Search results

Road trauma remains a significant concern internationally. Traffic crashes rank within the top three leading causes of death for individuals aged between 15–44 years old, with nonfatal casualties occurring at around 30 times the rate of fatal incidents. Historically, road safety research has not captured factors relating to driving purpose. However, more recently, researchers have focused on the importance of driving for work. Over a third of traffic volume represents commuting or driving in the line of employment; improving workplace road safety practices represents a tangible way of reducing road trauma. This chapter considers the link between safety culture and best practice in workplace road safety. It is argued that best practice is not a term to define individual safety practices, but a system of practices that create a culture of safety. This research uses data collected on organizations workplace road safety practices within the Australian context. This data has been collected by the National Road Safety Partnership Program (NRSPP); an initiative that constitutes a network of organizations and academics working together to develop a positive road safety culture. Twenty-four case studies are presented of organizations that have implemented workplace road safety programs to improve their safe driving culture. Qualitative analysis was conducted to systematically categorize the safety initiatives and their indicators of success. Almost all case studies expressed the importance of developing a safety-first culture in the workplace. Third-party regulation, internal policy and corporate social responsibility form the foundation of workplace safety. However, it was the culture and attitude towards the safety initiatives that achieved effectiveness in the long-term. The findings of this research support the argument that best practice is best achieved when integrated within a culture that values and prioritizes safety, rather than implemented in isolation to other elements in the workplace system.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss cultural causes of conflict in the workplace and call for research to address what happens when cultures collide generating workplace conflict. The author assumes that because cultures differ in terms of functional solutions to problems of social interaction that there will be conflict when people from different cultures are interdependent in the workplace. The author discusses types of culture and their conflict management profiles with respect to three characteristics of conflict management: direct vs indirect confrontation; emotional expression, and third party conflict management. The author proposes what happens when cultures collide and calls for research on those collisions.

Application of the cultural literature on self-worth to three elements of workplace conflict: direct vs indirect confrontation of conflict, feelings and expressions of negative emotions associated with conflict and timing and type of third party intervention.

When people from dignity, face, and honor cultures are working together the fundamental differences in the logic of self-worth in these three types of culture may cause conflict. People from dignity and honor cultures are likely to confront conflict directly, while those from face cultures are more likely to confront conflict indirectly. Workplace conflict generates negative emotions, but culture seems to affect whether that emotion is anger, shame or both. The timing of third party intervention into workplace conflict, that is, how managers intervene in workplace conflict has some parallels with how community mediators act in that culture.

There is limited research comparing management of workplace conflict in dignity, face, and honor cultures. The author generates propositions and suggests a research strategy for collecting data to test propositions.

Understanding what is culturally normative in terms of self-worth, confrontation, emotional expression, and managerial intervention can help people involved in workplace conflict understand what they are experiencing. It can also help managers intervene effectively.

How people react to workplace conflict varies with culture as does how managers intervene. Knowing this provides people with the first element of cultural intelligence that may help them manage conflict to facilitate a more creative and effective multicultural work environment.

This paper integrates theory and research from cross-cultural psychology, the psychology of emotion and the literature on third party intervention into community conflict to explain the patterns of cultural conflict and conflict management in the workplace. It also suggests what it may take to manage cultural conflict in the workplace successfully.

The aim of this chapter is to investigate the context dependence of the implications of telework for work–family conflict. It examines whether and how the implications of telework for strain-based and time-based work–family conflict depend on work–family-supportive and high-demand workplace cultures. Based on a sample of 4,898 employees derived from a unique linked employer–employee study involving large organizations in different industries in Germany, multilevel fixed-effects regressions were estimated.

The results show that telework is associated with perceived higher levels of both time-based and strain-based work–family conflict, and that this is partly related to overtime work involved in telework. However, teleworkers experience higher levels of work–family conflict if they perceive their workplace culture to be highly demanding, and lower levels if supervisor work–family support is readily available.

Future research is required to investigate how the conclusions from this research vary between heterogonous employees and how work–family-supportive and high-demand workplace cultures interrelate in their implications on the use of telework for work–family conflict.

The findings show how important it is to implement telework in a way that not only accommodates employers’ interest in flexibilization, but that it also makes it possible to reconcile work with a family life that involves high levels of responsibility.

This is the first study which examines whether telework is either a resource that reduces or a demand that promotes work–family conflict by focusing on whether this depends on perceived workplace culture.

Engaged employees are an organization’s competitive advantage because the employees are willing to strive for organizational excellence. This paper examines employee engagement (EE), taking workplace digitalization as the mediator. The authors developed an integrated framework introducing transformational leadership and innovative culture as EE antecedents in workplace digitalization settings. Specifically, the authors argue that transformational leadership and innovative culture influence EE directly and indirectly through workplace digitalization.

A total of 256 valid online-survey samples were used in the structural equation modeling (SEM) tests. The respondents were the management-level executives of Selangor/Kuala Lumpur-based Malaysian companies.

The authors' findings support that workplace digitalization positively influences EE. Unlike transformational leadership, innovative culture positively influences workplace digitalization. Further, innovative culture directly affects EE and indirectly through workplace digitalization, albeit partially. Transformational leadership directly influences EE but is insignificant through workplace digitalization.

The findings suggest that organizations that wish to fast-track EE can cultivate an innovative culture to facilitate employees' acceptance of workplace digitalization and enhance EE.

The authors' research expands the interdisciplinary theoretical foundation on how employees' perception and acceptance of workplace digitalization add to EE by highlighting the roles of transformational leaders and innovative culture. The authors' research is among the first few investigating how transformational leadership and innovative culture affect EE in the presence of workplace digitalization. The authors also discussed workplace digitalization as a mediator to innovative culture–EE relationships.

The purpose of this study is to provide a better insight into the role of national cultures on the management and design of workplaces of multinationals in different countries.

This explorative study is based on an extensive literature review of dimensions of a national culture in connection to corporate real estate management, interviews with ten representatives of multinationals on corporate real estate strategies and workplace characteristics and a multiple case study of two multinational firms with site visits and observations at offices in The Netherlands, Germany and Great Britain.

Whereas all interviewed companies had their real estate portfolio to some extent aligned to the local national culture, none had a strict central policy about this issue. Differences in workplace characteristics were mainly caused by the involvement of local people in workplace design. Using Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, the case studies showed relationships between masculinity of a culture and the expression of status and between uncertainty avoidance and openness to innovation; however, no relationships were found related to differences in power distance and short-/long-term orientation.

The case studies were conducted in three European Union countries. Due to practical reasons, most interviewees were Dutch. Additional empirical research including more different national cultures is needed to advance more unequivocal conclusions and to develop a clear set of guidelines for decision-making.

The findings stress the importance of finding a balance between aligning facilities to business purposes and meeting the needs of different (groups of) employees in multinational environments.

Although much has been written about national culture, not much research is yet available in connection to facilities management and corporate real estate management.

This conceptual paper explores the problems associated with trying to address culture as one of the key aspects in effective workplace strategies.

This paper critically addresses the relationship between workplace strategies and the behavioural components of locality. It reviews the role that the concept of culture has, so far, played in trying to predict these behavioural consequences as part of (literature discussing) efforts to design appropriate workplace strategies.

The discussion reveals the need to further address this relation through dedicated research. What is more, it is argued that there is a clear need to focus explicitly on work patterns, and how these can be accounted for in workplace strategies, instead of continuing to focus on the concept of culture as a predictor for successfulness. It is argued that the latter does not allow for practical application, whereas the former could help us to better understand and predict the effectiveness of specific workplace strategies in specific (local) circumstances.

The outcome of the discussion suggests that organisations consisting of multiple locations could benefit from explicitly accounting for (local) work patterns in setting up workplace strategies for the organisation as a whole.

This paper reveals a relevant research gap in current literature on workplace strategies and suggests a shift in focus from culture to work patterns as one of the key aspects to address.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to existing critiques of workplace spirituality and organizational culture. The paper links the two by problematising definitions of workplace spirituality that employ a “culture approach” to change, in which the construct is limited to a set of values that gives particular meaning to the workplace.

Properties of Weick's sensemaking model combined with a critical sensemaking approach are used to analyze texts in order to show how a spiritual culture may shape the actions of its members by serving as an implicit form of managerial control.

The paper reveals how some texts, Mitroff and Denton's, in particular, advocate workplace spirituality as necessary for organizations and the individuals who work in them to prosper. Simultaneously, such texts may imply a form of pastoral power, the purpose of which is to re‐affirm a positive self‐image, due to the cueing effects of language that is voiced in specific contexts.

The paper suggests that a cultural approach to understanding workplace spirituality influences how people can make sense of the organization in which they are members. The potential inordinate reverence of work and one's contribution toward enhanced organizational performance is of interest to all members of organizations because it highlights how control is achieved.

The paper offers some insights into the conditions that promulgate the linkage between work and spiritual fulfilment, and it promotes the continuing development of critical spirituality in organizations in order to overcome the potential managerial instrumentality that is highlighted in this paper.

Reliance on third-party judgments are common in efforts to identify and reduce workplace sexual harassment (SH). The purpose of this paper is to identify whether a workplace emphasis on inclusion as a cultural value is related to third-party labeling of and response to an exchange between a male manager and his female subordinate.

Participants (n=308) in an online survey experiment were randomly assigned to a workplace that emphasized inclusion or one that emphasized individual achievement as a cultural value. They read a vignette describing a workplace interaction between a male manager and his female subordinate and responded to a series of questions.

Organizational emphasis on inclusion is unrelated to third-party labeling of the interaction as SH, but positively associated with labeling the female’s intention to pursue harassment charges as an overreaction, and support for the female subordinate in a claim of SH against her manager. Culture is unassociated with willingness to defend the male manager in a SH claim.

Identifying how workplace culture shapes third-party reaction to harassment can help employers use third-party witnesses and cultural value statements as tools to reduce SH.

A workplace’s cultural emphasis on inclusion is positively related to third-party support for SH victims implying the importance of workplace context in the fight against workplace SH.

The paper presents the first experimental analysis of how a workplace cultural emphasis on inclusion affects the third-party observers’ reactions to SH.

This chapter aims to consider workplace spirituality from a cross-cultural perspective. The terms workplace spirituality and culture are so intangible, and both start with the attitude and behavior of humans but are meaningful in a community. Because of the constraint of understanding these abstract settings, it is necessary to define and specify the dimensions of both concepts to achieve the aim of this chapter. In this regard, the section starts with the conceptuality of workplace spirituality and the dimensions of the term, which cumulate at individual, group, and organizational levels. It goes with the part of cultural dimensions in the light of Hofstede's (2001) direction, Chhokar, Brodbeck, and House's (2007) extension, and Sharma's (2010) derivation of cultural dimensions for national, organizational, and individual levels, respectively. After joining the dots, the chapter focuses on one of the most sacred research areas for academic literature, cross-cultural differences, and workplace spirituality. The last part of the chapter is the conclusion to point to final notes about the concepts and help guide future studies.

This study aims to understand the role of digital literacies as a moderator between employee engagement and its antecedents, namely, workplace digitalisation and innovative culture.

A total of 256 valid samples were used in the analysis. The respondents were individuals used as management-level executives in companies located in Selangor/Kuala Lumpur. The model was tested using structural equation modelling.

The findings reveal that there exists a significant association between employee engagement and its antecedents, namely, workplace digitalisation and innovative culture. Digital literacies are found to moderate the relationships between workplace digitalisation-employee engagement and innovative culture-employee engagement.

This paper provides new insight to the practitioners about the role of digital literacies in raising employee engagement in the digital workplace.

These findings enrich the literature on employee engagement, whereby, improving employee digital literacies strengthens employee acceptance to workplace digitalisation and benefit from the innovative culture to stay engaged.