Search results

Existing literature on algorithmic management practices – defined as autonomous data-driven decision making in people's management by adoption of self-learning algorithms and artificial intelligence – suggests complex relationships with employees' well-being in the workplace. While the use of algorithms can have positive impacts on people-related decisions, they may also adversely influence job autonomy, perceived justice and – as a result – workplace well-being. Literature review revealed a significant gap in empirical research on the nature and direction of these relationships. Therefore the purpose of this paper is to analyse how algorithmic management practices directly influence workplace well-being, as well as investigating its relationships with job autonomy and total rewards practices.

Conceptual model of relationships between algorithmic management practices, job autonomy, total rewards and workplace well-being has been formulated on the basis of literature review. Proposed model has been empirically verified through confirmatory analysis by means of structural equation modelling (SEM CFA) on a sample of 21,869 European organisations, using data collected by Eurofound and Cedefop in 2019, with the focus of investigating the direct and indirect influence of algorithmic management practices on workplace well-being.

This research confirmed a moderate, direct impact of application of algorithmic management practices on workplace well-being. More importantly the authors found out that this approach has an indirect influence, through negative impact on job autonomy and total rewards practices. The authors observed significant variation in the level of influence depending on the size of the organisation, with the decreasing impacts of algorithmic management on well-being and job autonomy for larger entities.

While the influence of algorithmic management on various workplace practices and effects is now widely discussed, the empirical evidence – especially for traditional work contexts, not only gig economy – is highly limited. The study fills this gap and suggests that algorithmic management – understood as an automated decision-making vehicle – might not always lead to better, well-being focused, people management in organisations. Academic studies and practical applications need to account for possible negative consequences of algorithmic management for the workplace well-being, by better reflecting complex nature of relationships between these variables.

This paper offers a theoretical explanation to a positive story of a micro enterprise found in Uganda, an African developing country that has successfully managed workplace relationships, its survival and good performance. Specifically, the paper examines multiple theories to explain the practice in this enterprise.

The study uses storytelling, a form of narrative inquiry embedded in qualitative methodology. Based on in-depth interviews with the owner-manager and employees, a story was developed detailing their practical experience while focusing on the context, actions, results and lessons.

Findings reveal that micro enterprises that allow free generation of ideas across all levels with optimistic people who reciprocate and work together create a friendly work atmosphere with support for one another, with the ability to amicably resolve conflicts and build trust. More so, theories including social exchange theory, relational cohesion theory, complex adaptive systems theory and cultural historical activity theory help explain the manifestations of relational people management in micro enterprises.

This paper is unique in its use of a positive story showing a practical experience of how workplace relationships are managed in a micro enterprise found in Uganda. In addition, a multi-theoretical perspective is used to explain the manifestations in the story which may be novel in the study context. Thus, a conceptual model is proposed depicting generalized reciprocity, positive emotions, generative leadership and relational agency as antecedents of relational people management with relational agency again mediating the other relationships.

The purpose of the paper is to contribute to an understanding of the relational work carried out in mentoring programmes and the implications for learning capabilities in future practices.

This study is based on field research of a mentoring programme bringing together senior and newly graduated workers in a large Swedish health care organisation. In total, 54 qualitative interviews with mentors, mentees, HR, managers and union representatives are included.

The findings point to the role of trust and a psychological sense of community in the socialisation work that goes on in relationships between the mentor and the mentee. This in turn leads to increased social capital in the form of learning and retaining workers. The conditions for being vulnerable and asking questions, as well as daring to be independent, are an essential and decisive part of constructing bonding within the professional group and bridging out to other professions and parts of the organisation.

The practical contribution from this study is the workplace conditions that are central to organising mentoring programmes, with implications for learning capabilities in future practices.

With its theoretical focus on social capital, the study shows the importance of relationships for learning and retaining both newly graduated and experienced employees in a context of high employee turnover. It is central to achieving strong and mutually beneficial relationships through continual and trustful interaction between actors. By using the concepts of social capital, socialisation agents and psychological sense of community, this study contributes to an understanding of mentoring and workplace learning.

This exploratory inquiry sheds light on the nature of victim (i.e. provocative and passive) and specific work context in shaping the perceived causes and outcomes of felt workplace ostracism in teaching faculty of Pakistani higher educational institutions (HEIs) based on target-centric victimization framework.

This phenomenological research is based on data gathered from 30 ostracized teaching faculty members working in Pakistani public and private HEIs through in-depth semi-structured interviews. The interviews were tape-recorded, and transcription was entered in NVivo 12 Plus software to conduct thematic analysis.

This study found that provocative and submissive victim status, as well as the specific contextual factors in Pakistani HEIs (i.e. negative competition, cronyism, egoism and poor interpersonal relationships), is responsible for fostering workplace ostracism and yielding unique outcomes in each case.

This study has taken the scantly used target-centric victimization framework to distinguish the causes and consequences of workplace ostracism based on the nature of victim and work context in Pakistani HEIs .

This review analyzes data from research articles published from 2010 to 2022 related to workplace ostracism which include theoretical or empirical practical implications. The primary motive of this review is to identify main themes of practical implications relevant to workplace ostracism.

In total, 86 research articles published in 56 journals were retrieved from six well-known management science databases, namely, Science Direct, Emerald Online, Springer Link, Taylor and Francis, Wiley and Sage. The affinity diagram was utilized to organize the practical implications of the studies into meaningful themes. Moreover, in order to prioritize the main themes, the Pareto diagram was utilized.

Eleven themes have been used to categorize the practical implications of the reviewed articles, demonstrating various human resource (HR) interventions for avoiding or limiting the feelings of ostracism at work. Specifically, they focus on training and development, culture, formal and informal meetings, interpersonal relationships, task interdependence, monitoring, trust and transparency, proper channel, job autonomy and individual characteristics.

While many systematic and traditional literature reviews have been undertaken in an attempt to thoroughly organize extant literature on various aspects of workplace ostracism, no study has addressed the main themes of practical implications vis-à-vis employees experiencing workplace ostracism. Moreover, the majority of them are apparently out of date (prior to 2019), and there is just one study undertaken up to 2020.

Without competent and talented employees, no organisation can grow and sustain for a long time. It becomes essential for every organisation to retain and satisfy the employees to achieve their predetermined organisational goals. The present study examines the mediating effect of workplace spirituality dimensions (i.e. meaningful work, compassion, transcendence, mindfulness and sense of community) in the link between job satisfaction and organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) among managerial employees of selected manufacturing firms of Chhattisgarh state.

Correlational research design was incorporated. Employees working at managerial positions at different private manufacturing firms of Chhattisgarh state were chosen as a sample for the present study. Regression analysis and confirmatory factor analysis tools were used to analyse the primary data collected from 400 respondents.

The results revealed that all the dimensions of workplace spirituality, i.e. meaningful work, compassion, transcendence, mindfulness and sense of community, were found statistically significant and partially mediated between job satisfaction and OCB among managerial employees of Chhattisgarh. The authors discussed the results thoroughly and provided avenues for the future research.

The findings of the present research study will assist all private organisations in rethinking their employee retention and satisfaction strategies, since the presence of workplace spirituality in the organisation has a significant and beneficial impact on its environment. The current research will assist organisations in creating circumstances for OCB for employee via the introduction of workplace spirituality.

Creating spirituality in the current situation, where Covid-19 has suddenly affected all organisations around the world, would be extremely beneficial in terms of employee retention and satisfaction, which would eventually aid in the development of an environment conducive to citizenship behaviour at the workplace. However, the role of workplace spirituality as a mediator in the link between job satisfaction and OCB is innovative and has received little attention in the research community.

The potential applications of information and communication technologies in the workplace are wide-ranging and, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, have increasingly found their way into the field of electronic performance monitoring (EPM) of employees. This study aims to examine the influence of EPM on individual performance considering the aspects of privacy invasion, organizational trust and individual stress within an organization. Thus, important insights are generated for academia as well as business.

A theoretical framework was developed which conceptualizes perceived EPM as independent variable and individual performance as dependent variable. Moreover, the framework conceptualizes three mediator variables (privacy invasion, organizational trust and individual stress). Based on a large-scale survey (N = 1,119), nine hypotheses were tested that were derived from the developed framework.

The results indicate that perception of EPM significantly increases privacy invasion, reduces organizational trust, increases individual stress and ultimately reduces individual performance. Moreover, it was found that privacy invasion reduces organizational trust and that this lowered trust increases individual stress. Altogether, these findings suggest that the use of EPM by employers may be associated with significant negative consequences.

This research enriches the literature on digital transformation, as well as human–machine interaction, by adopting a multidimensional theoretical and empirical perspective regarding EPM in the workplace context, in which the influence of EPM perceptions on individual performance is examined under the influence of different aspects (privacy invasion, organizational trust and individual stress) not currently considered in this combination in the literature.

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to trigger a transcendental concern toward building the spiritual capital (SC) particularly focused on the highly relevant domain of work. In doing so, this conceptual framework focuses on potential antecedents and outcomes of the SC.

Such an endeavor is premised on the Christian's teaching that advocates the need for gathering spiritual treasures (i.e. capital). Secondly, the foray into Spiritism Doctrine (SD) literature is due to the fact that this doctrine considers the spiritual construct as the cornerstone of its principles and tenets. Thirdly, it also examines the related perceptions and approaches from the fields of positive psychology, positive organizational scholarship, workplace spirituality and psychology of religion.

The model invites the individual to capitalize on salient virtues and remarkable human qualities so as to build a SC, namely: humility, compassion, forgiveness, empathy, positive emotions, connections/relationships and sense of cooperation. Finally, it is envisaged that the attempt to create a SC may lead the individual to a feeling of well-being and more resilience at work.

At last, the implications to develop a SC in the context of work are sizeable. After all, it implies to add more concerns to one's career much beyond those strictly functional or professional ones. Rather, it means to regard the work domain through unusual lens.

By bringing the conceptual framework of SC to the forefront of management, spirituality and religion studies through an interdisciplinary approach showed that it is not an elusive or mythical topic. On the contrary, this analysis revealed that this is a serious and surprisingly neglected issue that deserves further attention in light of the benefits that it can potentially yield.

This paper aims to investigate whether relational agency fosters relational people management using evidence from micro and small enterprises in Uganda, an African developing country. Specifically, the paper examines whether the individual relational agency dimensions (shared learning, mutual cooperation, collective efficacy and interaction enablement) also affect relational people management.

A cross-sectional survey design using a quantitative approach was used in this study. Data were collected from 241 micro and small enterprises in Uganda using a structured questionnaire and were analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Scientists.

The results indicate that relational agency is positively and significantly associated with relational people management. Findings further indicated that collective efficacy, mutual cooperation, shared learning and interaction enablement individually matter in relational people management.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study may be among the first to demonstrate that relational agency and its individual dimensions (interaction enablement, shared learning, mutual cooperation and collective efficacy) foster relational people management in the context of micro and small enterprises of Uganda, an African developing country. Consequently, this study contributes to both theory and literature via the cultural historical activity theory, hence, adding to the scant existing literature on relational agency and relational people management.

The authors explore the ways work-based learning (WBL) can help degree apprentices cross the gaps between the workplace and the classroom, arguing that problem-based learning allows them to become aware of the overlaps in skills required to succeed between the two sites of learning.

This case study of a self-managed learning module uses a workshop methodology to understand the ways 61 undergraduate business management apprentices in the UK navigate the boundaries between work and learning and develop skills across both domains.

The authors' findings suggest that degree apprentices do not always perceive the two sites as overlapping in terms of what skills are required and how learning takes place. However, WBL modules have the potential to make them aware of how one informs and reinforces the other. Students identified teamwork, communication and reflection as necessary at the workplace and in their studies. They also viewed learning agility at critical, especially in the time of coronavirus disease 2019.

The paper adds to the existing literature exploring how WBL learning can help minimise the gap between the classroom and the workplace by adding the analysis of the case study. Those interested in developing modules which embed theory and practice can benefit from the discussion on how such modules enable students to reflect on the crossover between the two sites, not only on degree apprenticeships but higher education degrees broadly.