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The purpose of this paper is to examine how abusive supervision affects employee creativity, incorporating departmental identification as a mediator and face as a moderator based on social identity theory.

The study sample consisted of 207 full-time employees in China.

Results indicate that abusive supervision is negatively related to employee creativity and this relationship is fully mediated by departmental identification. In addition, face held by employees plays a moderating role: the direct effect of abusive supervision on departmental identification and the mediating effect of departmental identification are stronger when face is low rather than high.

This study also has major practical implications for organizations. First, the organizations should fully understand the harmfulness of abusive supervision and try to avoid abusive behaviors. Second, the organizations could enhance employee creativity by promoting departmental identification. Third, employees who hold low face should get more attention and support.

This study makes several theoretical implications. First, findings contribute to enriching one’s understanding of the relationship between abusive supervision and employee creativity in China. Second, the domain of abusive supervision is expanded by empirically testing departmental identification as a crucial psychological mechanism explaining the abusive supervision – employee creativity relationship. Third, this study also advances one’s understanding of social identity process by examining empirically moderating effects of cultural value in the relationship between abusive supervision and employee creativity.

Whilst professional learning communities (PLCs) have been widely explored at the school level, they have received less attention at the departmental level. The study takes the variance between departments and the role of departmental teacher leaders into consideration, and the relationships amongst departmental-level PLC dimensions, two types of teacher leadership (TL) and individual teacher self-efficacy are investigated.

The sample consisted of 907 teachers from 81 departments in Chinese schools. The associations between the studied variables were explored through a multi-level analysis approach.

The results show that two specific characteristics of departmental PLCs, namely reflective dialogue (RD) and collective responsibility (CR), exhibit a positive correlation with individual teacher self-efficacy. Additionally, the findings indicate that teacher transformational leadership significantly predicts teacher self-efficacy, whereas teacher instructional leadership (IL) does not emerge as a significant predictor. These findings may be attributed to the contextual factors of Chinese teachers' collective work and the practice of teacher leaders.

This research contributes to the existing literature by addressing the variance between departments and uncovering the impacts of departmental PLC dimensions on individual teachers. Furthermore, two TL styles at the departmental level are differentiated, and their distinct influences on teacher self-efficacy are further analysed.

A plant layout in the context of manufacturing facilities design consists of the production areas, manufacturing support areas and personnel areas. In facilities design, plant layout has been determined to be one of the most important elements in the effectiveness of systematic manufacturing operability. This paper describes the development of a split departmental plant layout generation system (LAYSPLIT) in the domain of facilities design to develop layouts that will minimize the material handling costs. The plant layout generation system consists of a data acquisition module, a pair‐wise departmental exchange module, a layout development module, and a graphical representation module. The approach used to develop the system using a split departmental method, and the characteristics of the system are outlined. The advantages of the developed system in terms of facilitating effective operations and increasing productivity in manufacturing environments are discussed. The results obtained from LAYSPLIT are compared with that produced by the MCRAFT system and discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the current management perceptions regarding conflict within teams, specifically looking at capital investment appraisals, with the aim of improving team performance.

The research was undertaken in two stages. The first stage is based on a postal questionnaire survey relating to the appraisal of capital investments, addressed to large UK organisations. The second stage was conducted through semi-structured interviews, which were followed by a short-questionnaire sent out by e-mail, and designed from the information obtained from the interviews. The research is both qualitative and quantitative.

From the exploratory study, the author was able to identify and further investigate what the author’s respondents termed “personal” and “departmental” conflicts, as well as what the author perceived to be “good” (positive) conflict and “bad” (negative) conflict. The author finds that controlled “departmental” conflict may lead to enhanced decision making, while “personal” conflict may be destructive and lead to non-optimal decision making. The author also identified the importance of the investment appraisal “procedure” as distinct from the individual models used, and suggests that this is one way of controlling conflict within teams.

The research is limited by the fact that it is based on individual perceptions of a small sample number. However, the sample consists of some of the most senior executives from the largest UK organisations whose views are usually difficult to obtain by academics.

It provides senior managers with a comprehensive view, by their peers, and a better understanding of team conflict, especially with regard to “personal” and “departmental” conflicts; thus, allowing them to manage teams more efficiently in the future.

The research is unique in that it focusses on conflict within teams that are given the specific task of appraising capital projects and it theorises on what the respondents’ terms “departmental” and “personal” conflict. It brings up-to-date, managements’ current perception of team conflict and contributes to the ongoing search for a better understanding of conflict within business teams, and ultimately to an enhanced team performance and improved decision making.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how non‐finance departmental involvement in the management of exchange rate risks impacts the extent of foreign exchange speculation in non‐financial firms.

Non‐financial firms in a small open economy (Denmark) are surveyed to investigate the extent of foreign exchange speculation and how it is related to the degree of nonfinance departmental involvement in the management of exchange rate risks. The authors employ binary and ordered probit regression analysis.

A positive link is found between the extent to which departments other than the finance department are involved in the management of exchange rate risks; and second, the extent to which the firm is likely to speculate – whether in the form of selective hedging or active speculation – on the foreign exchange market.

The findings indicate that the trend towards a more integrated risk management approach in which the finance department is not the only department responsible for risk management may have the (unforeseen) consequence that foreign exchange speculation increases.

The paper's findings are important because the link between the extent of foreign exchange speculation and a more integrated risk management approach has not been addressed previously.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and empirically test a model investigating the relationship among inter-departmental communication, buyer innovativeness, and retail competitiveness. The authors also explore whether a retail strategy of supply base diversification for managing suppliers moderates the association between innovativeness and competitiveness.

Hypotheses were tested using a structural equation model and survey data drawn from general merchandise managers of 149 supermarket retailers in Japan.

The results indicate that inter-departmental communication between merchandising and store divisions drives innovativeness among retail buyers and ultimately strengthens firm competitiveness. Moreover, when buyer innovativeness is evident and less actively the retail buyers utilize supply base diversification, the stronger is the retailer’s competitiveness. The study failed to find any direct impact of inter-departmental communication on retail competitiveness.

This study offers managerial insights into the roles that buyer innovativeness, inter-departmental communications, and supply base diversification play in developing effective competitive strategies.

This study makes two key contributions. First, it is novel in using inter-departmental communication to explain the antecedents of buyer innovativeness. Second, drawing on the power-dependence theory, the authors extend the well-established innovativeness-performance linkage by exploring the moderation effect of supply base diversification.

Universities are social and economic instruments for investment in man and thereby for the development of human resources at the highest level. This is truer in the case of developing countries where science and technology have not yet extended their beneficial aspects to whole spheres of social life. While preserving culture and heritage, universities are the most powerful institutions for social change and innovation. At the same time, universities and colleges themselves are subject to changes and need to adapt to these.

This study aims to investigate growth stage of an entrepreneurial venture born within Thai university and also to explore the future growth strategy which is formulated by the departmental team and at the same time is influenced by the school’s administrators.

Single case study approach was used to explore the growth of dental school’s internal venture aimed to produce low-cost pharmaceutical supplies. The interview data were matched with relevant entrepreneurship literatures to build theory from case study.

There is a clash in terms of growth strategy preferred by the parental organization and department-level team who found the venture. The dental school’s administrators expect their internal venture to be fully commercialized as spin-off according to typical academic entrepreneurship scheme. Differently, the entrepreneurial team prefers keeping the departmental venture inside to serve its socially entrepreneurial motivation with modest growth.

The case evidence implies different schools of thought that could influence the growth of university-based entrepreneurial venture. The university’s entrepreneurial development scheme thus is to incorporate such differences to move its departmental venture forward for sustainable growth.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the library use pattern of humanities faculty members at University of the Punjab, Lahore.

A questionnaire‐based survey was conducted to get response from the targeted population which consisted of 90 teaching and research staff of humanities departments. The response rate was 69 percent.

The study reveals that most of the respondents feel themselves good in library use skills, which is owing to their high frequency of library use, not to any formal training. They prefer to use the library themselves, rather than seeking help from the library staff. Respondents found the central library richer in collection than their departmental libraries. Most of respondents were visiting the library for using the reference material or for searching some specific information and they seldom seek help from the library staff. Resources and services/facilities available in the central library were professed to be better than their departmental libraries. Respondents fulfilled their information needs not only from central and departmental libraries of the university but from other libraries in the city as well. They were facing the problem of non‐availability of required material due to their heavy dependency on the library resources. Dissatisfaction was also shown with the library staff and technical support. More journals and reference material in humanities were suggested by the respondents, along with better facilities and services.

The knowledge about the information needs and library use pattern of users helps the library and information science professionals to develop the library collections, improve the services and upgrade the facilities.

This paper provides a case study of how specific kinds of scholars use library services and should be of interest to librarians providing information services for humanists.

Employee participation is conceived as a four‐stage process (interaction, communication to and from management, influence by and on management, employee effect on decisions). Eighty‐two lower supervisory managers perceived the four stages as highly related except for influence by management. Further, the four processes of participation were found in approximately equal amounts (except for managerial influence). An examination by decision type showed that employee and managerial influence were inversely related on corporate and departmental decisions, but were unrelated on departmental employee and operational decisions. Employees engaged most in participation on departmental employee decisions and least on departmental staffing decisions. This difference in participation was greater for organisations of small size.