Xiaohong Xu, Stephanie C. Payne, Margaret T. Horner and Allison L. Alexander
The purpose of this paper is to examine how individual differences influence employees’ attitude toward organizational change. Specifically, the present study examined how and why…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine how individual differences influence employees’ attitude toward organizational change. Specifically, the present study examined how and why proactive personality, dispositional resistance to change, and change self-efficacy influence employees’ perceived fairness about the organizational change.
Design/methodology/approach
Structural equation modeling was utilized to analyze the survey data obtained from a sample of 140 food service employees after some organizational changes in leadership, menu offerings, and facilities.
Findings
The results revealed support for two micromediational chains predicting change fairness: first, change self-efficacy leads to less uncertainty and second, dispositional resistance to change leads to less communication regarding change resulting in employees perceiving they have fewer opportunities to voice concerns about the changes.
Research limitations/implications
The cross-sectional design prevents causal inferences and the generalizability of the present findings beyond similar samples experiencing similar changes is unknown. However, the predictions were based on theories that apply to all employees regardless of the changes or the employees’ occupations or workplace.
Social implications
Employees with particular personality traits are more receptive to change, suggesting that organizations should consider the impact of individual differences when facing large-scale change. To ensure the success of organizational change, organizations should communicate with employees and encourage employee input before implementing change which in turn improves the chances that employees will have favorable reactions to the change.
Originality/value
This is the first study to examine how and why individual difference variables influence employees’ perceptions about organizational change fairness.
Details
Keywords
Stephanie C. Payne, Margaret T. Horner, Wendy R. Boswell, Amber N. Schroeder and Kelleen J. Stine‐Cheyne
The purpose of this paper is to compare employee reactions to the use of an online performance appraisal (PA) system to the traditional paper‐and‐pencil (P&P) approach.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to compare employee reactions to the use of an online performance appraisal (PA) system to the traditional paper‐and‐pencil (P&P) approach.
Design/methodology/approach
A quasi‐experimental study is conducted comparing the reactions of a group of 83 employees evaluate with a traditional P&P PA instrument to the reactions of a group of 152 employees evaluated with an online version of the same assessment tool.
Findings
Employees rate with the online version reported significantly higher levels of rater accountability and employee participation than employees rate with the traditional instrument. They report no difference in perceived security of the ratings, utility of the ratings, or satisfaction with the PA. Online employees report significantly lower levels of quality for the PA ratings than traditional employees.
Research limitations/implications
The paper is limited to employees in one organization and the variables examined. In the future, researchers should examine supervisor and human resource (HR) manager reactions to the system, additional individual difference variables, variables related to technology acceptance and use, and additional PA reactions.
Practical implications
The findings inform HR managers about how one sample of employees' reacted to an online appraisal. It is important for organizations to ensure all system users are well‐trained in how to provide quality ratings and feedback through the system.
Originality/value
This is the first quasi‐experiment comparing employees' attitudes toward an online administration of PA to a traditional P&P administration.
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Keywords
Kathleen Lynne Lane, Eric Alan Common, Mark Matthew Buckman and Grant Allen
Tiered systems may hold particular benefit for students with intensive intervention needs, as this continuum of supports is ideally comprised of evidence-based practices. In this…
Abstract
Tiered systems may hold particular benefit for students with intensive intervention needs, as this continuum of supports is ideally comprised of evidence-based practices. In this chapter, we explore three intensive interventions: functional assessment-based interventions (FABI), First Step to Success, and Read 180 as they feature a range of practices and programs to meet students' academic, behavioral, and social needs. We define and describe each intervention, including information on essential features necessary for drawing valid inferences: treatment integrity, social validity, as well as student performance. We also provide examples of supporting evidence, featuring treatment-outcome studies documenting intervention effectiveness. We close with clarifications and considerations for meeting the multiple needs of students requiring intensive intervention efforts.
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Keywords
The pattern of prosecutions forfood offences has changed very little in the past decade. Compositional offences have rarely exceeded 5 per cent and, since the 1967 batch of…
Abstract
The pattern of prosecutions forfood offences has changed very little in the past decade. Compositional offences have rarely exceeded 5 per cent and, since the 1967 batch of regulations for meat products, are mostly in respect of deficient meat content. Food hygiene offences have also remained steady, with no improvement to show for all the effort to change the monotony of repulsive detail. The two major causes of all legal proceedings, constituting about 90 per cent of all cases—the presence of foreign matter and sale of mouldy food—continue unchanged; and at about the same levels, viz. an average of 55 per cent of the total for foreign matter and 35 per cent for mouldy food. What is highly significant about this changed concept of food and drugs administration is that almost all prosecutions now arise from consumer complaint. The number for adulteration as revealed by official sampling and analysis and from direct inspectorial action is small in relation to the whole. A few mouldy food offences are included in prosecutions for infringements of the food hygiene regulations, but for most of the years for which statistics have been gathered by the BFJ and published annually, all prosecutions for the presence of foreign matter have come from consumer complaint. The extent to which food law administration is dependent upon this source is shown by the fact that 97 per cent of all prosecutions in 1971 for foreign bodies and mouldy food—579 and 340 respectively—resulted from complaints; and in 1972, 98 per cent of prosecutions resulted from the same source in respect of 597 for foreign matter and 341 for mouldy food. Dirty milk bottle cases in both years all arose from consumer complaint; 41 and 37 respectively.
LIBRARIES have come impressively into the public picture in the past year or two, and seldom with more effect than when Their Majesties the King and Queen opened the new Central…
Abstract
LIBRARIES have come impressively into the public picture in the past year or two, and seldom with more effect than when Their Majesties the King and Queen opened the new Central Reference Library at Manchester on July 17th. In a time, which is nearly the end of a great depression, that the city which probably felt the depression more than any in the Kingdom should have proceeded with the building of a vast store‐house of learning is a fact of great social significance and a happy augury for libraries as a whole. His Majesty the King has been most felicitous in providing what we may call “slogans” for libraries. It will be remembered that in connection with the opening of the National Central Library, he suggested that it was a “University which all may join and which none need ever leave” —words which should be written in imperishable letters upon that library and be printed upon its stationery for ever. As Mr. J. D. Stewart said at the annual meeting of the National Central Library, it was a slogan which every public library would like to appropriate. At Manchester, His Majesty gave us another. He said: “To our urban population open libraries are as essential to health of mind, as open spaces to health of body.” This will be at the disposal of all of us for use. It is a wonderful thing that Manchester in these times has been able to provide a building costing £450,000 embodying all that is modern and all that is attractive in the design of libraries. The architect, Mr. Vincent Harris, and the successive librarians, Mr. Jast and Mr. Nowell, are to be congratulated upon the crown of their work.
V. Cano, C. Hatar and A. Zapatero
This paper presents research on the managerial reasons for the relatively slow up‐take of teleworking. Different definitions for telework are contrasted. It is proposed that an…
Abstract
This paper presents research on the managerial reasons for the relatively slow up‐take of teleworking. Different definitions for telework are contrasted. It is proposed that an isolationist conception of telework predominates in the early teleworking literature and that this perception, coupled with outdated labour legislation and managerial attitudes towards staff supervision contributed to the relatively slow up‐take of telework. New forms of team‐based organisation of labour supported by groupware technology are proposed as a progression from isolationist telework into telecooperation.
R F Vollans writes:Nothing pleases me more than to see honours bestowed on those who are worthy of them, particularly if they are my close friends and personal colleagues. It was…
Abstract
R F Vollans writes:Nothing pleases me more than to see honours bestowed on those who are worthy of them, particularly if they are my close friends and personal colleagues. It was, therefore, with some delight that I read of the LA'S new awards—the McColvin and Besterman Medals.
The purpose of this paper is to make intelligible the rationalities and mechanisms through which markets have been proffered as alternatives or complements to traditional…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to make intelligible the rationalities and mechanisms through which markets have been proffered as alternatives or complements to traditional welfare‐based provision and the effect of this development on the subjectivity of workers.
Design/methodology/approach
The research involved collection of archival data, personal encounters and in‐depth interviews with managers, staff and elected representatives at a local authority in New Zealand. Michel Foucault's concept of governmentality is mobilised to interpret these data.
Findings
The paper finds that the mandatory changes required by legislation are associated with efforts to constitute local authority workers as business‐like subjects through disciplinary mechanisms and technologies of the self. While markets have permeated this local authority, with some managers and staff claiming to work in a business‐like manner and transact with each other as customers, these discourses have not vanquished the traditional concern of working for one organisation to serve the community.
Research limitations/implications
While the results of this study are not generalisable to other contexts, they show how the introduction of New Public Management in a specific context is associated with a contest between the traditional discourses of community and public service, and the more recent ones of enterprise and customer. The paper illuminates the pathologies associated with these new technologies and how their implementation is often divergent from the rationalities in the name of which they are promoted.
Practical implications
The paper will contribute to ongoing debate on how best to deliver public goods and services and especially, the limits and potential of markets.
Originality/value
The paper's mobilisation of Foucault's governmentality framework in the study of a local authority case study in a contemporary setting is relatively unusual.