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The purpose of this paper is to recognise the importance of the interplay between performance measurement, performance management, employee engagement and performance. However, the nature of this phenomenon is not well understood. Analysis of the literature reveals two dimensions of organisational control, technical and social, that are used to develop a conceptual framework for studying this phenomenon.

The authors conducted explorative action research involving pilot and control groups from two departments of a UK bank.

The authors show that an intervention on the social controls has led to changes in technical controls of the performance measurement system resulting in significant improvement in employee engagement and performance.

The research was undertaken with two cases from a single organisation. Further fine-grained, longitudinal research is required to fully understand this phenomenon in a wider range of contexts.

The paper contributes to the theory on performance measures and gives guidance on how organisations might design their performance measurement systems to enhance employee engagement and performance.

The study makes three contributions. First, the authors introduce a new theoretical framework based the organisational control theory providing a basis for future research. Second, through nine propositions, the authors establish a causal relationship between performance measurement, performance management, employee engagement and performance. Third, the authors identify a gap in knowledge concerning the design of organisational controls in the context of the process that is being managed.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the experience of call centre employees who have been involved in high-involvement innovation (HII) activities to understand what frontline and managerial employees think of these involvement activities.

A qualitative case study approach is utilised, drawing on evidence from seven UK call centres. Various sources of data are examined, i.e. interviews, observation, call listening and documentary.

From the analysis of the testimonies, it is found that job design, the mechanisms and practices as well as other people’s perceptions of involvement influence the experience of frontline and managerial employees. The findings highlight that HII has the potential to intensify jobs (both frontline and managerial employees) when the quantity of ideas submitted becomes a component of the employee performance appraisal system.

This research has shown that the heightened targets used in many of the cases have reduced the ability of employees to be involved in any innovation activities. What is not clear from the findings is that if performance measures can be used in a more participative way with employees so that they can have less time pressure allowing them to become more involved in innovation activities. Thus, an interesting direction for future research would be to consider the effects of performance measurement systems in the role they play in facilitating HII activities.

The findings show that HII has the potential to enrich frontline employees’ jobs, making them feel more valued and giving them some variety and challenge in their job. Therefore, practitioners should approach employee involvement in the innovation process as something potentially fruitful and not just wasted time away from the phones.

This research is important as it explores what effects these involvement initiatives have on the employees and managers involved in them. This is valuable since there is no real consensus across human resource management, labour process and critical management fields resulting in a limited conceptualisation of the relationship between management practices, employee experiences and the outcomes. This research makes a contribution through the elaboration of current theory to understand the complexities and subtleties that exist between the high involvement management practices and the experience of workers and their managers.

The purpose of this paper is to identify theories from manufacturing which can be applied to alleviate current issues within contact centre organisations. As contact centres currently adopt a mass production approach to customer service, this paper aims to examine the key issues currently facing contact centres and investigate how manufacturing has overcome some of its issues with the mass production approach.

The research employs a qualitative case study approach using a cross section of different types of contact centre to identify the current issues with contact centres. Interview and direct observation are the chosen methods for data collection and the data are analysed using a series of deductive and emergent codes.

From empirically investigating the issues that contact centres are currently facing it would imply that they have the same issues as manufacturing historically faced. Therefore, it can be concluded that if manufacturing can develop from an industry founded on scientific management principles, then so can the contact centre industry.

The findings of this paper provide a useful starting point to discuss the ability of theories developed in manufacturing to be adapted into the contact centre context. This paper is a starting point for further work into the applicability of manufacturing theories into the contact centre environment and as such it is deliberately discussed at a high level of abstraction.

Many of the techniques employed in contact centres originate from manufacturing's past but little of the research focuses on how contact centres can learn from manufacturing's future therefore this paper has practical implications in identifying which concepts can be transferred from manufacturing to contact centres.

The value of this paper is that it looks to the future of contact centre operations and discusses which techniques can be transferred from manufacturing to alleviate some of the current issues with contact centres.

This chapter addresses the dynamics in inter-organizational relations. The authors probe the value networks so prevalent within contemporary ­manufacturing to put forward that their basic cooperation/competition duality manifests itself in practical terms as capability, appropriation, and governance paradoxes. The authors conducted a longitudinal ethnographic study aimed at capturing the process by which inter-organizational collabor­ation in ­manufacturing value networks is enacted. Our study finds that inter-organizational relations are “nested” in that a relationship plays out over an interpersonal network where the inter-organizational relationships are a framework for action, while simultaneously interpersonal interactions affect how the inter-organizational relationships take shape and evolve. Furthermore, we found that inter-organizational dynamics is essentially a stratified process. Solving particular and concrete problems at the surface level, with regard to specific collaboration issues between organizations, simultaneously shapes truces with regard to the underlying capability, appropriation, and governance paradoxes.

This research aims to identify whether leaders' affective organizational commitment influences employees' affective commitment to both the leader and the organization. Additionally, the study explores the role of employees' emotional awareness in shaping these relationships.

Examining a sample of 154 leaders and 249 employees in multinational companies, this study adopts a multilevel approach.

The results reveal a positive influence between the two foci of commitment (leaders and organization) at both the leader and employee levels. Furthermore, it confirms that employees' emotional awareness plays a positive role in the commitment process.

This research highlights the significance of implementing internal policies and measures that consider the various foci of commitment. To foster employees' commitment, it is crucial to establish a robust alignment between human resources management and leaders.

This study delves into the exploration of two commitment foci to deepen our comprehension of the directional relationship between them in the workplace. More specifically, our research scrutinizes the impact of leaders' affective organizational commitment on employees' affective commitment to the organization, while also analyzing its reciprocal influence on employees' affective commitment toward their leaders.

This paper aims to explore brain-based differences in national and own-label brands perceptions. Because price is a differentiating characteristic, able to discriminate between national and own-label brands, its influence is also studied.

The study uses the Save Holdings Or Purchase (SHOP) task with functional magnetic resonance imaging to explore the differences in brain functioning for national versus own-label branded products.

For the same product, the higher priced national brands and the lower priced own-label brands lead to more buying decisions. It is also found that there are brain structures that are more active/deactive for national than for own-label brands, both marked with real market prices. Price is a powerful driver of buying decisions and has its neural correlates. Parietal regions activate when brand information is subtracted from brand-plus-price information. The most surprising finding is that visual and visual associative areas are involved in the contrasts between branded products marked with switched prices and marked with real market prices.

The activation/deactivation brain patterns suggest that accepted models of brain functioning are not suitable for explaining brand decisions. Also, to our knowledge, this is the first time that a study directly addresses the brain’s functioning when subjects are stimulated with national versus own-label brands. It paves the way for a new approach to understanding how such brand categories are perceived, revealing the neural origins of the associated psychological processes.

Whereas traditional book and journal publishing remain the gold standard for many post-secondary institutions, nontraditional publishing is just as prolific at the flagship university in Maine. The university has strong land and sea grant missions that drive a broad research agenda, with an emphasis on community outreach and engagement. However, the impact of researchers’ contributions outside of academe is unlikely to be accurately reflected in promotion, tenure or review processes. Thus, the authors designed a series of altmetrics workshops aimed at seeding conversations around novel ways to track the impact of researchers’ diverse scholarly and creative outputs.

This paper presents a case study of the instructional approach taken at the University of Maine library to facilitate discussions of alternative impact assessments that reach beyond traditional publications.

Evaluations revealed an increased awareness of, and interest in, impact tracking tools that capture both traditional scholarship, like journal articles, and nontraditional scholarly and creative outputs, such as videos, podcasts and newsletters. The authors learned that altmetrics provides an entry point into a broader conversation about scholarly impact, and was best received by those whose scholarly output is not always captured by traditional metrics.

Scholars are equipped with novel methods for describing the value of their work and discovering a broader audience for their research. Future initiatives will target the needs identified through initial conversations around altmetrics.

Altmetrics workshops provide spaces to explore the potential for new tools that capture a range of previously unconsidered measures of impact, and to discuss the implications of those measures.