Search results

The purpose of this paper is to address a missing link between top management and employees when it comes to understanding how to successfully implement and embed workplace health promotion (WHP) as a strategy within organizations: the role of the middle managers.

A conceptual framework based on review of theory is applied within an empirical multi-case study that is part of a health intervention research project on increased physical activity among office workers. The study involves six Danish organizations.

Middle managers play a key role in successful implementation of WHP, but feel uncertain about their role, especially when it comes to engaging with their employees. Uncertainty about their role appears to make middle managers reluctant to take action on WHP and leave further action to top management instead.

Limitations included the middle managers’ low attendance at the half-day seminar on strategic health (50 percent attendance), the fact that they were all office workers and they were all from Denmark.

Middle managers ask for more knowledge and skills if they are to work with WHP in daily business.

Implementing and embedding WHP as a health strategy raises ethical issues of interfering with employees’ health, is seen as the employee’s personal responsibility.

This study adds to knowledge of the difficulties of implementing and embedding WHP activities in the workplace and suggests an explicit and detailed research design.

The purpose of this study is to describe primary health-care managers’ perceptions of management competencies at different management levels in digital health services using the management competency assessment program as a framework.

A secondary analysis study involving 21 semi-structured individual interviews was conducted among Finnish primary health-care managers at different management levels (frontline, middle and senior). The deductive framework method was used to analyze the data.

Similarities and differences were found in management competencies between different levels of management. Competencies related to the use of digitalization were highlighted by managers at all management levels. Managers at all management levels were involved in developing digital solutions and supporting employees in using digital solutions in their work. Frontline and middle managers emphasized more issues related to day-to-day management and communication with employees, whereas senior managers highlighted the management of large entities.

In the secondary analysis, data were used for purposes other than originally intended. Therefore, the data are subject to limitations of the methodology applied and should be transferred to other contexts with caution.

Identifying the management competencies needed to manage digital health services is important to target managers’ training according to needs in the future.

The results could be used to develop the management of digital health services, as well as improve digital health services and their deployment.

Previous literature mostly examined managers’ informatics competencies and paid little attention to other management competencies. This study discusses more broadly the management competencies that digital health services require from managers at different levels of management.

This study examines whether managerial capability fit between line managers, middle managers and top-level managers enhances effectiveness.

Effectiveness data and managerial capability ratings from more than 1,600 manager–supervisor dyads were collected in the United States and Germany. Polynomial regression was used to study the relation between manager–supervisor fit and managerial effectiveness.

Our results indicate that the fit of managerial capabilities between a manager and his/her supervisor predicts the effectiveness of this manager. The most effective managers show particularly high managerial capabilities that are in line with predominantly high managerial capabilities of their supervisors. Two aspects are important: the manager–supervisor fit and the absolute capability level that both possess. The results further indicate that the importance of the manager–supervisor fit varies across lower, middle and top-level management dyads.

This study contributes by advancing research on managerial capability fit conditions between managers and their supervisors as a central element in viewing and managing effectiveness.

This article informs managers, supervisors and HR professionals about pitfalls in organizations that degrade effectiveness.

This article shows how the alignment between managers and their supervisors relates to effectiveness in a large-scale study across different hierarchical levels.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the perceived effects between soft management practices, employee behaviours and the implementation of digital technologies in manufacturing plants, as well as how these relate to the emergence of digital waste.

This paper uses case-based research. Data was collected in two large manufacturing companies based in Norway and Sweden through semi-structured interviews with two management representatives and four shop-floor employees. The data was used to evaluate 29 variables describing lean- and total quality management (TQM)-associated employee behaviours and soft management practices, in light of digital transformation.

The results suggest that several variables were positively influenced by the digital transformation process. These were top management leadership, middle management involvement, employee education, corporate social responsibility focus, innovation, knowledge sharing, work-family balance, psychological capital, job satisfaction and career commitment. Training employees, creativity, discretionary effort, turnover intention and proactivity appear to be negatively influenced by digital transformation The findings also indicate that several soft management practices and employee behaviours were not only influenced by manufacturing digitalization but also themselves influenced the process. The potential for digital waste creation was also detected in several variables, including reward and recognition and training employees.

Managers, practitioners and academics may learn about the importance of certain managerial practices and employees’ behavioural needs during the digital transformation process. The findings may help in prioritizing TQM and soft lean management practices and certain employee behaviours during the digital transformation and in creating awareness of digital waste.

This study builds on several existing studies discussing the impact of digital transformation on soft management practices and employee behaviours. It provides insights from a lean and TQM angle and offers a means of prioritizing certain practices and behaviours during a digital transformation. This study also highlights the significance of digital waste.

Due to the “European Union Framework Directive on Safety and Health at work” (Directive 89/391/EEC, 1989), every employer is obliged to avoid psychosocial hazards when designing work. Little is known empirically about the barriers that workplace actors experience while developing and implementing OSH measures that prevent psychosocial hazards. The purpose of this paper is to explore barriers, causes and attempts to overcome them and discusses them with reference to relevant theoretical concepts and models that help to explain how these barriers hinder the development and implementation of OSH measures.

Semi-structured interviews with workplace actors in charge of psychosocial risk assessment (PRA) were conducted in 41 business cases, and transcripts were analysed using a thematic analysis approach. Barriers, causes and attempts to overcome them were extracted inductively and discussed with reference to relevant theories and explanatory models.

The complex nature of psychosocial risks, hindering general beliefs, lack of a perceived scope for risk avoidance, lack of assumptions of responsibility among players on all hierarchical levels, discrepancies between formal responsibility and decision authority, and low reflexivity on processes of development and implementation of interventions were described as barriers. Causes and attempts to overcome these barriers were reflected upon by workplace actors.

Recommendations on the organisation of PRA will be given with respect to the reported results and relevant research in this field.

This qualitative study explores the barriers to developing and implementing OSH measures to eliminate psychosocial hazards, from the perspective of actors in charge of PRA, and why they might fail.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the successful implementation of digitalization by exploring what characterizes strategy work undertaken by companies that have achieved digital transformation. Based on empirical data, the authors delineate five essential strategic actions that are prerequisites for digital transformation: discuss and communicate the vision and strategy; align resources and activities with the strategy; ensure a continuous focus on operational improvements and efficiency; create an orientation toward customer or user needs and expectations; and develop the competencies of top managers, middle managers and employees.

Between January 2021 and February 2022, the authors conducted a survey on strategy work in Danish organizations with 2,251 respondents. The respondents encompass top managers, middle managers and employees representing 1,164 organizations.

The authors identify five strategic actions that positively influence whether organizations incorporate digitalization into their strategy work. These strategic actions can support organizations in their strategy work regarding digital transformation and offer valuable insights and inspiration for leaders currently undertaking the journey of digital transformation.

Based on the empirical data, it is not possible to deem one action as more important than another in the context of digital transformation, as each action contributes significantly to facilitating the process. Given the nature of empirical data, the strategic actions reflect correlation rather than causation.

The empirical insights provide valuable practical guidance for leaders in managing digital transformation as a part of strategy work, which is typically discussed in a more conceptual manner. In addition, the authors identify new areas for further in-depth exploration in practice.

Privilege is often silent, invisible and not made explicit, and silence is a key question for theorizing on organizations. This paper examines interrelations between privilege and silence for relatively privileged professionals in high-intensity knowledge businesses (KIBs).

This paper draws on 112 interviews in two rounds of interviews using the collaborative interactive action research method. The analysis focuses on processes of recruitment, careers and negotiation of boundaries between work and nonwork in these KIBs. The authors study how relative privilege within social inequalities connects with silences in multiple ways, and how the invisibility of privilege operates at different levels: individual identities and interpersonal actions of privilege (micro), as organizational level phenomena (meso) or as societally constructed (macro).

At each level, privilege is reproduced in part through silence. The authors also examine how processes connecting silence, privilege and social inequalities operate differently in relation to both disadvantage and the disadvantaged, and privilege and the privileged.

This study is relevant for organization studies, especially in the kinds of “multi-privileged” contexts where inequalities, disadvantages and subordination may remain hidden and silenced, and, thus, are continuously reproduced.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between organizational performance and the pattern of strategic decisions formalized in the planning of a Brazilian heavy construction company between 2006 and 2014. In this period, the company experienced a recurrent pattern of maintaining strategic decisions, despite the systematic decrease in performance and investments in the formal strategic planning (SP) and monitoring of results. The research focus is on strategic inertia and the influence of social determinants on the relationship between performance and the strategic actions negotiated in formal planning.

This is a single-case study. The exploratory-descriptive research comprises data collection on performance and strategic decisions from the period between 2006 and 2014. The analysis was guided through documentary material and data collected from 16 interviews conducted with members of the middle to top management concerning performance, goals, and strategic initiatives. The interviewees’ statements were used to apprehend the interpreted dimension of SP expressed in the meanings attributed to this process. The analysis adopts a sociological base, and strategic inertia is the underlying phenomenon that guides this analysis.

The results show the interactive effect caused by political, cognitive, discursive, and ceremonial mechanisms obstruct the company’s strategic decisions. This case study illustrates that the conditions for the phenomenon of path dependence were created, reinforcing the strategic inertia observed in the maintenance of a reproduced pattern of strategic initiatives and goals, even though the performance was recurrently unsatisfactory. In this case, strategic inertia showed a complex relationship between the interpreted performance and strategic actions negotiated in formal planning, conditioned by mechanisms of trajectory reinforcement that interfered with the conditions for strategic change.

Strategic inertia demonstrates a complex relationship between the interpreted performance and strategic actions negotiated in formal planning, conditioned by mechanisms of trajectory reinforcement that interfere with the conditions for strategic change. Future research on social mechanisms from the perspective of strategy-as-practice could be developed to capture the tacit components, language, power games, and other relevant categories in the social interaction of strategy development at the organizational level. In addition, future research could focus on investigating the extent to which path dependence is contingent, assuming that it is a temporary and, therefore, reversible process.

This work contributes to the view of SP from the social perspective and shows that the relationship between performance and strategy has biases that can compromise performance. The work highlights implications for maintaining strategic initiative patterns, which shape a path whose function is less associated with its effects on performance and more associated with the commitment to instrumental results, due to the social nature of organizations.

This work deals with social mechanisms that influence strategic decisions. Since organizational performance depends on strategic decisions, the social nature of strategic inertia has causal implications to economic and social impact of organizations.

This work argues in favor of the influence of self-reinforcing mechanisms of path dependence in the relationship between performance and strategic decisions. The results extended the predominantly structural approach of path dependence by considering interpretive aspects related to the political, discursive, cognitive, and ceremonial dimensions of strategic inertia.