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1 – 10 of 22Christine Victorino, Karen Nylund-Gibson and Sharon Conley
The purpose of this paper is to focus on the relationship between college and university faculty collegiality, conceptualized as a set of prosocial behaviors, and job satisfaction.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to focus on the relationship between college and university faculty collegiality, conceptualized as a set of prosocial behaviors, and job satisfaction.
Design/methodology/approach
A multi-level structural equation model was developed to examine the relationship between faculty collegiality and job satisfaction at the individual and institutional levels, the effects of gender and race/ethnicity, the effect of institutional type (i.e. research universities vs non-research universities), and whether institutional-level perceptions of faculty collegiality and job satisfaction influence perceptions of faculty collegiality and job satisfaction at the individual level.
Findings
Faculty collegiality was highly and significantly related to job satisfaction at the individual level (0.86) and at the institutional level (0.93). At the individual level, pretenured women faculty and faculty of color indicated significantly lower levels of collegiality. At the institutional level, pretenured faculty interactions with tenured faculty colleagues were positively and significantly related to individual-level perceptions of faculty collegiality.
Research limitations/implications
Study limitations include self-report data that were dependent upon accurate responses from faculty participants, and cross-sectional data. Future analyses could extend study findings by examining the influence of faculty collegiality upon such outcomes as faculty productivity and retention in future multi-level analyses.
Practical implications
It is recommended that interventions be undertaken to embed prosocial behaviors into faculty research, teaching, and service activities, and to foster relationships between pretenured and tenured faculty members.
Originality/value
This paper underscores the importance of collecting nationally representative faculty data and conducting rigorous multi-level analyses to inform higher education policy and practice.
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Sharon Conley, Jewell Gould and Harriet Levine
Despite the critical role of support personnel in education, the literature about their supervision has been less than informative. In an effort to provide additional guidance to…
Abstract
Purpose
Despite the critical role of support personnel in education, the literature about their supervision has been less than informative. In an effort to provide additional guidance to school leaders seeking to improve the supervision of such personnel, the purpose of this paper is to examine and compare three distinct groups of support personnel: school custodians/janitors, school secretaries, and paraprofessionals in special education.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper begins with two analyses. One is that of the general importance of the role of support personnel in public schools in the USA. The other consists of a brief argument as to why the literature about the supervision of support personnel has not been overly informative. The paper proceeds with descriptions of three distinct support personnel groups.
Findings
The examination of three support personnel groups highlights the visibility of the school custodian/janitor, the multi‐dimensional responsibilities of the school secretary, and the background of the paraprofessional in special education.
Research limitations/implications
A comparison of three distinct groups of support personnel has implications for their training, compensation and scheduling, and work design and supervision.
Originality/value
The paper content offers an information‐rich and multi‐faceted view of support personnel in schools, with implications for their overall supervision and the importance of their contribution to the organization.
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Sharon Conley and Sherry A. Woosley
Educational researchers have long been concerned with role stress among teachers. In education, research on the consequences of such role stress for teachers has largely concerned…
Abstract
Educational researchers have long been concerned with role stress among teachers. In education, research on the consequences of such role stress for teachers has largely concerned outcomes valued by individuals such as job satisfaction and reduced stress. Less research has focused on examining the effects of role stress on outcomes valued by the organization, such as employee commitment and employee retention. In examining the role stress‐outcome relationship, research suggests the importance of taking into consideration the work orientations of individuals as possible moderators of the role stress‐outcome relationship. Using a sample of elementary and secondary teachers, this study empirically examined, first whether three role stresses – role ambiguity, role conflict, and role overload – are related to two individually and two organizationally valued states and second, whether teachers’ higher‐order need strength moderates these role stress‐outcome relationships. The study found that role stresses relate to individually‐ and organizationally‐valued outcomes among both elementary and secondary teachers.
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Sharon Conley and Ernestine K. Enomoto
This paper presents routinized action theory as a way to examine the regular, habitual activities that occur in school organizations. Using this theoretical lens, school routines…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper presents routinized action theory as a way to examine the regular, habitual activities that occur in school organizations. Using this theoretical lens, school routines were analyzed in order to understand organizational stability and change.
Design/methodology/approach
Using case study methods, three discrete cases are presented, a K‐12 public school setting, a private international school, and a central office in an educational system. Cases were selected for their descriptive detail and illustrate different aspects of the theory.
Findings
Routinized action theory posits that alterations in routines occur for different reasons: failure to produce desired outcome; producing new possibilities, and/or falling short of ideal targets. In these case studies, routines were altered by management to address problems, repair what did not work, and strive toward new targets. Management also shifted resources accordingly. While these actions can help the organization survive environmental changes, routines may also restrict the organization's response to change.
Practical implications
By analyzing the resources associated with routines, school administrators can understand the possibilities for accomplishing necessary work in ways that reduce environmental influences. Routines might be a useful lever for change.
Originality/value
Routinized action theory may have been overlooked as a viable means to analyze educational organizations. The systematic application of this theoretical lens to schools holds significant implications for practitioners and researchers because schools are deeply routinized organizations.
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In the past decade or so, workplace organisation and restructuring processes, have been subjected to the most intense scrutiny. Driven by rapidly intensifying competitive…
Abstract
In the past decade or so, workplace organisation and restructuring processes, have been subjected to the most intense scrutiny. Driven by rapidly intensifying competitive pressures, work organisations sought increased flexibility, especially from labour, as they struggled to maintain market shares in an economic environment increasingly characterised by excess in labour supply. Pressures for change were probably most evident in the public sector where economic and ideological forces combined to limit the growth of government services and increase their exposure to competitive forces.
This chapter proposes and tests a novel relationship between early participation in competitive activities, “competition socialization,” and the attainment of a managerial…
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter proposes and tests a novel relationship between early participation in competitive activities, “competition socialization,” and the attainment of a managerial position in adulthood. Building on extensive qualitative research, I argue that an early emphasis on “winning” becomes internalized as a desire for the extrinsic rewards that in some ways characterize managerial positions.
Methodology
I test this hypothesis on survey data collected from professionals (N = 334) employed in a probability sample of U.S. advertising agencies, using binomial logistic regression.
Finding
For individuals under forty, competition socialization increases the likelihood of working in a managerial position. However, this effect does not hold for older professionals, for whom graduate education is a better predictor of managerial attainment.
Value of the chapter
To my knowledge, this is the first chapter to test of the effect of youth participation in organized activities on adulthood outcomes. By drawing attention to the influence of competitive socialization on managerial attainment, I highlight the need to incorporate informal socialization into our models of occupational attainment.
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