Search results

A questionnaire concerning their out‐patient consultation was completed by 372 patients attending 17 different clinics over a two‐day period at East Birmingham Hospital. The majority were satisfied with their consultations and felt better informed but many waited excessively long periods and many could not give the name or status of the doctor they had seen. The patients identified the hospital doctor as being more knowledgeable and, therefore, preferable for follow‐up care when compared to their general practitioner. Because of this, they were prepared to be inconvenienced to achieve hospital follow‐up.

Global concerns over dysfunctional behaviours including bribery and corruption, embezzlement of funds and other conducts by leaders and public officials have become ubiquitous in organizations. Although national and organizational systems have been instituted to make these behaviours a high-risk and low-gain activity, these behaviours have been pervasive in the moral psyche of nations, especially in developing countries. The purpose of this study is to examine the underpinning factors exacerbating dysfunctional behaviours in Ghana's Public Service (GPS) and link these causes to social capital theory.

This is a qualitative case study, which employed semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions (FGDs) and documentary reviews as the data collection instruments. In all, 20 in-depth interviews and four FGD were conducted.

The following were used to explain how social capital contributes to dysfunctional behaviours: the extended family system, respect for the elderly, moral tone of the nation and in-group member effect, organizational politics and politicization of the service.

The main limitation of this research is the limited sample size, which does not portray the views of all employees working within GPS.

HR has a crucial role in intervening to ameliorate this challenge. The mechanisms to deploy include the development of employee awareness and skills on ethical behaviours, instituting ethical governance culture, encouraging, rewarding ethical behaviour and introducing effective performance management systems. This will enhance employees' behaviours and ensure improved engagement and overall good governance practices and ethical behaviour.

The main value of this research is its contribution in bringing to the fore some underlying causes of dysfunctional behaviours in the public service of developing countries.

Open Courseware, in many ways, was the starting point towards mainstream discussion and adoption of open learning, particularly in higher education. In its first iteration, the concept specifically excluded assessment recognition, and credentialisation, which aims to ‘liberate’ knowledge without shattering the designing, teaching and awarding processes traditional education has relied upon for decades, if not centuries.

Explained pay dispersion theory (Shaw, Gupta, & Delery, 2002) contends that the consequences of pay dispersion depend on two critical contingencies: (1) the presence of legitimate or normatively acceptable dispersion-creating practices, and the (2) identifiability of individual contributions. In this chapter, the first 20 years of empirical evidence and theoretical offshoots of this theory are reviewed. Other recent studies on the outcomes of horizontal and vertical pay dispersion are also evaluated. The review concludes with an evaluative summary of the literature and the identification of several potential fruitful areas for future research.

Purpose — Most managers seem dissatisfied with their careers after they return from expatriate assignments. The study aimed to identify the reasons for their dissatisfaction and distill implications for MNCs interested in improving the return on the investment they make on expatriation and harnessing the valuable knowledge with which many managers return after successful completion of expatriate assignments.

Methodology/approach — The data were collected via depth interviews with recently returned expatriates.

Findings — The level of dissatisfaction among returning expatriates is high and is attributable to a poorly managed HR function. While considerable sums are invested in transferring knowledge from home to host offices, MNCs seem curiously inattentive to the process by which their returning expatriates are reintegrated into the firm.

Practical implications — Managers' voices call for a strategically oriented HR function of MNCs and a new organisation for developing intellectual capital and a cadre of globally trained managers. Changes in structure, systems and processes are discussed.

Social implications — If MNCs continue neglecting the repatriation needs of their expatriates, and paying little or no attention to transferring their knowledge about international operations, U.S. companies are likely to lag in terms of utilising that knowledge to become more effective global organisations.

Originality/value of the chapter — Sources of dissatisfaction among returning expatriates are identified. Much of the dissatisfaction relates to the disconnect between expectations and reality, the failure of the mentor role and a lagging HR function. The chapter identifies steps to correct these problems.

This paper aims to investigate the effects of school quality (SQ) on residential property prices in Johannesburg, South Africa. Previous studies have empirically examined the quality of private and public schools without a standard proxy that is accepted in the literature. As a result, this paper extends the literature to the global south by the effect that SQ has on residential property price changes in the local markets of the City of Johannesburg.

The research adopts the hedonic pricing model to evaluate and quantify the impact that the structural attributes such as erf size; number of bedrooms and bathrooms; and SQ measured by pass rates, sport rankings and quality of facilities have on house prices. A total of 2,763 property transactions covering the Kensington and Observatory areas of the City of Johannesburg over the period 2010 and 2020 were obtained from the deeds registry and used for the empirical analysis.

The study finds that SQ has a positive impact on house prices. When the average pass rate of the model school increases by 1%, all other things being equal, house prices also increase by 1.8%. This suggests that people who live closer to the model school are willing to pay more when the school performance improves. The 1.8% premium this study attributes to a 1% increase in school performance is however generally low when compared to some findings in the literature suggesting that there may be some other important factors that households consider when purchasing their home.

The main contribution is uncovering the relationship between the SQ and residential property prices in the local markets, using Kensington and Observatory in Johannesburg as sampled areas. Due to the presence of reliable and quality of data sets, such studies are not many in the global south and a study of this nature in South Africa is notably not existing in the literature.

Organizational scholars studying compensation often place an emphasis on certain employee groups (e.g., executives). Missing from this discussion is research on the compensation systems for low-wage jobs. In this review, the authors argue that workers in low-wage jobs represent a unique employment group in their understanding of rent allocation in organizations. The authors address the design of compensation strategies in organizations that lead to different outcomes for workers in low-wage jobs versus other workers. Drawing on and integrating human resource management (HRM), inequality, and worker literatures with compensation literature, the authors describe and explain compensation systems for low-wage work. The authors start by examining workers in low-wage work to identify aspects of these workers’ jobs and lives that can influence their health, performance, and other organizationally relevant outcomes. Next, the authors explore the compensation systems common for this type of work, building on the compensation literature, by identifying the low-wage work compensation designs, proposing the likely explanations for why organizations craft these designs, and describing the worker and organizational outcomes of these designs. The authors conclude with suggestions for future research in this growing field and explore how organizations may benefit by rethinking their approach to compensation for low-wage work. In sum, the authors hope that this review will be a foundational work for those interested in investigating organizational compensation issues at the intersection of inequality and worker and organizational outcomes.

Organizational researchers studying well-being – as well as organizations themselves – often place much of the burden on employees to manage and preserve their own well-being. Missing from this discussion is how – from a human resources management (HRM) perspective – organizations and managers can directly and positively shape the well-being of their employees. The authors use this review to paint a picture of what organizations could be like if they valued people holistically and embraced the full experience of employees’ lives to promote well-being at work. In so doing, the authors tackle five challenges that managers may have to help their employees navigate, but to date have received more limited empirical and theoretical attention from an HRM perspective: (1) recovery at work; (2) women’s health; (3) concealable stigmas; (4) caregiving; and (5) coping with socio-environmental jolts. In each section, the authors highlight how past research has treated managerial or organizational support on these topics, and pave the way for where research needs to advance from an HRM perspective. The authors conclude with ideas for tackling these issues methodologically and analytically, highlighting ways to recruit and support more vulnerable samples that are encapsulated within these topics, as well as analytic approaches to study employee experiences more holistically. In sum, this review represents a call for organizations to now – more than ever – build thriving organizations.

Presents a series of articles on each of the following topics: digital strategy in the next millennium (Digital strategy – a model for the millennium; Searching for the next competitive edge; The technology link; Value web management opportunities; clash of the Titans: communications companies battle for new ground; and a guide through the maze); retailing and distribution in the digital era (The business case for electronic commerce; superdistribution spells major changes; VF Corp. sews up software operation; IBM seeks to harness digital revolution; Egghead’s bold move to a Web‐based strategy; achieving successful Internet banking; and enterprising uses for IT); and the changing shape of the aviation industry (boom times ahead for air cargo; United Airlines flies high through employee ownership; Asian practices to West at Cathay Pacific; and Ryannair strips to the bone).

Purpose – It may be time to reformulate the rejection of censorship. Freedom is not the only opposite of, strategic resource against, or antidote to, censorship. Methodology/Approach – This chapter argues against censorship with a Kantian-normative approach (the deontological position of the categorical imperative), using conceptual analysis, constructivism, and international legal scholarship, from the standpoint of a humanity-wide duty to safeguard and promote cultural diversity and biodiversity. Increasingly visible weaknesses of the argument against censorship from the utilitarian standpoint of freedom, a negative argument, can be avoided in this way. Findings – Especially the neoliberal approach to freedom has no provisions against corporate and only little against copyright censorship, which are both becoming increasingly acute. Diversity, on the other hand, both biological and cultural, is argued to be instrumentally good, and intrinsically good, but the latter only if balanced by equality of basic rights. Originality/Value – The resulting moral and legal imperatives are to support, safeguard, and promote diversity, and thus to minimize both censorship in culture and selection/elimination in nature, but only to minimize them, simply because they cannot themselves be eliminated. It is impossible to eliminate elimination. This becomes clear when one considers self- and soft censorship. At least in the wide sense, censorship is inevitable – but sustainable development is impossible without strict minimization of censorship.