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1 – 10 of over 2000Does staffing contribute to organizational effectiveness and sustained competitive advantage, or are many of staffing’s implications merely cross-level fallacies? This article…
Abstract
Does staffing contribute to organizational effectiveness and sustained competitive advantage, or are many of staffing’s implications merely cross-level fallacies? This article provides a critical examination of staffing research and practice, and proposes a multilevel model of staffing that ties together micro (e.g. personnel selection), meso (e.g. team staffing), and macro (e.g. organizational strategy, Human Resources practices) theory, research, and practice. The model is both integrative and prescriptive, providing a basic organizing structure for examining staffing research within and across levels. The article begins with a review of multilevel theory, followed by a review and critique of the dominant staffing paradigms from a multilevel perspective. It is shown these single level paradigms cannot answer many of the primary questions of interest to staffing specialists. In contrast, the multilevel staffing model not only addresses these limitations, but also prompts a variety of new predictions that oftentimes run counter to prevailing wisdom. Staffing specialists are challenged to show how our science and practice contribute to better functioning organizations.
Fuli Li, Xin Lai and Kwok Leung
Purpose – This chapter provides an overview of multilevel modeling with a focus on the application of hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) in international management…
Abstract
Purpose – This chapter provides an overview of multilevel modeling with a focus on the application of hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) in international management research.
Findings – The key topics covered include an introduction to hierarchical linear models, how to apply appropriate hierarchical linear models to address different types of international management research questions, and six methodological issues concerning international management research with a multilevel analysis.
Originality/value – The overview of HLM and its relevance for international management research facilitates researchers to apply this powerful analytical strategy in their future research.
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Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which explains how individual organisms can become exquisitely adapted to their environments, does not explain the evolution of adaptive…
Abstract
Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which explains how individual organisms can become exquisitely adapted to their environments, does not explain the evolution of adaptive societies with equal ease. To understand the nature of the problem, imagine a mutant individual who behaves in a way that increases the survival of everyone in her society, including herself, to an equal degree. Such a “no-cost public good” might not appear very feasible (and will soon be amended), but is useful for illustrative purposes. By increasing the fitness of everyone, the mutant trait will not increase in frequency within the society (other than by drift, which can equally cause a decrease in frequency). This example illustrates the elementary fact that natural selection is based on relative fitness. It’s not enough for a mutant trait to increase its own survival and reproduction; it must do so more than alternative traits in the population. The relative nature of fitness makes the evolutionary forces within a population insensitive to the welfare of the population as a whole.
Caitlin E. McClurg, Jaimie L. Chen, Alexandra Petruzzelli and Amanda L. Thayer
This chapter reviews the challenges associated with measuring and studying cohesion over time and provides guidance for addressing these issues in future research.
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter reviews the challenges associated with measuring and studying cohesion over time and provides guidance for addressing these issues in future research.
Methodology/approach
We reviewed the team cohesion and team development literatures, including definitions and conceptualizations of cohesion as well as the seminal team development taxonomies. We then integrated these literatures to identify the challenges and potential solutions for studying team cohesion as a dynamic construct.
Findings
We identified five key challenges – theoretical and practical in nature – that researchers and organizations often face in capturing and studying team cohesion emergence: problems with self-report measures; measuring multiple dimensions of cohesion at appropriate times; failure to combine multilevel and temporal frameworks; and tracking of team and organizational events. In response, we provide actions that researchers can take in addressing these challenges: using indirect/unobtrusive measures; using social network analysis; studying “swift cohesion”; adopting an event system theory framework; and applying agent-based modeling.
Research implications
This comprehensive chapter provides recommendations for studying team cohesion as a dynamic, emergent process rather than as a static state. We discuss the challenges pertaining to study design and measurement when capturing team cohesion emergence, and provide theoretical and practical ideas to guide researchers in overcoming these issues in future research.
Practical implications
This chapter suggests tools and data collection techniques that organizations and practitioners can use for measuring and improving team cohesion, such as using unobtrusive measures and timing measurement according to team and organizational events.
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Multilevel approaches are generally well suited to group communication because what people say and do in groups is a function of intra- and trans-individual mechanisms. This…
Abstract
Multilevel approaches are generally well suited to group communication because what people say and do in groups is a function of intra- and trans-individual mechanisms. This chapter first provides a brief overview of group research as a multilevel problem and then describes more modern approaches to modeling nested data using latent variable models, including multilevel structural equation modeling and latent class analysis. The chapter concludes by addressing conceptual opportunities provided by multilevel latent modeling approaches to group communication.
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This study proposes a multilevel framework to test the mechanisms and boundary conditions of the relationships between positive group affective tone (PGAT) and individual/team…
Abstract
Purpose
This study proposes a multilevel framework to test the mechanisms and boundary conditions of the relationships between positive group affective tone (PGAT) and individual/team creativity.
Design/Methodology/Approach
Data are collected from 122 research and development (R&D) teams (including 305 members and 122 team leaders). Hierarchical linear modeling analyses and hierarchical regression analyses are performed to test hypotheses.
Findings
The results show that PGAT facilitates individual creativity via enhanced work engagement, and increases team creativity via team information exchange. Supporting the substituting perspective, we found that the positive indirect effects of PGAT on individual/team creativity were attenuated when supervisory support is high.
Research Limitations/Implications
Although all variables were collected at the same time and the individual-level variables were collected from the same source, our findings highlight the mechanisms explaining the beneficial effects of PGAT on individual/team creativity, and how supervisory support can substitute for such effects.
Practical Implications
In order to make the individuals and teams more creative, the organizations need to promote PGAT via the selection of appropriated leader and members or team social events. Moreover, supervisors support is particularly salient in enhancing team creativity when PGAT is low.
Originality/Value
This study is the one of the first study to test the motivational/social mechanisms linking the relationship between PGAT and individual/team creativity, and the competing theoretical perspectives regarding how supervisory support can moderate the PGAT–creativity linkage.
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Silvia Massini and Arie Y. Lewin
Purpose – To discuss how coevolutionary framework is useful to research emerging and evolving phenomena, such as global sourcing of business services, where West meets…
Abstract
Purpose – To discuss how coevolutionary framework is useful to research emerging and evolving phenomena, such as global sourcing of business services, where West meets East.
Approach – The authors first introduce the phenomenon of global sourcing of business services and then review extant literature on coevolutionary research.
Findings – The authors discuss how global sourcing is a coevolutionary and multilevel phenomenon, which can be better understood by identifying micro and macro factors (task, firm, industry, and country), demand and supply (clients and service providers), technological and institutional factors (Information and Communication Technology (ICT), digitization, demographic trends, national and regional policies).
Research implications – The authors identify the main mechanisms, research questions, and methodological issues that underlie coevolutionary analysis.
Originality/Value – The main contribution of this chapter is twofold: provide a deeper and more nuanced understanding of global sourcing of business services, and assert that in coevolutionary research the role of mechanisms affecting a phenomenon may change over time.
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Deborah E. Rupp and E. Layne Paddock
Purpose – We outline a theoretical model of the emergence of justice climate in groups, teams, and organizations, and in doing so integrate multiple justice perspectives (e.g.…
Abstract
Purpose – We outline a theoretical model of the emergence of justice climate in groups, teams, and organizations, and in doing so integrate multiple justice perspectives (e.g., affective events, fairness heuristic, deonance, justice integration, multifoci justice, overall justice).
Approach – In this theoretical paper, we propose that justice climate is spawned at the level of the event; individuals experience discrete events and then use their emotional reactions related to these events as information in forming fairness judgments. Cognitive processes explicated in justice integration theory, fairness heuristic theory, and fairness theory also play a role. Over time, these judgments about various perpetrators – which may include the evaluation of outcomes, procedures, information, and interpersonal treatment – are aggregated to form individual-level, stable judgments regarding the fairness of exchange partners with whom employees interact (e.g., supervisors, coworkers, and customers). Through socialization and social-information processing, and influenced by organizational structure and social networks, these individual multifoci justice perceptions merge to form multifoci justice climate, which over time lead to the formation of shared cognitions of overall justice climate.
Value – The chapter proposes a temporal model of how discrete events at the individual level merge to form individuals’ multifoci justice perceptions, shared multifoci justice climate, and ultimately overall justice climate. The chapter offers multiple propositions and concludes with recommendations for empirically testing the model.
The contrast of multilevel and comparative research may seem counterintuitive at first. After all, one might argue that comparative research on organizations by necessity spans…
Abstract
The contrast of multilevel and comparative research may seem counterintuitive at first. After all, one might argue that comparative research on organizations by necessity spans several levels of analysis (Rokkan, 1966). Yet, multilevel and comparative research on organizations present rather distinct traditions in organization studies, each with its own epistemological assumptions and associated methods. Accordingly, an approach that aims to incorporate both multilevel and comparative ideas needs to start with taking inventory of these prior literatures to situate itself. In the following, we thus turn to the literatures on multilevel and comparative research as different traditions with surprisingly little overlap.