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1 – 10 of 512Maria Jakubik and Peeter Müürsepp
This conceptual paper aims to contribute to the knowledge management (KM) literature by seeking to determine whether wisdom management (WM) will replace KM in future.
Abstract
Purpose
This conceptual paper aims to contribute to the knowledge management (KM) literature by seeking to determine whether wisdom management (WM) will replace KM in future.
Design/methodology/approach
This exploratory paper follows the interpretivist research philosophy and the deductive approach. The data collection is based on selected literatures from three disciplines (KM, philosophy and psychology). The findings were qualitatively analysed.
Findings
The findings are threefold: (1) the discussion of wisdom has been either neglected or superficially discussed in the KM literature; (2) despite the fact that wisdom is widely discussed and researched in philosophy and psychology disciplines, there is no commonly agreed upon definition of wisdom, and a dichotomy exists between the implicit and explicit theories of wisdom; (3) wisdom research in philosophy and psychology disciplines provides valuable input to KM by identifying the dimensions, components and characteristics of wisdom and wise individuals.
Research limitations/implications
Important sources may have been unintentionally overlooked in this paper. This paper identifies the need for empirical research and discussion about WM as the next potential phase of KM. It offers several implications for researchers, managers and management educators as this paper shows that WM is emerging as a new discipline.
Originality/value
This paper makes a theoretical contribution to the fifth phase of KM by drawing attention to wisdom and WM as the next potential phase of KM.
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S. J. Oswald A. J. Mascarenhas
In the wake of the extraordinary financial scandals that both preceded and followed the September–October Financial Crises of 2008, discussions about the executive virtues of…
Abstract
Executive Summary
In the wake of the extraordinary financial scandals that both preceded and followed the September–October Financial Crises of 2008, discussions about the executive virtues of honesty and integrity are no longer academic or esoteric, but critically urgent and challenging. As representatives of the corporation, its products and services, corporate executives in general, and production, accounting, finance, and marketing executives in particular, must be the frontline public relations and goodwill ambassadors for their firms, products, and services. As academicians of business education, we must also analyze these corporate wrongdoings as objectively and ethically as possible. What is wrong must be declared and condemned as wrong, what is right must be affirmed and acknowledged as right. We owe it to our students, our profession, our stakeholders, and to the business world. Contemporary American philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre (1981) proposes the issue of morality in a threefold question: Who am I? Who ought I to become? How ought I to get there? The answer to every question refers to the virtues, especially to corporate executive virtues. This chapter explores corporate executive virtues, especially the classical cardinal virtues of prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice as defining and enhancing corporate executive life.
The purpose of this paper is to pinpoint some key variables that help shape the notion of older workers as a source of organizational wisdom capital.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to pinpoint some key variables that help shape the notion of older workers as a source of organizational wisdom capital.
Design/methodology/approach
Toward that end, the paper reviews a selective bibliography in order to support its arguments.
Findings
The evidence garnered throughout this paper – fundamentally through different lens of analysis – suggests that older workers may be considered as valuable assets. Furthermore, a sizeable number of members of this cohort continue, even in the latter stages of their careers, to be willing, well-equipped, and able to enhance, if properly utilized, companies to achieve other patterns of performance. Accordingly, it is advocated here that their knowledge and expertise constitutes an authentic source of organizational wisdom capital that deserves careful attention from organizations to maintain by means of suitable incentives and training.
Research limitations/implications
This paper highlights other aspects that should not be disdained by organizations such as career-ending, work characteristics, and mastery-avoidance goals. Thus, companies that are interested in keeping older talents must be attuned to their wishes and aspirations, as well as being proactive by offering tailor-made job-products to them.
Social implications
Given the trend of aging workforce, it is likely that organizations will be increasingly impacted by societal demands and public policies toward benefiting and respecting older talents.
Originality/value
This paper advocates that older workers are usually living memories of organizational life. Rather, they tend to keep in their minds those failures and successful ideas, projects, initiatives, and leaderships, which added or not value throughout their trajectories, as well as things that worked out or not. Fundamentally, they are able to provide answers to vital questions.
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S. J. Oswald A. J. Mascarenhas
Leadership cannot exist without followership. The phenomenon of direction and guidance, coaching and mentoring, has at least three components: the leader, leadership, and…
Abstract
Executive Summary
Leadership cannot exist without followership. The phenomenon of direction and guidance, coaching and mentoring, has at least three components: the leader, leadership, and followers. With each component, the composition of purpose and goals, ethics and morals, rights and duties, and skills and talents is critically important. While the leader is the central and the most important part of the leadership phenomenon, followers are important and necessary factors in the leadership equation. Leaders and followers are engaged in a common enterprise: they are dependent upon each other; their fortunes rise and fall together. Relational qualities define the leadership–followership phenomenon. A major component of such a relationship is how the leaders create and communicate new meaning to followers, perceive themselves relative to followers, and how the followers, in turn, perceive their leader. This mutual perception has serious ethical and moral implications – how leader uses or abuses power, and how followers are augmented or diminished. This chapter features the essentials of ethical and moral, corporate executive leadership in two parts: (1) the Theory of Ethical and Moral Leadership and (2) the Art of Ethical and Moral Leadership. Several contemporary cases such as inspirational leadership of JRD Tata, Crisis of Leadership at Infosys, and Headhunting for CEOs will illustrate our discussions on the ethics and morals of corporate executive leadership.
Tanika Songlar, Nicharuch Panjaphothiwat Pussadee La-or, Chalitar Chomchoe and Siriyaporn Khunthason
Chiang Rai being an earthquake-prone city, it is essential to raise awareness about earthquake safety and readiness, especially amongst the elderly population who spend most of…
Abstract
Purpose
Chiang Rai being an earthquake-prone city, it is essential to raise awareness about earthquake safety and readiness, especially amongst the elderly population who spend most of their time at home. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the earthquake preparedness of elders in relation to knowledge, attitude and practice.
Design/methodology/approach
This was an analytic cross-sectional study. Research data were collected from 480 elders of 60 years old and above. The research instruments were questionnaires about knowledge, attitude and self-assessment of practices in earthquake situations. Data were analyzed by number, percentage and a χ2 test.
Findings
Of participants interviewed, 39.4 percent were aged between 60 and 66 years old. Overall, 94.0 percent of them had already experienced an earthquake, with 79.4 percent having experienced it in 2014. Participants had a good level of knowledge and attitude toward earthquake safety. Their practices toward earthquake readiness, however, were insufficient due to the lower practice scores (<12), especially found in the high seismic zone. The score level of knowledge, attitude and self-assessment of practice in earthquake situations showed that there is a difference in statistical significance (p<0.05).
Originality/value
This study focuses attention on the need to increase levels of preparedness. Safety instructions and earthquake drills should be promoted and supported in order to prepare elders for an earthquake in the study area. Research findings identified in this study will help to address the specific needs of the elderly when implementing an earthquake disaster risk reduction plan.
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Juha Törmänen, Raimo P. Hämäläinen and Esa Saarinen
This study aims to introduce the perceived systems intelligence (SI) inventory, developed based on the earlier published self-report SI inventory (Törmänen et al., 2016). It can…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to introduce the perceived systems intelligence (SI) inventory, developed based on the earlier published self-report SI inventory (Törmänen et al., 2016). It can be used together with earlier managerial level tools for building a learning organization and included in general 360-style evaluations in personnel development.
Design/methodology/approach
The inventory is validated with confirmatory factor analysis with a model based on the self-report SI inventory, using data from full-time used employees and managers in the USA and UK. Perceived SI factor scores are correlated with the perceived study performance of the individual.
Findings
The perceived SI inventory is found to have good factorial validity, and it correlates strongly with evaluations of perceived study performance. Managers perceived high in performance are also found to score high in perceived SI. Perceived SI does not depend on gender, age, organization size or industry.
Originality/value
The perceived SI inventory is the first personnel level peer evaluation tool suggested for developing learning organizations. The new inventory makes peer evaluations possible and provides a new grassroots level tool for personnel development programs in learning organizations.
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Tamara Bilbija and Jack Stout Rendall
The purpose of this paper is to provide new evidence on the different dimensions of well-being that can occur in work integration social enterprises (WISEs). This study aims to…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide new evidence on the different dimensions of well-being that can occur in work integration social enterprises (WISEs). This study aims to call for a future discussion on the role of meaningful work (MW) and its impact upon well-being beyond satisfaction.
Design/methodology/approach
Explorative interviews were undertaken with professional workers and beneficiaries within a Spanish WISE. These interviews aimed to uncover similarities and differences across aspects of what makes work meaningful to them as workers. Both eudaimonic and hedonic dimensions of well-being were used to analyse the data.
Findings
Different groups of employees show that professional employees (those working in the WISE, not because of their disadvantages in the labour market) create their narratives based on MW experiences (eudaimonic well-being), whereas beneficiaries (those working in the WISE because of their disadvantages in the labour market) often describe how satisfied they are at work (hedonic).
Originality/value
The concept of MW within WISEs to achieve well-being for both beneficiaries and professional workers could be enhanced through discussion of the different types of well-being that are being realised in such settings. Engaging with the concept of “eudaimonia” helps the authors to achieve this aim.
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Tom L. Junker, Christine Yin Man Fong, Marjan Gorgievski, Jason C.L. Gawke and Arnold B. Bakker
This study investigates when and for whom job crafting may turn into job quitting. The authors hypothesize that approach job crafting relates more positively to turnover…
Abstract
Purpose
This study investigates when and for whom job crafting may turn into job quitting. The authors hypothesize that approach job crafting relates more positively to turnover intentions and subsequent voluntary job changes among employees with (a) high (vs low) need for career challenges and (b) those with high (vs low) self-esteem.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected from 575 employees of a large public organization in the Netherlands with two measurement moments three months apart. Hypotheses were tested using cross-lagged regression analyses and path modeling.
Findings
Supporting the hypotheses, approach crafting related positively to an increase in turnover intentions only among employees with high need for challenge or high self-esteem. Moreover, via turnover intentions at Time 1, approach crafting related positively to the voluntary job change at Time 2 for employees with (a) high need for challenge, as well as those with (b) high self-esteem. These findings held after controlling for avoidance crafting.
Research limitations/implications
This study has been conducted in a relatively homogenous sample. Future research may test the predictions in a more heterogeneous sample, including participants from different cultural and economic contexts.
Practical implications
The authors advise human resource (HR) professionals to facilitate the job crafting efforts of employees with a high need for challenge and those with high self-esteem because these groups are particularly at risk of voluntarily quitting their jobs. Adopting insights from the wise proactivity model may help ensure that job crafting benefits both employees and employers.
Originality/value
This study brings clarity to the inconsistent relationships between job crafting and job quitting by using the wise proactivity model as an explanatory framework.
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This paper examines the strategies that volunteers use when supporting asylum seekers with their information challenges to be able to develop services for asylum seekers and…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper examines the strategies that volunteers use when supporting asylum seekers with their information challenges to be able to develop services for asylum seekers and promote their access to reliable information in the most suitable way.
Design/methodology/approach
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven volunteers who help asylum seekers with their asylum cases in two cities in Finland. The interview data was thematically coded and analysed.
Findings
Six types of information-related strategies were identified: information mediatory, language adjustment, spatial and non-verbal communicative, inclusive, and supervisory strategies, as well as strategies with shifting roles. These strategies holistically support asylum seekers' information practices, considering the challenges of their situation and emotional needs.
Originality/value
This study creates new knowledge about volunteers' role in the information practices of asylum seekers, highlighting their unique position both in and outside the asylum system. Information-related strategies are a novel way of examining the ways to holistically support other people's information practices, by understanding that information is intertwined in all kinds of everyday actions and interactions.
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This study aims to fill the research gap regarding the usability of group reporting information in the central government. It answers the question of how the consolidated…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to fill the research gap regarding the usability of group reporting information in the central government. It answers the question of how the consolidated information should be formed to benefit the real needs of governmental information users.
Design/methodology/approach
The empirical research is based on a survey and interviews among key internal preparers and users in the central government sector in the case country, Finland.
Findings
Results show that the private sector approach regarding consolidation is not appropriately transferable to the central government sector. The key stakeholders identified several economic and financial reporting needs that exceed what formal Consolidated Financial Statement (CFS) can offer. Consolidation is needed but not according to the extensive full control approach, but rather following the budgetary approach consolidating units of the legal person of the government, and further using the partial control approach for consolidating by discretion essential special purpose SOEs.
Research limitations/implications
Respondents and interviewees represented governmental internal organisations, free experts, auditors and financial managers from the group entities. Politicians and citizens were not directly represented.
Practical implications
Research gives applicable insights into central governments planning and developing group reporting for information needs in a favourable cost-benefit ratio. Findings benefit the development of EU's EPSAS (European Public Sector Accounting Standards) project which is still incomplete.
Social implications
Research recommends governments to make a thorough analysis before deciding on a new financial reporting system. A critical analysis prevents governments to waste money and resources on a reporting system not fulfilling the real needs of information users.
Originality/value
The value of this research is that the private sector approach in consolidation was not taken as granted. This study investigated critically and empirically the real need for consolidated information serving steering and overseeing purposes of the government's group entities.
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