Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine a possible negative spillover effect in sports sponsorship to answer whether the sponsored team’s poor performance will have a negative effect on audiences’ trust in its sponsor’s brand. The authors further analysed whether the audience’s attitude towards the team plays a mediating role and whether the audience’s personality type (active vs passive) plays a moderating role in this negative spillover effect.

Three experimental studies were conducted with 380 Chinese undergraduates and MBA student participants over two years. The authors designed the experiment as a computer-mediated intervention in which good, poor and neutral performance groups were compared. After the respondents were exposed to the intervention, we asked them to answer questions using a computer terminal. We analysed the data from the three experiments through analysis of variance (ANOVA), regression analysis and a bootstrap.

The audiences who were exposed to a team’s poor performance condition reported less trust in the sponsor’s brand relative to those exposed to a good performance condition, and the brand trust was even lower than for those who were exposed to a control condition (no performance information). Further, the audience’s negative attitude towards the sports team mediated the negative effect of the team’s poor performance on its sponsor’s brand trust. The negative effect was more obvious for individuals with Type A personalities (active) than for those with Type B personalities (passive).

The prior literature has neglected a possible negative effect of a sports team’s performance on its sponsor’s brand trust. In particular, questions of whether, how and when this negative effect occurs are critical for sponsors, teams, and audiences. Since sports team sponsorship is burgeoning in China, the negative implications are unclear in this new context. Thus, the revelation that the negative spillover effects of a team’s poor performance on audiences’ trust in the sponsor’s brand provides two original contributions. First, the negative effect reveals value for multiple sponsorship stakeholders. Second, the Chinese context in this study adds value for future research and practice regarding both Chinese-foreign and domestic Chinese decisions.

The purpose of this paper is to study the consistency in the management of poor performance by a group of experienced managers working at the same level in a service organisation which had a formal performance management process.

A case study is developed using cognitive scripts to reveal how front‐line managers in a large service organisation dealt with the issue of poor performance. The nature of their scripts was also related to measures of the managers' experience.

The management of poor performance is still fraught with inconsistency even among an experienced group of managers. Those who had been managers longest were the most likely to act consistently in this area.

The research is based on the perceptions of the managers all‐operating at the same level and in one organisation and it is not possible to generalise across other levels or organisations.

The inconsistency of approach does suggest that organisations should at least review their procedures and facilitate the development of managers in this area.

The paper presents the managers' voice on this area of their work, a perspective that is essential for management development in this area.

Recent performance appraisal (PA) literature suggests that alongside cognitive biases, rating distortions may stem from rater disposition and PA context. The study investigated the role of social value orientation (rater disposition), PA purposes and rater accountability (PA context) toward rating distortions at both performance levels, i.e. good and poor.

The authors designed an experimental study and elicited data from N = 110 undergraduate students about two video-taped performances of good and poor performers. In these videos, two managers conducted assessment interviews of two different employees for the job of a sales representative at an information technology organization. To ensure the validity of performance ratings, the authors invited 10 senior managers to provide benchmark ratings of the video-taped performances. While being placed in two separate groups, the study participants gave performance ratings on both the video-taped performances. The authors used repeated-measures analysis to analyze data.

The results revealed that rating distortions took place not because of rater social value orientation, but the PA context. Different rating distortion patterns emerged for different levels of ratees' performance.

This study’s findings furnish new insights for assessing rating distortions for poor as well as good performers. Moreover, the results support previous findings that for good performers, accountable raters are tempted toward accurate ratings and refrained from deflation. Similarly, for poor performers, accountable raters do not inflate ratings. The findings will open research avenues to examine the role of PA purposes in rating distortions for different performance levels.

In our framework, we examine the influence of both reactive and proactive cognitive variables on strategic change. Reactive sources that impact strategic change are perceptions and attributions – cognitions that determine the “what” and the “why” of performance. Perceptions are first-order cognitions that assess what is the performance feedback: positive or negative? After performance feedback is perceived, attributions are second-order cognitions that attempt to establish why the performance is positive or negative.

One of the primary responsibilities of a board of directors is to assess management practices and to make sure that the organization is being run in a fashion that is consistent with the interests of shareholders. This responsibility becomes especially important when the firm is performing suboptimally. The current paper integrates corporate governance theory with attribution theory to examine the processes by which board members attribute poor firm performance to either external or internal causes. A framework is presented that suggests that inside directors and outside directors differ significantly in the constraints they face and in the ultimate attributions they make. Facing primarily social constraints, such as loyalty to the CEO and fear of retaliation, inside directors are more likely to consistently attribute poor performance to industry or environmental factors, as opposed to top management. Facing primarily cognitive constraints, outside directors will use specific informational cues to attribute poor performance either to industry/environmental factors or to top management. Implications and suggestions for future research are provided.

The purpose of this study is to empirically quantify the factors that are perceived to drive or inhibit performance of information technology (IT) outsourced employees from a range of information technology outsourcing (ITO) stakeholders in South Africa.

The first phase was a qualitative study on 19 stakeholders focussed on the development of the constructs. The second phase was quantitative, with a sample of 116 ITO stakeholders of the largest IT company in South Africa.

The study revealed that the ITO stakeholders had misaligned perceptions on inhibitors and somewhat congruent perceptions with regards to drivers of performance. Managers and poor performers’ perceptions of inhibiting factors of performance were significantly different. The empirical evidence showed that the key drivers of performance were intrinsic factors and leadership, whilst the inhibiting factors were mainly related to poor leadership.

The major limitation was that the population was represented by one large organisation in the South African IT industry and its clients, thereby excluding the rest of the IT industry participants, specifically the medium and small IT companies. The quota sample resulted in a non-probability study, and thus, the results of this study may not necessarily be generalised to other populations. This study’s findings on differences between good and poor performers must be investigated in other industries.

For outsourced employees to perform optimally, some key intrinsic factors must be fulfilled. Passion and pride, aligned to a meaningful job role, will unleash outstanding performance. Organisations need to ensure that there is regular feedback to managers on their performance and subsequent leadership development. Alignment of managers and poor performers’ perceptions on drivers and inhibitors could improve performance.

These findings demonstrate the large gap in perceptions about the key drivers and inhibiters of performance.

The study reveals that top performers tend to have higher order and intrinsic motivators, compared to poor performers, who have a mixture of extrinsic and intrinsic needs, and managers have a misaligned expectation of extrinsic motivators.

The multiple performance measures in strategic performance measurement systems should be selected to represent a set of causally linked strategic drivers and outcomes. The pattern of results thus can provide information concerning the proper execution of the strategy (i.e., the performance evaluation role) and the strength of the cause-and-effect linkages assumed by the strategy (i.e., the strategy evaluation role). Unfortunately, managers’ tendency to re-evaluate the strategy when performance falls short of target is low in practice. Possible explanations include motivational and cognitive biases. We experimentally examine two decision aids, an attribution aid, and a decomposition aid, designed to help managers ease these challenges. Study 1 shows the decision aids, individually and in combination, increase managers’ tendency to re-examine a problematic strategy. Study 2 demonstrates the effectiveness of the two decision aids, when used together, under a different pattern of results and among a sample of more experienced managers.

The aim of the study is to determine the prevalence of absenteeism and presenteeism and explore their association with work performance among support workers in a medical school hospital in Thailand.

A cross-sectional study was conducted among 1,102 support workers in the Faculty of Medicine Ramathibodi Hospital, Mahidol University, in June–August 2020. The World Health Organization Health and Work Performance Questionnaire (HPQ) was used to assess absenteeism, presenteeism, work performance and related factors. Multiple logistic regression was used to examine the association between current work performance and absenteeism and presenteeism in the past year.

A total of 505 (45.8%) support workers completed the self-report questionnaire. Prevalence of sickness absence, non-sickness absence and presenteeism in the past year was 54.2%, 81.4% and 48.1%, respectively. Sickness absence and presenteeism in the past year were significantly associated with increased odds of poor work performance: (OR 3.05, 95% CI: 1.24–7.49) and (OR 5.12, 95% CI: 2.25–11.64), respectively. Support workers with high levels of stress and burnout were 3.89 (95% CI: 1.56–9.68) and 2.66 (95% CI: 1.50–4.72) times more likely to report poor work performance.

Sickness absence and presenteeism are associated with poor work performance in hospital support workers. Other factors such as stress and burnout also contribute to poor work performance, and interaction among these factors needs further research. To improve productivity, hospital administrators might consider intervention programs to enhance work performance among workers with sickness absence and presenteeism.

Relationship marketing is beneficial to firms because it can foster customer loyalty and re‐patronage behavior. Consumers engaged in relational exchanges are more satisfied than those in discrete transactions because of the ease and psychological comfort of purchasing from a familiar company. This research investigates the power of relationship marketing to mitigate in two situations. One exposes consumers to poor product performance and examines their levels of trust, commitment and satisfaction. The second presents a product failure that is followed by a lapse in service recovery and measures satisfaction and exit behavior. The findings of both studies suggest that relationships make up for increasingly strong negative encounters, providing a level of insulation for the marketer. Implications for service firms are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the perceptions and experiences of healthcare managers working within a community and ambulatory health service who manage poorly performing staff and, to identify the supports, and gaps in supports, that are available to these managers.

Data were collected via two focus groups using a semi-structured schedule. The data were transcribed, themed and conclusions summarised.

On analysis of the discussion of the line managers’ experiences and perceptions of competence, six themes were identified, five themes common to both groups. When discussing the availability and gaps in supports available when managing poor performance, managers were aware of the majority of the supports available to them in the workplace but there was a disconnect between managers and the HR department.

Though the results of this study are not generalisable, as the participants came from programs within a single hospital, they may be transferrable to other healthcare environments. Future research should attempt to replicate these findings using other research techniques.

The findings in this paper indicate that methods should be identified to build better relationships between managers and HR departments, develop clear management learning pathways, and to support managers to manage their emotional responses. These strategies will support organisations to achieve improved outcomes from the performance management processes.

This study contributes to the current literature by identifying key themes that may have an impact on the outcome of performance management processes. These themes would benefit from further exploration.