Search results

Drawing insights from Piaget's theory of cognitive development and exploring their applicability to working adults while assessing the role of tenure, as appreciated by multiple studies associated with adaptability and openness, the current study examines the influence of work experience in the relationship between an individual's adaptability and openness to people's ideas in the context of the Indian workplace. The study followed a cross-sectional survey-based design, and data were gathered from 202 junior, middle and senior executives from Indian manufacturing and service organizations. Using PROCESS macro in SPSS, the moderating effect of work experience on the linkage between adaptability to situations and openness to people's ideas was examined. The study results depicted that adaptability to situations is positively associated with a person's openness to people's ideas. Such a result indicates that promoting adaptability among employees could lead to openness in behaviour towards ideas of their colleagues and other people, which may promote team cohesiveness and learning in the long run. Also, the work experience of employees was found to be moderating the relation between adaptability and openness such that the increasing years of work experience tend to enhance the positive relationship between adaptability and openness. These results suggest that as the work experience increases, the positive association between adaptability and tendency to be open towards people's ideas strengthens. Further, the implications for the domains of research and practice, limitations of the study and directions for future studies have been discussed.

The literature on individual differences in innovative work behavior (IWB) reveals inconsistencies in the relations of personality traits and tenure on innovation at work. To provide greater clarity about the effects of these antecedents, the purpose of this paper is to report a study of the moderating effects of tenure on the associations of traits and IWB, and apply a theoretical lens based on the trait-activation theory.

In all, 146 employees of a UK-based financial institution completed measures of conscientiousness and openness, and had three aspects of IWB (idea generation, promotion, and realization) rated by their line-supervisor. All participants were on graduate training programs. Hierarchical regression analyses were used to test the moderating effects of tenure on the associations of the self-reported traits with the supervisor-rated IWB outcomes.

Tenure moderated the effects of conscientiousness on IWB, with highly conscientious employees being less innovative with longer tenure. Tenure moderated the effect of openness with idea generation with highly open employees generating more ideas if they were longer tenured.

Management of innovation requires differentiated strategies based on the personality traits and tenure of individual employees. Implications for recruitment, socialization and development are discussed.

This is the first study to examine empirically the interactions of traits and contextual factors (i.e. organizational tenure) on IWB, framed around a strong theoretical foundation (i.e. trait activation theory). The study also makes notable contributions by measuring innovative behavior using a supervisor-rated and multidimensional approach.

Students of organizations are beginning to recognize the importance of continuous learning in organizations, but to date the concept is not well understood, particularly in terms of how the learning of individuals is related to the learning that takes place in groups, which is related to the learning that occurs in organizations (and all other combinations). To further our understanding, we offer the idea of continuous learning in organizations from a living system's perspective. We view individuals, groups, and organizations as living systems nested in a hierarchy. We propose that living systems can learn in three ways: they can adapt, they can generate, and they can transform. Learning triggers from the environment spark learning, and this relationship is moderated by the system's readiness to learn. Readiness to learn is a function of the permeability of the system's boundaries, the system's stage of development, and the system's meta-systems perspective. Additional research questions are presented to explore learning flow between levels and to determine how the match between one system's pressure for change and another system's readiness to learn affects the emergence of adaptive, generative, and transformative learning. In addition, research questions are offered as a means to test these ideas and build grounded theory. Finally, using this model, the chapter presents three case studies and suggests diagnostic questions to analyze and facilitate continuous learning from a multi-level perspective.

The purpose of this study is to explore the potential positive effects of the design of a physical organisational environment on the emergence of an organisational culture conducive to organisational creativity.

The study is based on an in-depth, longitudinal case study, the aim being to enhance understanding of how a change in physical space, including location, spatial organisation and architectonic details, supports cultural change.

It is suggested that physical space plays an implicit yet significant role in the emergence of a culture conducive to organisational creativity. It appears from the case analysis that there are three aspects of culture in particular, equality, openness and collectivity, that may be positively affected by the design of an organisation’s physical environment.

The careful choice, planning and design of an organisation’s physical location, layout and style can advance the appearance of an organisational culture conducive to creativity.

The paper describes a longitudinal study comparing a case organisation before and after a change in its physical environment. The longitudinal data illustrates how a change in the spatial environment contributes to the emergence of a culture conducive to organisational creativity.

The purpose of this paper is to examine knowledge-creating interaction in developing an innovation in a multidisciplinary research community with hermeneutic phenomenology, to understand how previous experiences and future prospects shape the process and to examine the circumstances, which support or limit knowledge creation.

The approach of this study is phenomenological and the empirical case study has been conducted using ethnography. The data consist of field notes, videos, interviews and documents of a BCDC energy consortium, developing energy weather forecast (EWF) in a new type of research environment.

The results indicate that the role of actual interactive events was crucial in the development of EWF. Hermeneutic approach illustrated that the roots of that event were in the past experiences of the participants and the circumstances, which promoted the development of the innovation, but the acknowledgment of the future prospects was crucial in finalizing the process. The role of a leader organizing the interaction and collaborative work was also substantial.

The results of this study could be used to plan and organize knowledge creation processes in organizations, especially in universities and research communities, striving to create multidisciplinary research environments and practices.

This study proposes a new approach based on hermeneutic phenomenology to examine it in a unified way, by focusing on the key aspects of elements affecting knowledge-creating interaction.

Most of the managers I meet (and I reckon to have met a few thousand over the last ten years) are dissatisfied with their lot. Many have an ambition to “retire at forty‐five” (or thirty‐five, depending on their age); a perceptible minority “drop out”, watched more or less wistfully by many of their colleagues; most of all, they tell you they want to do their own thing, to work for themselves.

The joint influence of personality traits, age and gender on environmental citizenship behavior (ECB) is relatively unknown among youth. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the independent and joint influence of the Big Five traits, age and gender on the three dimensions of ECB of students in a Nigerian university community.

A quantitative cross-sectional survey was adopted to collect data from 290 students in a Nigerian university.

The findings show that personality traits of openness and agreeableness were more related with eco-initiatives and eco-helping. Likewise, traits of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion and agreeableness were more associated with eco-civic engagement. Age was also consistently associated with the three dimensions. The Big Five traits, age and gender also have joint influence on the dimensions of ECB.

This is a self-reported survey, which limits the ability to draw any firm conclusions regarding the causal relationship between the study variables. Future research needs to consider other methods suitable for establishing causal relationship.

The findings imply that knowing the associations of personality traits, age and gender with environmental actions can help organizers of environmental initiatives to target their recruitment messages toward youth who might be pre-disposed to taking environmental actions, and also consider alternative actions that might appeal to their counterparts.

The originality of this paper lies in combining personality traits, age and gender to gain a better understanding of the three dimensions of ECB in a student sample against monolithic approach of authors of previous studies.

Current marketing theory and practice have recognized that exchanges between buyers and sellers are frequently embedded in social relationships. Despite the vast body of research on interorganizational exchange, there has been little effort to address the role of larger social networks in which business‐to‐business services firms operate. This paper seeks to present a model of how social network theory can help in understanding why some services firms manage to reinvent themselves and continue to succeed in a business‐to‐business environment, while others are slow to change and decline.

Drawing on 81 in‐depth interviews conducted with general managers/chief executive officers operating in information technology, and biotechnology business‐to‐business services contexts, we consider the relative importance of both network strength and network openness in driving business performance.

The authors identify both network strength between firms and openness towards new actors as underpinning competitive advantage in business‐to‐business services.

Data were collected for service firms operating in two different industries in two regions. The paper underscores the importance of examining the network properties that connect exchange partners when discussing firm performance in business‐to‐business service contexts.

The paper makes a series of important contributions to the small, but growing literature on services networks and has direct implications for managers.

The relationship between corporate culture and inbound open innovation (OI) has been limited to two sub-constructs: a culture for openness and an innovation culture, but until now a richer conceptualization of corporate culture is missing.

The authors apply Quinn and Rohrbaugh's (1983) competing values framework and regress these together with company internal and external control variables on five measures of inbound OI, reflecting product innovation, process innovation and the sourcing of innovation activities. The authors use data from a survey of more than 250 Swiss companies, primarily SMEs.

The importance of the firms' market environments suggests that the results are affected by the specific situation in which the firms found themselves at the time of the survey: after a strong currency shock, inbound OI activities seem to be a reaction to external pressure that favored planning and rule-oriented (formal) cultures to implement cost-cutting process innovations.

Companies should develop a vision and a strategy, ensure open and transparent communication, have suitable reward and support mechanisms in place, adjust structures and processes, and institutionalize and formalize any change whenever they are confronted with a situation that requires a quick reaction and an adjustment to their degree of openness.

The paper clarifies the relationship between cultural traits and inbound OI, using a well-established understanding of corporate culture and differentiating between innovation types. It points to the importance of the external environment in order to understand the role of culture.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the fit between innovativeness and lean practices (LPs) can affect triple bottom line (TBL) performance. Two types of fit are tested: fit-as-mediation in which innovativeness creates TBL performance through the mediation of LPs and fit-as-moderation whereby the effects of innovativeness on TBL performance are moderated by LPs.

Structural equation modelling and moderated regression are used to test the fit-as-mediation and fit-as-moderation models using survey data collected from 241 manufacturers in China.

The results show that innovativeness is positively associated with LPs that emphasize operational excellence. Innovativeness indirectly affects all three TBL dimensions through the mediation of LPs, and LPs do not moderate the effects of innovativeness. The applicability of fit-as-mediation model suggests directing attention towards integrating innovation and LPs within same organizational units to achieve improved TBL performance.

The findings suggest manufacturers should involve employees within the same organizational unit embrace an integrated culture of innovativeness and LPs and avoid separate attention to innovativeness and LPs.

This is the first study of which the authors are aware developing and empirically testing both fit-as-mediation and fit-as-moderation models within the same study to understand how innovativeness and LPs work together to influence TBL performance. This study extends the boundaries of current understanding by examining how, when and why the innovativeness – LPs–TBL relationship arises between constructs central to our theories.