Search results

In the US minimum wages were initially enacted by individual states, beginning with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1912. These laws were modeled on legislation enacted over the previous two decades in Australia, New Zealand, and England (Fisher, 1926, chap. 8; Hammond, 1915, 1913; Hobson, 1915; Hart, 1994, chaps. 2 & 3; Morris, 1986). From 1912 to 1923, the legislatures of 16 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia passed minimum wage legislation, although not all of them were operational by the end of this period (Brandeis, 1935, p. 501; Clark, 1921; Millis & Montgomery, 1938, chap. 6; Morris, 1930, chap. 1).

This paper aims to clarify the need for Chief Knowledge Officers (CKOs) and explain how some recent views on competencies for educational guidelines, a Knowledge Management (KM) competency model and expansion of practice management concepts make the need for CKOs clearer.

This viewpoint was developed in response to recent publications disparaging the idea of a CKO. The method used was to extract ideas from published and in-work papers to establish the basis for and explain the postulated Unified Competency Theory of KM and its implications regarding the need for CKOs.

CKOs are needed to ensure that all organizationally relevant functions’ knowledge and KM assessments and/or audits are individually complete and collectively sufficient. A risk/opportunity management role also provides justification.

This paper mainly limits its discussion to the papers that comprise research leading to the Unified Competency Theory of KM, its implications and an updated practice management model. Other points of view that might substantiate or refute the conclusions have not been addressed.

The KM field needs to better identify KM’s risk and opportunity management role and functional imperative. Organizations may need to reevaluate their directions with regards to KM and a CKO.

It extends the concept of practice management to permit differentiating disciplines. It provides new rationale for CKOs.

Academic and practitioner attention to the constructs of authentic leadership and work engagement and their implications for organizations has grown dramatically over the past decade. Consideration of the implications of these constructs for high-performance human resource practices (HPHRP) is limited, however. In this monograph, we present a conceptual model that integrates authentic leadership/followership theory with theory and research on HPHRP. Then, we apply this model to systematically consider the implications of skill-enhancing, motivation-enhancing, and opportunity-enhancing HR practices in combination with authentic leadership for authentic followership, follower work engagement, and follower performance. We contend that authentic leadership, through various influences processes, promotes HPHRP, and vice versa, to help foster enhanced work engagement. By cultivating greater work engagement, individuals are motivated to bring their best, most authentic selves to the workplace and are more likely to achieve higher levels of both well-being and performance.

We examine how input- (vs. output-) based performance evaluation and incentive intensity impact employees’ autonomous motivation, thereby influence their proactive work behaviors.

We collected survey responses from 309 employees of different firms. Multi-group Structural Equation Modeling analyses were used to analyze the data.

Input-based evaluation had a positive effect on autonomous motivation and proactive work behaviors when task uncertainty was high, but a negative effect when it was low. Autonomous motivation had a positive effect on proactive work behaviors.

Our results on the moderating effect of task uncertainty provide insights into inconsistencies in earlier studies. Moreover, applying self-determination theory of motivation to incentive research can provide some insights into why sometimes, incentives can negatively affect performance.

The study of proactive work behaviors is important because despite their necessity in the fast-changing business environment, they are relatively unexplored in the incentive literature. Proactivity is especially important for tasks that are high in uncertainty because the exact tasks to achieve those goals are hard to specify.

We investigate the effect of performance management system on proactive work behaviors, mediated by autonomous motivation and moderated by task uncertainty.

This chapter provides in-depth case studies of two large urban public libraries in the United States and how communities and libraries respond to reductions mandated by their funding agencies. Boston Public Library (BPL) and Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL) are both in communities that faced, and are still facing, recessionary budget pressures that began in 2007. Each community and library system has responded in different ways. In the recent past, in both Boston and Los Angeles, the Mayors and City Councils have supported libraries that have come to define the great cultural heritage and heart of these cities in the past. In 2010, however, both cities faced unheard of budget pressures. In Boston, there was a budget shortfall of $3.6 million. In Los Angeles, the budget shortfall began in 2007 due to huge increases in pension payments to city workers, particularly in the police and fire departments (City of Los Angeles Web site, 2011). In Boston, the community was told there could be branch closures. In Los Angeles, the budget shortfall created severe personnel, material, and service cuts. How each library and their leaders responded to those challenges differed. The level of support that their communities provided and the manner in which it was provided also differed. The two cases describe what can happen when budget crises occur and how libraries and their communities deal, or do not deal with them. The cases also reflect how the two library systems serve metropolitan areas with very distinct characteristics.

Fundamental “purposes” of Australian police organizations are examined, not with a view to solving the complex and ongoing question of an accountable police mandate, but to consider the difficulty of its reconciliation with the new managerialism sweeping numerous public organizations in Australia – police organizations included. Briefly explores the purposes of policing and a problematic police culture as a lead in to a discussion on the possibly deleterious effects of new managerialism and its associated management faddism. Problems associated with the theory of managerialism, which police managers may not be aware of, are explored: managerialism and economic rationalism; management fads and tool tropism; managerialism as a thinly veiled control agenda; and the potential human costs to police officers arising from managerialist approaches. Suggestions are made for ways forward for police organizations which include a recognition of the down‐side of managerialism and a suggested shift away from a belief in a purely rationalistic organization to one which recognizes and accommodates an actor’s “voice” as a legitimate input to growth, learning and institutional development.

Faith‐based activism in living wage campaigns is on the rise. Summarizes recent campaigns to enact living wage ordinances in US municipalities, underscoring the role of community‐church partnerships such as Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice, and other local organizations in the struggle for wage justice. Explores the theological bases of this activism by tracing the evolution of the concept of a just, living wage in Christian social economic thought. To illustrate the historical and philosophical roots of living wage discourse, provides textual analysis of major Roman Catholic and Episcopal Church documents and briefly considers writings by US social economists in the first half of the twentieth century.

Non-completion or slow completion of doctoral degrees has been a matter of concern to Australian Universities for many years, as government funding for research students is contingent upon on-time completion. Part-time students are of particular concern as it can be difficult for them to maintain motivation over several years. This chapter discusses the approaches adopted by one Australian university to address this problem in a professional doctorate part-time program.

Our program applies the concepts of Self-Determination Theory (Ryan & Deci, 2002), addressing social relatedness (addressed through students taking coursework subjects as a cohort), competence (students learn how to write a literature review, how to develop a conceptual framework, to design and justify a research design, to conduct and analyze quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods research, and how to disseminate their research), and autonomy (students choosing a topic relevant to them and are encouraged to take their own decisions as they develop their competence).

Although student numbers are small, we believe that applying the concepts of Self-Determination Theory to our professional doctorate program has improved on-time completion rates.