Search results

This study aims to examine the role of horizontal and vertical individualism‐collectivism in explaining conflict management styles. Design/methodology/approach – A total of 640 respondents completed the Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory‐II (ROCI‐II, Form C) designed to assess five conflict management styles and the individualism‐collectivism (I‐C) scale designed to assess the vertical and horizontal aspects of individualism‐collectivism. Findings – Correlation and regression analyses provide support for a conceptual fit between cultural dimensions and conflict management styles. Horizontal and vertical aspects of individualism‐collectivism explained 5‐20 percent of the variance in the various conflict management styles. Specifically, individuals displaying an individualist orientation (horizontal and vertical) tended to give greater importance to satisfying personal needs and preferred a dominating style, rather than an obliging or avoiding style. In contrast, collectivists (horizontal and vertical) seemed more likely to sacrifice personal needs for the sake of the group and preferred an integrating style. Further, horizontal collectivists were more likely to prefer an obliging style and vertical collectivists an avoiding style of conflict management. Research limitations/implications – Generalization is limited to college student samples from the USA. Practical implications – Organizations could provide training programs to sensitize employees to their specific cultural orientations and their preferred conflict management styles. In addition, employees could learn to switch between styles depending on the situation, issue, or relationship within which the conflict is taking place. Originality/value – Highlights the importance of sensitizing employees to their cultural orientation and preferred conflict management style; raises the possibility of training them to develop alternate styles.

This paper aims to explain a celebrity’s deep resonance with consumers by unpacking the individual constituents of a celebrity’s polysemic appeal. While celebrities are traditionally theorised as unidimensional semiotic receptacles of cultural meaning, the authors conceptualise them here instead as human beings/performers with a multi-constitutional, polysemic consumer appeal.

Supporting evidence is drawn from autoethnographic data collected over a total period of 25 months and structured through a hermeneutic analysis.

In rehumanising the celebrity, the study finds that each celebrity offers the individual consumer a unique and very personal parasocial appeal as the performer, the private person behind the public performer, the tangible manifestation of either through products and the social link to other consumers. The stronger these constituents, individually or symbiotically, appeal to the consumer’s personal desires, the more s/he feels emotionally attached to this particular celebrity.

Although using autoethnography means that the breadth of collected data is limited, the depth of insight this approach garners sufficiently unpacks the polysemic appeal of celebrities to consumers.

The findings encourage talent agents, publicists and marketing managers to reconsider underlying assumptions in their talent management and/or celebrity endorsement practices.

While prior research on celebrity appeal has tended to enshrine celebrities in a “dehumanised” structuralist semiosis, which erases the very idea of individualised consumer meanings, this paper reveals the multi-constitutional polysemy of any particular celebrity’s personal appeal as a performer and human being to any particular consumer.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a comprehensive framework that covers the major dimensions of performance-oriented office environments including involved actors and performance parameters on the one hand, and the processes and success factors of implementation and change management of such workspace projects on the other hand, with their interaction to be considered as well. This framework can serve as a first guideline and rough “checklist” to support such projects, both in research and practice.

The framework was developed and refined by combining international literature analyses, industry experience from the authors and application of first conceptual ideas to a pilot project. The methodology of the whole endeavor, not only this paper, is a grounded theory approach, acknowledging the intermediate state of prior theory regarding workspace change projects. The framework will thus be further developed with additional case-based empirics in the future.

The framework addresses the design parameters (the content) of (re)developing performance-oriented office environments as well as the management (the processes) of this (re)development including its implementation. Due to the considerable number of dimensions and factors relevant for workspace projects in addition to their interaction and dependency as well as the individuality of situation and stakeholders, the probability of workspace project failure is high. Knowing the parameters of workspace change project success and measures to be tracked and checked during the design and implementation processes of such projects is therefore imperative. Suggestions for operationalizing the relevant factors are made. Equally important is to understand and address individual emotions and concerns of those being involved in or affected by the change situation, and to inform and include them adequately. The comprehensive framework provides a respective first overview.

The framework is conceptual, based on many sources. Yet, the exhaustive inclusion of all research on the many relevant factors is neither feasible nor intended. The paper rather tries to be comprehensive on the dimensions to be considered and to only exemplarily concretize how to handle this complexity in a manageable and practical way. Future research needs to test and adapt the proposed framework, to detail key performance indicators (KPIs), indicators and processes suggested, and to develop an according planning and controlling system.

The paper pictures key aspects for the effective design and change management of holistic workspace projects. KPIs as well as leading indicators are introduced that can be used to measure the various dimensions in an ongoing process throughout all phases of the project, enabling the organization to anticipate or at least rapidly react to problems arising. Accordingly, success factors for managing workspace change are collected and structured along the workspace dimensions including actors and performance.

The originality of this study lies in the approach to comprehensively integrating design and change management parameters of workspace projects, the explicit performance orientation and the inclusion of the multitude of actors (i.e. users, facilities management, Human Resources, ICT). Instead of the design and its implementation only being supported by change management, the organizational environment and its needs – like way of working, organization models, performance priorities and change capabilities – are driving the design, which constitutes a new approach in the design activity.

Aims to identify the importance of segmentation both as part of the network design process and as an operational tool for correctly allocating products to appropriate supply chains.

The allocation is based upon a wide range of possible factors relating to the characteristics of the product, to the market, to the source and to the geographic/commercial context. The application of this framework is presented in a case study of a global electronics company, where large costs savings were achieved through the segmentation of supply chains.

A logical basis for segmentation is derived and an operational framework developed, which highlights the importance of product value density (PVD), throughput volume and product availability.

Demonstrates the paramount importance of throughput, demand variability/service factor and PVD as the key drivers in the segmentation process.

Prosecutions under Criminal Law, associated in the minds of most people with “criminal offences” of a serious nature—“crime” in the traditional sense—and undertaken by the police authorities, constitute a very large and rather untidy body of public law. It includes a large and constantly growing number of offences in respect of which prosecutions are undertaken by various corporate bodies who, as in the case of local authorities, have a duty albeit with a power of discretion, to prosecute. There would appear to be little in common between such offences, as smoking in the presence of open food or failing to provide soap, nail‐brushes, etc, for food handlers, and the villainy and violence of the criminal, but their misdeeds are all criminal offences and subject to the same law. Other countries, such as France, have definite Criminal Codes and these offences against statutes and statutory instruments which in English Law are dealt with in the broad field of Criminal Law, are subject to special administrative procedure. It has obvious advantages. Although in England and Wales, prosecutions are undertaken by police authorities, local authorities, public corporations, even professional bodies and private individuals, with a few statutory exceptions for which the Attorney‐General's fiat or consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions is necessary, may instigate a prosecution against anyone if he can provide prima facie evidence to support it. In Scotland, prosecutions are instituted at the instigation of the various authorities by an officer, the Procurator‐Fiscal. Many advocate such a system for England and Wales, despite the enormous difference in the volume of litigation. Supervision of prosecutions on a much smaller scale is by the Director of Public Prosecutions, an office created in 1879, with power to institute and carry on criminal proceedings—this is the less significant of his duties, the number of such prosecutions usually being only several thousands per year—the most important being to advise and assist chief officers of police, clerks to the magistrates and any others concerned with criminal proceedings Regulations govern the cases in which DPP may act, mainly cases of public interest. The enormous growth of summary jurisdiction over the years, especially that arising from so‐called secondary legislation, is largely outside his sphere.

One of the major developments of the post‐War years has been the rise of consumer protection ‘watchdog’ committees galore, a flood of legislation and completely changed enforcement methods by existing local authority officers who to all and intents have become a completely new service. Voluntary agencies, national and local, based on the local High Street, have appointed themselves the watchdogs of the retail trade; legislation and central departments, the larger scene. The new service has proved of inestimable value in the changed conditions; it continues to develop. When shopping was a personal transaction, with the housewife making her purchases from the shopkeeper or his staff on the opposite side of the counter; when each was well known to the other and the relationship had usually lasted for many years, often from one generation to the next, things were very different, complaints few, unsatisfactory items instantly replaced, usually without question. This continuing state of equanimity was destroyed by the retail revolution and new methods of advertising and marketing. Now, the numbers of complaints dealt with by consumer protection and environmental health departments of local authorities are truly enormous. We have become a nation of “complainers,” although in all conscience, we have much to complain about. Complaints cover the widest possible range of products and services, of which food and drink form an integral component. The complaints to enforcement authorities include many said to be unjustified, but from the reports of legal proceedings under relevant enactments, it is obvious that the bulk of them now originate from consumer complaints. Not all complainants, however, relish the thought of the case going before the courts. Less is heard publicly of complaints to the numerous voluntary bodies. Enforcement authorities see complaints in terms of infringements of the law, although their role as honest broker, securing recompense to the aggreived customer, has become important; a few departments being able to claim that they secured reimbursements and replacements of value totalling upwards of amounts which annually run into six figures. The broker role is also that adopted by voluntary bodies but with much less success since they lack the supporting authority of legal sanction.

Protests surrounding the 2004 Republican National Convention (RNC) resulted in over 1,800 arrests. Scholarship on repression is divided about the likely impacts of arrests on subsequent activism. Interviews with RNC arrestees are used to examine potential effects. Findings offer twists to social movements and socio-legal hypotheses: (1) while many arrestees were less willing to protest after their arrest, for many of these individuals deterrence was selective, not wholesale; (2) many factors that were expected to neutralize repressive impacts either resulted in deterrence or set the stage for radicalization; and (3) individuals who were radicalized shared strong preparation for their arrest experience.

Drawing inspiration from C Wright Mills exhortation to sociologists to locate themselves and their experiences in the ‘trends of their epoch’, I consider how first-hand experience of imprisonment can help criminology account for the growing trend towards the use of imprisonment in many Western democracies. Using interviews with a small group of British criminologists who have experience of imprisonment, I explore the connections between personal stories and collective narratives. Drawing reflexively from my own imprisonment, my subsequent professional trajectory and experiences of prison research, I consider the difficulties and potential of crafting a collective criminological project from disparate and profoundly personal experiences of imprisonment. The chapter combines methodological reflections on the use of autoethnography, autobiography and vignettes as a means to an end: establishing collective narratives from personal stories. I argue that the task of connecting these narratives to the ‘trends of the epoch’ that manifest in expanding prison populations is difficult but developing some momentum in convict criminology.

Leadership development may be a key strategy to enhance job satisfaction, reduce burnout and improve patient safety in health-care systems. This study aims to assess feasibility of a leadership development series in an effort to invigorate a collaborative culture, create peer networks and elevate autonomy in daily work.

The authors implemented a collectivistic leadership development series titled Fueling Leadership in Yourself. The series was designed for all types of health-care workers in the medicine service at a tertiary referral center for veterans. Two series of leadership development sessions with varied experiential learning methods were facilitated by content experts. Subjects focused on leadership approaches and attributes applicable to all roles within a health-care system. The authors collected participant perceptions using pre- and post-series surveys. Primary outcomes were understanding and applicability of leadership concepts, employee engagement in leadership, satisfaction with training and work environment and qualitative reflections.

A total of 26 respondents (of 38 participants) from 8 departments and several role types increased their knowledge of leadership techniques, were highly satisfied with and would recommend the series and found leadership principles applicable to their daily work. Participants continued to use skills years after the series.

Short, intermittent, collectivistic leadership development sessions appear effective in expanding knowledge, satisfaction and skills used in daily practice for a diverse group of health-care workers.

Novel programmatic aspects included inviting all types of health-care workers, practicing universally applicable content and using a variety of active, experiential learning methods.