Ajay Singh, Gangaram Singh and James R. Beatty
An interesting conundrum exists in India with its rise as an economic powerhouse. On one front, there is tremendous pride in asserting its Indian identity. On another front, it…
Abstract
Purpose
An interesting conundrum exists in India with its rise as an economic powerhouse. On one front, there is tremendous pride in asserting its Indian identity. On another front, it seeks to embrace Western practices to announce its entry into the world economy. This paper aims to examine the extent to which Indian information technology (IT) firms adopt Western concepts of a high performance work system (HPWS) and the correlates of such a system (pro-social organizational behavior and employee attitude). Data from 211 IT employees in India show widespread adoption of a HPWS, and more importantly several approaches to assessment indicate that a HPWS positively correlates to pro-social organizational behavior and employee attitude.
Design/methodology/approach
The sample consisted of IT professionals in India having a minimum of three years of work experience. The study has used a snowball strategy to generate the sample. Eight HPWS practices were included in the survey questionnaire to assess three dimensions of HPWS. Analysis was conducted to examine differences between the highest (i.e. top 10 per cent) and the lowest (i.e. bottom 10 per cent) and bivariate correlations of the surveyed employees regarding pro-social organizational behaviors related to altruism, job involvement and work involvement, and regarding employees attitudes related to job satisfaction, intention to stay in organization, level of morale and optimism.
Findings
HPWS is positively associated with employee attitudes and pro-social organizational behavior. It reflects the reality that HPWSs, at least as conceived by researchers from the West, have penetrated organizations in India. Moreover, they seem to complement each other and together they seem to have a positive association with employee attitudes and pro-social organizational behavior. As organizations in India continue with the march toward servicing the world in the IT sector, the present study suggests that they have a potent tool in a HPWS to keep employee attitudes and pro-social organizational behaviors high.
Research limitations/implications
The criticism of survey methodology approach adopted in the present study is that it has common method bias. That is, in the survey, respondents tend to score along a path with a common response. As a validation, the study has performed a treatment-by-subjects analysis of variance with matched participant scores on the three pro-social behaviors to determine whether the means of altruism, job involvement and work involvement were significantly different. As to convergence, much more causal data would be needed to make a definitive conclusion on the findings of the present study.
Originality/value
This is the first study of its kind to examine the adoption of Western concepts of a HPWS in Indian IT Industry.
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Alex De Noble, Craig S. Galbraith, Gangaram Singh and Curt H. Stiles
The purpose of this paper is to test the proposition that religious orientation has a measurable affect on individuals' definitions of market justice and attitudes toward…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to test the proposition that religious orientation has a measurable affect on individuals' definitions of market justice and attitudes toward self‐employment.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper distinguishes between religious orientation and spirituality and defines religious orientation to be either intrinsic or extrinsic. It then examines the modern concept of market justice and hypothesizes that individuals with intrinsic religiosity will have negative opinions of the justice of market exchange while those with extrinsic religiosity will have positive opinions. It is expected that individuals that own their own business or have positive views of self‐employment will have positive opinions of the justice of market exchange. Finally, the paper hypothesizes that intrinsic religiosity will lead to higher levels of entrepreneurial behavior once opinion about market justice has been controlled for. The survey instrument was administered to 141 undergraduate business students.
Findings
Cluster analysis revealed two clusters; cluster membership was used as a binary dependent variable indicating positive or negative opinions of market justice. The intrinsic religiosity hypothesis is statistically supported. The self‐employment hypothesis is only partly supported. The entrepreneurial behavior hypothesis is also statistically supported.
Originality/value
This paper examines the concepts of religious orientation and attitudes toward market justice and entrepreneurship. It offers an empirical analysis of value‐based attitudes and their impact on entrepreneurial activity, and the importance of religious attitudes on market behaviors.
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Gangaram Singh and Alex DeNoble
The United States (U.S.) is a truly multi-ethnic society. White Anglo Americans are still the majority group, but the non-white group has recorded a sizable increase. Non-white…
Abstract
The United States (U.S.) is a truly multi-ethnic society. White Anglo Americans are still the majority group, but the non-white group has recorded a sizable increase. Non-white Americans make up about 26% of the population of the nation as a whole, and this number is projected to reach 31% by the year 2020 (Judy & D’Amico, 1997). The primary source regions of immigrants now include Mexico, Asia, South and Latin America, and other non-European areas. Established U.S. native minority populations historically consisted of African-Americans, native Indians, and second-generation Mexican immigrants (Cox, Lobel & McLeod, 1991).
Kamal Haddad, Gangaram Singh, Don Sciglimpaglia and Hung Chan
– The purpose of this study is to examine the relevance and limitations of using a top journal approach as a proxy for an article's value or contribution.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine the relevance and limitations of using a top journal approach as a proxy for an article's value or contribution.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors determined the citations for all articles published in 2001 and 2003 in 26 key marketing journals included in the Social Science Citation Index and 50 journals included in Google Scholar to rate the impact of a specific article. They also assessed these articles to examine the source of citations, as a way of measuring impact.
Findings
This study indicates that articles published in the journals most often considered the top three or four in marketing are cited by others significantly more often than the ones published in the other journals. However, the authors found substantial misclassification errors from using publications in these “top” journals to infer a top article status across three different criteria for defining a top article.
Originality/value
These findings strongly support the need to evaluate each article on its own merits, rather than abdicating this responsibility by using journal ranking as a proxy for an article's value or contribution.
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Sifeng Liu, Qi Li and Yingjie Yang
The purpose of this paper is to present a novel synthetic index of two counts and mathematical model for researcher evaluation.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present a novel synthetic index of two counts and mathematical model for researcher evaluation.
Design/methodology/approach
A synthetic index L for researcher evaluation considering both the total number of other citations (C) and nonacademic impact (I) and a synthetic evaluation model are proposed in this paper. C and I are verified impact indexes. According to investigation by Delphi method, researchers are divided into five different classes of “below average,” “average,” “good,” “excellent” and “stellar.” The threshold values for counts C of grey class “stellar” are determined by deep investigation. The possibility functions of the two counts C and I on four grey classes of “below average,” “average,” “good” and “excellent” are built.
Findings
The novel synthetic index of two counts and mathematical model for researcher evaluation provide a better way to conduct researcher assessment.
Practical implications
The synthetic index L presented in this paper can be used to evaluate a researcher. It's more reasonable than the current research assessment indexes such as the number of publications and the numbers of so-called high-quality journal publications and the amount of granted funds and so on. The synthetic index L reflects the actual value created by a researcher. No artificial maneuver can change them significantly.
Originality/value
A synthetic index L for researcher evaluation considering both the total number of other citations (C) and nonacademic impact (I) and a synthetic evaluation model are proposed in this paper.