Search results

To enhance the development of individuals for executive positions, fast‐track management development programmes have been adopted by many organisations. However, such programmes do not always lead to positive consequences for the participant. The purpose of the present research was to investigate the frustrations of participants in an entry‐level fast‐track programme. Results of the study suggest several important lessons for those responsible for fast‐track programmes. First, participants′ major frustrations involved issues regarding ongoing career guidance, future job assignment uncertainty, and the degree of challenge, responsibility, and variety inherent in their job assignments. Second, participants are likely to have high expectations for themselves and their careers which must be considered. Third, company executives and programme supervisors may misjudge the frustrations of participants; therefore, monitoring such frustrations is important.

Despite their fairly widespread use among large companies, little information is available to those interested in designing, managing, or evaluating high‐potential (fast‐track) management development programmes. In an attempt to fill this void, three sources of programme ineffectiveness are examined: participants′ dissatisfaction, the negative attitudes of non‐participants, and cultural misfit. Also examines ten ineffectiveness‐avoiding lessons for programme design and implementation learned during an in‐depth assessment of one company′s formalized, entry‐level high‐potential management development programme

The purpose of this paper is to examine the applicability of Prochaska and colleagues' “stages of change model,” which has generated substantial support in the therapeutic literature as a useful framework for understanding the dynamics of motivation to change problem behaviors, in a leadership development context.

A group of over 70 supervisors/managers was studied over a period of nine months as they participated in a company‐sponsored leadership development effort.

Results provide initial evidence that the stages of change model has the potential for being reliably and validly assessed in a leadership development context. Participants' stage scores related in meaningful ways to relevant criteria such as job attitudes, perceptions of personal leadership areas needing improvement, and evaluations of actual development module content and presentation over a nine‐month period.

Participants were drawn from only one organization and this was the first major leadership development effort undertaken by this organization.

Study results provide support for the appropriateness of applying the stages of change model and its measurement in a leadership development context. Results demonstrate that the stages of change model appears to offer useful and pragmatic insight into motivation to learn and on improving the effectiveness of leadership development activities.

The present study is unique in that makes use of a stages of change model to empirically examine differential patterns of relationships between participants' stages of change and their organizational attitudes, leadership developmental needs, and longitudinal reactions to the development effort.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of core self-evaluations (CSE) and change uncertainty on job satisfaction and turnover intentions within the context of an organizational change. Because individuals high in CSE are expected to be able to cope better with uncertainty, the authors also tested the mitigating effect of CSE on the change uncertainty-attitude relationships.

Surveys were completed and returned by 398 employees in the midst of a merger containing measures of CSE, change uncertainty, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions. The survey was voluntary and administered cross-sectionally.

Change uncertainty was found to negatively influence job satisfaction and positively influence turnover intentions. Additionally, CSE positively impacted job satisfaction and negatively impacted turnover intentions. High CSE was also found to minimize the negative impact of examined change uncertainty-job attitude relationships.

The research has implications for the role of CSE in attitude formation within a change context and adds to existing literature supporting the detrimental effects of change uncertainty on job attitudes. Also, the study provided evidence of how CSE interacts with change uncertainty reducing the detrimental impact on job attitudes. Future research should continue to examine the role of CSE in the way employees react to other change-related stressors.

The relationships among change uncertainty, CSE, and job attitudes were explored through a theoretical lens and tested empirically using employees in the midst of an organizational change.

The purpose of this paper was to examine the interaction effects of managers' perceptions of the supporting vision clarity, appropriateness, and execution of a major organizational change on their job satisfaction, organizational commitment, turnover intentions, and role ambiguity.

Data were collected from upper and middle‐level managers of a Fortune 500 US manufacturer and maker of consumer goods involved in a large organizational change initiative. A survey was completed by 217 managers, for a response rate of 89 percent. Change attitudes, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, turnover intentions, role ambiguity, and control variables were all assessed.

A three‐way interaction between change vision clarity, change appropriateness, and change execution was found to predict managers' job satisfaction, turnover intentions, and role ambiguity.

The study relied on self‐reports collected at one point in time, allowing for the possibility of common method bias. The complex, nonlinear relationships indicate that method bias cannot fully account for the reported relationships.

Study results illustrate that the individual experience of major change is multifaceted and that simultaneously considering the combined effects of individual's change attitudes including readiness (in the form of believing a change is needed and appropriate) and the perceived effectiveness of the change execution on key job‐related outcomes can help practitioners understand more fully the implications of organizational change.

The findings lend support to the notion that individual's sentiments concerning organizational change are interactive and should not be ignored.

Explains how we used the change message components of discrepancy, appropriateness, efficacy, principal support, and personal valence and the message conveying strategies of active participation, persuasive communication and management of information suggested by Armenakis and colleagues to help an organization create readiness for a major reorganization. We describe and evaluate our experiences from our initial coaching with the president, through initial management meetings to determine the new business unit’s strategy and structure, to the initial company‐wide announcement of the plans. We conclude with a set of observations and lessons and suggestions for future research on the use of the change message framework.

This paper broadens and extends the idea of organizational death by arguing that certain organizational site moves, those in which employees hold a strong place attachment to the to be left, are a form of organizational death. It argues for the utility of viewing organizational change as involving loss and including space in studies of everyday organizational experiences. Using ethnographic research (participant‐observation and in‐depth interviews with the employees) of one such organization (the “Coffee House”) and a negotiated‐order perspective, discusses employee beliefs as to how the site move should have been managed as a means to document their understanding of the move as a loss experience and as a form of organizational death.

Using a meta-regression analysis, we quantitatively review the empirical literature on the relation between effective tax rate (ETR) and firm size. Accounting literature offers two competing theories on this relation: The political cost theory, suggesting a positive size-ETR relation, and the political power theory, suggesting a negative size-ETR relation. Using a unique data set of 56 studies that do not show a clear tendency towards either of the two theories, we contribute to the discussion on the size-ETR relation in three ways: First, applying meta-regression analysis on a US meta-data set, we provide evidence supporting the political cost theory. Second, our analysis reveals factors that are possible sources of variation and bias in previous empirical studies; these findings can improve future empirical and analytical models. Third, we extend our analysis to a cross-country meta-data set; this extension enables us to investigate explanations for the two competing theories in more detail. We find that Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory, a transparency index and a corruption index explain variation in the size-ETR relation. Independent of the two theories, we also find that tax planning aspects potentially affect the size-ETR relation. To our knowledge, these explanations have not yet been investigated in our research context.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

This bibliography is offered as a practical guide to published papers, conference proceedings papers and theses/dissertations on the finite element (FE) and boundary element (BE) applications in different fields of biomechanics between 1976 and 1991. The aim of this paper is to help the users of FE and BE techniques to get better value from a large collection of papers on the subjects. Categories in biomechanics included in this survey are: orthopaedic mechanics, dental mechanics, cardiovascular mechanics, soft tissue mechanics, biological flow, impact injury, and other fields of applications. More than 900 references are listed.