Anita L. Tucker and Amy C. Edmondson
This paper investigates how hospital work environments and manager behavior influence nurses' responses when faced with unexpected problems, or exceptions. Data from a qualitative…
Abstract
This paper investigates how hospital work environments and manager behavior influence nurses' responses when faced with unexpected problems, or exceptions. Data from a qualitative study involving 239 hours of observation of 26 hospital nurses at nine hospitals suggest that exceptions occur frequently and that the work design of hospital nurses leads them to respond to exceptions through first-order problem solving, addressing only immediate symptoms without attempting to alter underlying causes. This pattern of behavior contrasts with recommended approaches found in the quality improvement literature (Ackoff, 1978; Deming, 1986; Juran, Godfrey, Hoogstoel & Schilling, 1999; Kepner & Tregoe, 1976). An implication of our findings is that health care managers may need to tailor front line quality improvement processes to meet the demands of the health care delivery environment — in which exceptions are so frequent as to be considered virtually routine — rather than expecting health care workers to engage in quality improvement practices developed for work environments with different characteristics. Building on empirical observations from our study, we draw from two literatures — healthcare management and organizational behavior — to develop a model of problem solving behavior by hospital nurses. The model proposes that nurse manager coaching, support, and proficiency, together with features of the organizational context — training, self management, work design, group norms, and reward interdependence — influence nurses' problem solving behavior through the mediating variable of nurse cognition (psychological safety and motivation). The use of a problem solving coordinator moderates the problem-solving behavior's impact on performance outcomes.
Anita L. Tucker, Amy C. Edmondson and Steven Spear
We propose that research on problem‐solving behavior can provide critical insight into mechanisms through which organizations resist learning and change. In this paper, we…
Abstract
We propose that research on problem‐solving behavior can provide critical insight into mechanisms through which organizations resist learning and change. In this paper, we describe typical front‐line responses to obstacles that hinder workers’ effectiveness and argue that this pattern of behavior creates an important and overlooked barrier to organizational change. Past research on quality improvement and problem solving has found that the type of approach used affects the results of problem‐solving efforts but has not considered constraints that may limit the ability of front‐line workers to use preferred approaches. To investigate actual problem‐solving behavior of front‐line workers, we conducted 197 hours of observation of hospital nurses, whose jobs present many problem‐solving opportunities. We identify implicit heuristics that govern the problem‐solving behaviors of these front‐line workers, and suggest cognitive, social, and organizational factors that may reinforce these heuristics and thereby prevent organizational change and improvement.
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The purpose of this paper is to give prominence and further understand the Coleman and Borman (2000) citizenship performance model. This study also aims to determine and validate…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to give prominence and further understand the Coleman and Borman (2000) citizenship performance model. This study also aims to determine and validate the scale formed from the behaviour statements defined by Coleman and Borman in the Indian context by using standard validating measures.
Design/methodology/approach
The citizenship performance construct was measured and validated with a sample of 150 employees working in the IT/ITES sector in Chennai, India. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were performed on the 27 behavioural statements proposed by Coleman and Borman (2000), which were converted into a five-point Likert scale.
Findings
This paper proposes that citizenship performance can be reliably measured by the 17 items which are based on the 27 citizenship performance behaviour (CPB) statements provided by Coleman and Borman. In addition, it also confirms that citizenship performance is a second-order multi-dimensional construct.
Research limitations/implications
An acceptable but constrained sample was used in this study. The sample frame was limited to the IT/ITES sector in Chennai, a city in Tamil Nadu, India, to minimise cultural influences on the study.
Originality/value
This paper bridges and backs the conceptualisation of the Coleman and Borman (2000) model and the validation of a questionnaire based on their proposed set of CPB statements in the Indian context. This helps to measure the model with its intended questionnaire rather than borrowing items from other scales measuring other dimensions of the OCB domain.
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Purpose: This chapter problematizes the philosophical origins of direct funding models in a normative conception of independence that ignores and obscures the fundamentally…
Abstract
Purpose: This chapter problematizes the philosophical origins of direct funding models in a normative conception of independence that ignores and obscures the fundamentally relational nature of care work.
Approach: The study adopts a reflexive ethnographic methodological approach. In-depth, semistructured interviews were conducted with 19 participants variously involved with direct-funded attendant services (disabled “self-managers,” “attendant” employees, other members of self-managers’ support networks, and program staff). Additional data sources included the author's reflexive journaling and publicly available policy and program materials. The present analysis interrogated the impact of systemic constraints (i.e., limited funding) on the organization and management of attendant services.
Findings: The data illuminate how systemic constraints draw the interests of self-managers and attendants into tension, despite the affective relationality of the work they do together. The findings present four strategies self-managers adopt to maximize support hours, including: splitting shifts, strategic hiring, dynamic resource management, and supplementing remuneration. These findings suggest it is not vulnerability to each other that represents an ongoing concern for self-managers and attendants, so much as exploitation by a system that capitalizes on the oppression of both groups.
Implication/ Value: Disabled people and care workers have been and continue to be constructed as opposing interest groups. However, there is great potential in disabled people and care workers joining a united front to lobby for their common, often interrelated interests. Direct funding models are an important evolution of support services, but where they fail to attend to the relational nature of care work, we must continue to pursue more inclusive solutions.
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Since the first Volume of this Bibliography there has been an explosion of literature in all the main areas of business. The researcher and librarian have to be able to uncover…
Abstract
Since the first Volume of this Bibliography there has been an explosion of literature in all the main areas of business. The researcher and librarian have to be able to uncover specific articles devoted to certain topics. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume III, in addition to the annotated list of articles as the two previous volumes, contains further features to help the reader. Each entry within has been indexed according to the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus and thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid information retrieval. Each article has its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. The first Volume of the Bibliography covered seven journals published by MCB University Press. This Volume now indexes 25 journals, indicating the greater depth, coverage and expansion of the subject areas concerned.
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The purpose of this paper is to discuss whether artists create research outcomes in a revolving (or spiraling) process? This can be a catch-22 where their work is responding to…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to discuss whether artists create research outcomes in a revolving (or spiraling) process? This can be a catch-22 where their work is responding to and forecasting change, while the artist’s voice is often seen as too qualitative to provide research impact for university societies or to be compared with the quantitative data that scientists use.
Design/methodology/approach
Where will research methods, qualitative and quantitative overlap? The author knows that both methods are important for ongoing observations about creative arts practice. The qualitative is part of Holmes’ (2011/2012) query about how “knowledge involved in artistic thinking should […] include the issue of how mental images are given creative form, but this is a process that remains obscure in current art research” (p. 2).
Findings
For Holmes, “the knowledge product of art research cannot be considered separate from the researcher’s psychic processes; and the currently obscure relationship between artistic production and subjectivity might lead to one of the unique contributions to be made by art research” (Holmes, 2011/2012, p. 2). Holmes’ suggestion provides a strategic link to the way arts and sciences might overlap. “How do artists and scientists find a way to match issues, ideas and theories?” This may be especially so in relation to the integral use of image to empower a message.
Originality/value
This paper offers an original look at how artists empower with image.
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María de-Miguel-Molina, Daniel Catalá-Pérez, Blanca de-Miguel-Molina and Virginia Santamarina-Campos
This chapter reports on the “CEO’s-eye-view” of the 1990 financial crisis at Citibank using unique data from CEO John Reed’s private archives. This qualitative analysis sheds…
Abstract
This chapter reports on the “CEO’s-eye-view” of the 1990 financial crisis at Citibank using unique data from CEO John Reed’s private archives. This qualitative analysis sheds light on questions that have perennially plagued executives and intrigued scholars: How do organizations change routines in order to overcome inertia in the face of radical change in the environment? And, specifically, what is the role of the CEO in this process? Inertial behavior in such circumstances has been attributed to ingrained routines that are based on cognitive and motivational truces. Routines are performed because organizational participants find them to cohere to a particular cognitive frame about what should be done (the cognitive dimension) and to resolve conflicts about what gets rewarded or sanctioned (the motivational dimension). The notion of a “truce” explains how routines are “routinely” activated. Routines are inertial because the dissolution of the truce would be inconsistent with frames held by organizational participants and fraught with the risk of unleashing unmanageable conflict among interests in the organization. Thus, the challenge for the CEO in making intended change is both to break the existing truce and to remake a new one. In this study, I uncover how the existing organizational truce led to the crisis at Citibank, why Reed’s initial attempts to respond failed, and how he ultimately found ways to break out of the old truce and establish new routines that helped the bank survive. These findings offer insight into the cognitive and motivational microfoundations of macro theories about organizational response to radical change.