that the attendance will surpass the record attendance registered at the Birmingham Conference, there is every reason to believe that the attendance at Leeds will be very large. The year is one of importance in the history of the city, for it has marked the 300th anniversary of its charter. We hope that some of the festival spirit will survive into the week of the Conference. As a contributor has suggested on another page, we hope that all librarians who attend will do so with the determination to make the Conference one of the friendliest possible character. It has occasionally been pointed out that as the Association grows older it is liable to become more stilted and formal; that institutions and people become standardized and less dynamic. This, if it were true, would be a great pity.

The role of budgets in organisations has received much attention from accounting theorists over the 20 years since Stedry's experiments on budget‐setting. In that time there has been a difference of emphasis between theorists in the United States, who have concentrated on the relation of the budget to the individual, and the European theorists, who have been more concerned with organisational aspects of budgets (Cooper, 1981). Individual and organisational aspects are not, of course, completely different: there is a considerable mutual influence between them. Nevertheless, the tradition is somewhat different, and the related discipline has in the USA tended to be psychology, whereas Europeans have tended to turn more to systems approaches to the sociology of organisations.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a re‐scripting of how it should educate students in light of a changing environment.

This paper shares a conceptual framework and provide examples from the service learning (SL) courses and data from students (from course‐based reflection and evaluation) to support the framework and recommendations.

Through the experiences, SL to transform students' learning and ability to adapt to the changing, global marketplace has been found.

The paper hopes that faculty and educational institutions will consider the outcomes and recommendations to challenge traditional modes of educating and utilize SL as one means for building competencies that facilitate personal and professional success in the current environment.

The paper challenges the prevailing wisdom about the role of curricula to focus primarily on knowledge and skills. The context of the unscripted future can quickly render knowledge and skill sets obsolete. Due to this age of uncertainty, it argues that curricula be built around capabilities (adaptability, behaving morally, cultural sensitivity) that enable students/future employees to adapt to a changing, global marketplace to leverage the knowledge base, and that SL be utilized as a meaningful pedagogical approach to instill this capability.

Film provides an alternative medium for assessing our interpretations of cultural icons. This selective list looks at the film and video sources for information on and interpretations of the life of Woody Guthrie.

This paper proposes a framework for understanding the concept of a learning organization from a normative perspective. A questionnaire was developed to operationally measure the described management practice attributes of a learning organization. Using a sample of four organizations and 612 subjects, support was found for three a priori predictive hypotheses derived from a conceptual framework. Implications of the results and further empirical research are discussed, especially for linking learning organization attributes to performance using larger samples and multiple measures.

Traditional multinational team (MNT) research has concentrated on negative phenomena such as in-group/out-group distinctions, social loafing, and pressures for convergence. In contrast, we examine instances where MNT members exhibit cross-national inclusive behavior, cross-national responsiveness, and cross-national divergence of ideas, which in turn result in positive outcomes such as cohesion, trust, and innovation. Furthermore, we identify important catalyzing mechanisms that effectively encourage these functional behaviors. For example, we highlight the importance of social categorization based on common group membership, social comparisons to referent others outside the team from other nations, and suspension of attributions based on national stereotypes – all of which will help turn the tide of the current research on MNTs.