Search results

There is a growing array of literature that supports various implications of positive organizational psychology on workplace outcomes such as the positive work cultures. However, lack of appropriate measuring instruments is halting the progress in this field. Laid down in this article are the conceptual and empirical perspective regarding a positive group culture, i.e. meaningful group culture (MGC) and elaboration of what MGC is and how to measure it. For this study, the MGC is defined as a culture of humane orientation and explained through five dimensions: ideology infused, caring for employees, pro diversity, helping and employee-centric organization identification. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.

To further elucidate, development and validation of the MGC instrument was carried out in three phases. In the very first phase, content and face validity was assessed by experts. Following it, the second phase construct validity was undertaken through exploratory factor analysis of the results from the use of the instrument on a sample of 540 professionals. To end with, in the third phase, multilevel confirmatory analysis was conducted on an organizational sample of 397 individuals and 106 groups.

The results of the Multilevel Confirmatory Factor Analysis (MCFA) provided further evidence of confirmation that the extraction of five factors was appropriate, and reliability analysis showed the MGC to be both valid and reliable. Consequently, the applications of the tool to Human Resource Development (HRD) professionals are suggested.

To broaden the coverage and enhance generalizability, the study focused on multi-sector convenient based sample.

HRD professionals can use it as a diagnostic tool for deeper exploration into systematic and organizational issues. The use of it can provide a window for addressing the developmental needs within the organizations.

This study is possibly one of the first to develop a psychometrically valid scale to measure higher order measure of a work group culture through multilevel assessment of the model.

There is increasing evidence about the key role that intragroup conflicts have for teams’ performance and its members’ well-being. However, the existing measures in the Spanish-speaking context to address intragroup conflicts suffer from important theoretical and methodological flaws. In response, this study aims to provide a valid and reliable scale to measure intragroup conflicts in organizational settings: the Intragroup Conflict Scale in its 14-item version (ICS-14: Jehn et al., 2008).

In a cross-sectional survey design, the authors analyze the ICS’s internal consistency and reliability, factor solution and external validity by using a multilevel approach in a sample consisting of 588 workers nested in 55 production teams from a Spanish company.

Results indicated that the ICS-14 exhibited good Cronbach’s alpha (0.62-0.95), omega (0.63-0.95) and multilevel alpha coefficient (0.82-0.98). In addition, in line with the theoretical conception of three types of intragroup conflicts, results from a multilevel confirmatory factor analysis revealed that a three multilevel-factor solution presented the best fit to the data. Finally, multilevel analyses also showed that intragroup conflicts are associated to burnout, engagement at work and perceived team’s quality of service, which provided additional support for using the ICS-14 in the Spanish context.

This study offers a reliable and valid measurement of intragroup conflict, considering the whole instrument and its different dimensions, which can be used to develop team strategies and evaluate the effect of specific interventions on conflict.

The authors validate the most recent 14-item version of the ICS-14 by applying a multilevel approach to a group-level construct that overcomes previous methodological flaws.

Based on theory Z of leadership, this research aims to investigate the direct relationship between participative leadership (PL) and creative idea validation (CIV) fostering both radical (RC) and incremental creativity (IC). Additionally, by utilizing attribution theory, it explores the moderating effect of coworkers’ knowledge-sharing behavior (KSB) on both the direct and indirect relationships.

Data were collected through a descriptive approach and convenient sampling from three sources – leaders, subordinates and coworkers – in R&D departments at multi-levels within 97 high-tech firms in China. Data comprised 446 employees (subordinates and coworkers) and 94 leaders, and multilevel path analysis was conducted using Mplus software.

The results indicate that PL exhibits both a direct and indirect positive association with RC and IC through the CIV. Moreover, the relationship is enhanced by coworkers’ high-KSB.

Our study offers implications that managers can leverage to foster employee creativity. Leaders are encouraged to embrace a PL style for collective idea validation. However, to overcome coworkers’ reciprocal behavior, they may facilitate trust and team-building exercises, enabling employees to strengthen relationships and share critical information and knowledge resources for the development and validation.

This study is the first to empirically extend the relationship between PL and CIV, utilizing a multilevel approach to assess its impact on distinctive types of creativity – namely, radical and incremental. Further, it testifies the significance of coworkers’ knowledge as an attribution effect influencing the relationships.

This paper aims to report the development of the multiparty collaborative leadership scale (MCLS) that assesses four dimensions of collaborative leadership that have been defined in the literature regarding the functions of collaborative leadership in intra- and interorganizational settings.

The authors have tested the validity and reliability of the MCLS in a sample of 110 managers and professionals who participated in five multiparty collaboration workshops, each lasting for two days. The authors used multilevel analyses to test the construct, discriminant and predictive validity of the MCLS.

The results generally supported the reliability and validity of the MCLS. The scale has good internal consistency and in terms of validation, the authors show that MCLS negatively predicts the conflictuality and positively predicts the collaborativeness of the leading party as well as trust in the multiparty system and its entitativity.

The MCLS can be used to extend literature on collaborative leadership and generate insights on the antecedents and consequences of effective collaborative leadership in multiparty systems.

Multiparty systems are set to deal with important societal challenges and mediators involved in multiparty issues are asked to settle important international disputes and conflicts. Understanding collaborative leadership in such systems and its role in establishing effective multiparty collaboration is key. The MCLS can be used as a research instrument and as a development tool toward realizing much-needed collaboration.

The authors present a first attempt to develop a short scale to assess collaborative leadership in complex systems in which participating stakeholders lack position power.

The present study aims to revalidate a measurement scale for organizational learning capability in the context of university faculty members. This is a particularly relevant context because it deals with knowledge‐intensive services. Following Chiva et al., organizational learning capability was conceptualized as a second factor construct including five dimensions: experimentation, risk taking, interaction with the external environment, dialogue and participative decision making.

Data were collected from the Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica, a leading university in Costa Rica. The survey was addressed to faculty members. A total of 795 valid questionnaires were obtained. Using confirmatory factor analysis, the construct measurement model was tested and the scale was validated.

The results show the internal consistency and the satisfactory factorial structure of the scale within the context of knowledge‐intensive services.

This validation of organizational learning capability measurement instruments has considered cultural differences (Spain vs Costa Rica), sectorial differences (industrial vs services), and the different educational background distribution of the sample. Another contribution of our study is the consideration of the non‐independence of observations through the complex Mplus method, since the samples in human resource research are affected by multilevel influences.

Internal knowledge transfer is crucial for firms to improve their employees’ abilities and improve their work performance. However, there is still a gap in the knowledge management field regarding whether internal knowledge transfer can leverage employee personality traits and service performance in service-oriented organizations. To address this gap, this study aims to validate a multilevel model of the mediating (i.e. internal knowledge transfer as a mediator) and moderating (i.e. task interdependence as a moderator) mechanisms underlying personality traits and employee service performance.

Multilevel structural equation modeling was applied for model validation using an original data set from 45 team leaders and 333 employees working in Chinese hotels.

Internal knowledge transfer mediated the link between extraversion and employee service performance and the link between openness to experience and employee service performance. Task interdependence played a moderating role that strengthened both the impacts of extraversion and openness to experience on internal knowledge transfer.

Through the use of an original data set, this study advances the knowledge management discipline by investigating the mediating impact of internal knowledge transfer between personality traits and employee service performance and revealing the moderating impact of task interdependence that underlies the links between personality traits and internal knowledge transfer.

This study aims to posit that managerial value would be one of the responsible factors for the difference in corporate social responsibility practice among businesses. It then empirically tested the effect of managerial value, with the moderation of organizational culture, on corporate social responsibility practice.

The authors have devised a “moderated micro-macro model” type of multilevel model, wherein managerial value took the micro (individual level) predictor variable role, stakeholder-based corporate social responsibility practice the macro (organizational level) outcome variable role and organizational culture the macro level moderating variable role. Because they need the attention of inquiry, large manufacturing firms in the Amhara region of Ethiopia, with a sample size of 53, constituted the organizational level units. The recent performance of the firms against corporate social responsibility practice and organizational culture have been judged by 473 randomly chosen employees. Managerial value has been rated by randomly picked managers, numbered 253. Analytically, Croon and van Veldhoven’s multilevel analytical package and Mplus software suited the designed model.

The study has revealed that managerial value, indeed, is a potential positive driver of CSR practice, the two managerial value dimensions demonstrated differential effects on corporate social responsibility practice and only one of the organizational culture dimensions, hierarchical culture, played a moderation role in managerial value – corporate social responsibility practice link.

The model and this empirical test have not been previously verified.

This study aims to investigate organizational learning, represented by the absorptive capacity, as a condition for the firm to learn about marketing data and make more informed decisions. The authors also aimed to understand how the behavior of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) businesses differ in this scenario through a multilevel perspective.

Placing absorptive capacity as a mediator of the relationship between business analytics and rational marketing decisions, the authors analyzed data from 224 Brazilian retail companies using structural equation modeling estimated with partial least squares. To test the cross-level moderation effect, the authors also performed a multilevel analysis in RStudio.

The authors found a partial mediation of the absorptive capacity in the relation between business analytics and rational marketing decisions. The authors also discovered that, in the MSMEs firms’ group, even if smaller companies find it more difficult to use data, those that do may reap more benefits than larger ones. This is due to the influence of size in how firms handle information.

The sample size, despite having shown to be consistent and valid, is considered small for a multilevel study. This suggests that our multilevel results should be viewed as suggestive, rather than conclusive, and subjected to further validation.

Rather than solely positioning business analytics as a tool for decision support, the authors’ analysis highlights the importance for firms to develop the absorptive capacity to enable ongoing acquisition, exploration and management of knowledge.

MSMEs are of economic and social importance to most countries, especially developing ones. This research aimed to improve understanding of how this group of firms could transform knowledge into better decisions. The authors also highlight micro and small firms’ difficulties with the use of marketing data so that they can have more effective practices.

The research contributes to the understanding of organizational mechanisms to absorb and learn from the vast amount of current marketing information. Recognizing the relevance of MSMEs, a preliminary multilevel analysis was also conducted to comprehend differences within this group.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on challenges faced by longitudinal quantitative analyses of school improvement processes and offers a systematic literature review of current papers that use longitudinal analyses. In this context, the authors assessed designs and methods that are used to analyze the relation between school improvement processes and student outcomes. Based on this the authors point out to what extent the papers consider different aspects of the complex nature of school improvement (e.g. multilevel structure, indirect and nonlinear effects, reciprocity). The choice of study designs and methods of analysis substantially determines which aspects of this complexity are taken into account.

The authors searched in four international high-impact journals and in ERIC for articles reporting longitudinal school improvement studies. The database of the review consisted of a total of 428 journal articles. In total, 13 of the 428 papers met the selection criteria and were analyzed in detail.

The analyzed papers use a wide range of designs and methodological approaches. They support the assumption that sophisticated quantitative longitudinal designs and methods can be applied effectively in school improvement research. However, considering the complexity of school improvement is accompanied by high demands on designs and methods. Due to this none of the papers met the standards applied in this review completely.

In particular, further research is needed to consider a long period of observation, reciprocal indirect and nonlinear processes in a multilevel structure. Moreover, research is required for a better and unambiguous theoretical foundation and empirical validation of the number of and intervals between measurement points.

If more consideration is given to the complex nature of school improvement in future studies, the broader knowledge base will allow a better understanding of the dynamic relation of school improvement and student learning. It would thus be possible to make more appropriate recommendations for the support of school improvement practice.

The original contribution of the paper is to show which aspects of the complexity of school improvement processes – and to what extent – are currently addressed in designs and methods of analysis applied in quantitative longitudinal studies that investigate the relation between schools’ capacity to managing change and student outcomes. Additionally the authors aim at deriving need for further research and giving guidelines how designs and methods in further studies can reflect the complexity appropriately. It is highly important to consider all aspects of this complexity to describe and understand the dynamic relation of school improvement processes and student outcomes.

Recent marketing research provides conceptual models to investigate the well-being of collectives, but service system well-being (SSW) remains untested empirically. This research conceptualises and develops a measure for SSW at the micro, meso and macro levels.

Using a series of studies, a multidimensional SSW scale is developed and validated to ensure its generalisability. After the development of preliminary items, Study 1 (N = 435 of service employees) was used to purify items using factor analyses. Study 2 (N = 592 of service employees) used structural equation modelling (SEM) with AMOS and SmartPLS to test the scale's dimensionality, reliability and validity.

The results confirm the validity and reliability of the nine dimensions of SSW. The measure was validated as a third-order micro-, meso- and macro-level construct. The dimensions of existential and transformative well-being contribute to micro-level well-being. The dimensions of social, community and collaborative well-being contribute to meso-level well-being. Government, leadership, strategic and resource well-being drive macro-level well-being. In addition, a nomological network was specified to assess the impact of SSW on service actor life satisfaction and customer orientation.

The study contributes to services literature by theorising SSW as a hierarchical structure and empirically validating the dimensions and micro-meso-macro levels that contribute to SSW.

The SSW scale is a useful diagnostic tool for assessing levels of well-being across different systems and providing insights that can help develop interventions to improve the well-being of collectives.

The research is the first study to theorise the micro, meso and macro levels of service system well-being and operationally validate the SSW construct.