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The learning outcomes are as follows: to identify and analyze the importance of operations management in a situation demanding minimizing environmental impact and maintaining operational momentum; access the risks faced during project executions and apply project management concepts to facilitate Karachi Steel in implementing indigenous technological solutions; and evaluate the importance of adaptability, continuous improvement and innovation in creating sustainable solutions to address complex challenges.

Javaid Iqbal, CEO of Karachi Steel, was the case’s protagonist. With capacity expansion, Javaid relocated the steel facility from Rawalpindi to Islamabad, Pakistan. The company encountered several difficulties because of the air emissions’ inconvenience to nearby residents and the strict environmental regulations. To push the emissions into the air, the company first installed a locally fabricated chimney. Later, they hired a foreign Pakistani engineering firm to install air filters, but the project proved unsuccessful. To control emissions, the company developed a Wet Particulate Control (WPC) system based on a water-sprinkling mechanism. The endeavor was successful, but it resulted in water pollution. As a result, Karachi Steel signed a contract with a local engineering company that invented and effectively installed an air filtration system. Karachi Steel not only devised solutions for their predicaments but also made significant contributions toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, the emissions reporting and monitoring mechanism continued to cause inconvenience for regulators. In addition, the filtration facility encountered a blocked duct conveying zinc sulfate from smoke, resulting in the periodic suspension of operations. As Karachi Steel seek long-term solutions to current challenges, it is critical to examine the relationship between internal circumstances and external forces and stimulate a holistic approach to resolving issues within the realms of operations management and project management.

The case study is suitable for students pursuing their undergraduate degree programs in business studies or management sciences. This case can be taught in specific subjects in the domain of management sciences, including project management and operations management. Furthermore, undergraduate students pursuing degrees in environmental sciences, specializing in environmental impact assessment and sustainable development, can also learn from this case study. These subjects have the potential to provide students with a detailed understanding of the dynamic relationship between environmental problems caused by business activities, and how to address these challenges using principles of project management and operations management. There is no pre-requisite for this case study, and the level of difficulty is moderate. The recommended teaching pedagogy for this multidisciplinary case study includes role-playing exercises, simulations to replicate real-world situations and the Socratic method, which encourages critical thinking.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 7: Management Science.

The purpose of this paper is to know that how group resources (internal and external) and the relationship quality among group members relate to group performance.

Given the normative nature of group performance, the study is carried out in a contrived environment. Participants were 204 master of business administration students who were allocated to 51 study groups. Data were collected in three waves and from two different sources, i.e., students and instructors. Data analysis was carried out by employing regression analysis and the bootstrapping procedure, i.e., PROCESS.

The results of this paper reveal that an individual-level internal resource, i.e. time, positively predicts group performance, while group-level internal resources, i.e., group composition and group members’ experience, negatively predict group performance. Both external resources (external communication and instructor’s support) are found to have a positive effect on group performance. The relationship quality among group members partially relates to group performance. Instructor’s support as an external resource is found to moderate the relationship between only two aspects of relationship quality and group performance.

This study provides guidance to group members as to how they can utilize internal and external group resources and their relationship quality for enhancing their group performance. Managers in varied organizations can also utilize the findings of this study.

This study is unique in that it offers a new insight into internal and external resources and relationship quality, that is, from the perspective of group performance. The group resources included in the study are rarely found in the existing literature.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the occurrence of rating distortions under raters’ different mood conditions and at different levels of interpersonal affect of raters towards ratees, and further its association with ratees’ perceptions of distributive and interpersonal fairness.

For the scenario-based experiment, the study recruited 110 undergraduate students as participants. Of them, 22 raters appraised the video-taped buyer-seller negotiation performance of 88 ratees. Repeated measures analysis was employed to analyse data.

Results revealed that under different mood conditions (pleasant and sad) and at different levels of interpersonal affect towards ratees (high and low), raters distorted ratings (inflated and deflated, respectively). These rating distortions shaped ratees fairness perceptions in such a way that ratees who received inflated ratings due to raters’ pleasant mood and high interpersonal affect perceived more distributive and interpersonal fairness than ratees who received deflated ratings due to raters’ sad mood and low interpersonal affect.

The paper is a step towards integrating the affect infusion model with distributive and interpersonal fairness theory. This integration can be of value for enhancing our understanding of how rater-centric rating errors take place, which subsequently shape ratees’ fairness perceptions.

This study examines the relationship between employees' perceptions of informational fairness and project performance. Furthermore, it examines if this relationship is sequentially mediated by (1) knowledge sharing and role clarity and (2) communication openness and role clarity.

Data are collected from 302 full-time employees of seven project-based construction organizations in Pakistan. Data are analyzed through variance-based structural equation modeling technique and the Preacher and Hayes' bootstrapping procedure.

Results indicate that project employees' perceptions of informational fairness positively predict project performance. Moreover, this relationship is sequentially mediated by (1) communication openness and role clarity and (2) knowledge sharing and role clarity.

This study provides further insights on the informational fairness and project performance relationship by examining their underlying mechanisms. It draws on the much ignored context of Pakistan, and offers some implications for managers and researchers with regard to how behavioral factors may further enhance project performance.

While studying the association between leader–member exchange (LMX) quality and employee work outcomes, the existing scholarship has generally focused on employee perspectives of LMX quality. Being more inclusive, this study utilizes role theory to incorporate the dyadic (in)congruence in LMX quality and their effects on ratee feedback seeking behavior.

Data elicited from N = 156 matched rater–ratee dyads comprising engineers working with telecommunication organizations of Pakistan. Purposive sampling was done to ensure that rater–ratee dyads were in continuous contact by their customized employee portals.

Results of polynomial regression analysis revealed that leader–member congruence in their perceptions of LMX quality enhanced member's feedback seeking behavior. Asymmetrical incongruence, i.e. the member perceived higher LMX quality than the leader, is found to predict member's feedback seeking behavior, even higher than both levels of congruence (high- and low-quality LMX).

The scope of this study was members' reactions to performance appraisal. However, other performance appraisal outcomes are plausible such as, leader performance. This study explored the objective incongruence, yet subjective congruence can be more conclusive about the results of the present study.

LMX incongruence is more detrimental to members in high interaction situations. When the member perceives lower quality LMX than the leader, expectations regarding resource exchanges and behaviors are more likely to be unfulfilled for the member. Feedback seeking behavior being a member related outcome is likely to be affected more negatively in such conditions of incongruence. Second, it is likely that when there is a high degree of incongruence among the dyads, LMX congruence may become more critical to the members which in turn may give them a sense of belongingness within the dyad. Third, the relationship between leader–member dyads is affected by the social interactions facilitating the members' opinion sharing.

The study suggests that to fully grasp the implications of LMX theory, we need to consider the viewpoints of both the dyadic members at the same time.

Recent performance appraisal (PA) literature suggests that alongside cognitive biases, rating distortions may stem from rater disposition and PA context. The study investigated the role of social value orientation (rater disposition), PA purposes and rater accountability (PA context) toward rating distortions at both performance levels, i.e. good and poor.

The authors designed an experimental study and elicited data from N = 110 undergraduate students about two video-taped performances of good and poor performers. In these videos, two managers conducted assessment interviews of two different employees for the job of a sales representative at an information technology organization. To ensure the validity of performance ratings, the authors invited 10 senior managers to provide benchmark ratings of the video-taped performances. While being placed in two separate groups, the study participants gave performance ratings on both the video-taped performances. The authors used repeated-measures analysis to analyze data.

The results revealed that rating distortions took place not because of rater social value orientation, but the PA context. Different rating distortion patterns emerged for different levels of ratees' performance.

This study’s findings furnish new insights for assessing rating distortions for poor as well as good performers. Moreover, the results support previous findings that for good performers, accountable raters are tempted toward accurate ratings and refrained from deflation. Similarly, for poor performers, accountable raters do not inflate ratings. The findings will open research avenues to examine the role of PA purposes in rating distortions for different performance levels.

This study seeks to examine the links between employee agreeableness, group performance, and peers' perceptions of threat of retaliation, through relationship conflict.

In a laboratory setting, 42 groups of undergraduate students (N = 182) from a Pakistani university were assigned to group projects to be completed within four months. Data collected from three different questionnaires at four different times and actual scores awarded by the course instructor to each group were used for the analyses. Based on r_WG(J) and ICC(1), level 1 (182 students') data were aggregated to level 2 (groups), and then analysed using regression analysis followed by Preacher and Hayes' bootstrapping procedure.

Results suggest that high agreeableness predicts group performance positively and peers' perceptions of threat of retaliation negatively. Moreover, relationship conflict among group members significantly mediates the agreeableness-group performance relationship. The above relationships may be sensitive to national culture.

In this study, groups were formed for a few months, whereas in real organizational life, workgroups are formed for different durations. Therefore, the range of situations to which these findings generalize remains an open question.

Agreeableness of group members can be constructive for performance of the group. Managers may utilize this insight while forming groups, and rating performance.

There is dearth of research illuminating how employee's personality traits affect group performance and appraisal ratings. The study tests the effects of employee agreeableness on: (1) group performance, as rated by supervisors; (2) the threat of retaliation, as perceived by peer raters; and (3) the mediating effect of relationship conflict.

Being grounded in interdependence theory, this study aims to address the following research question: Do managers’ negotiation styles (collaborative versus competitive) make employees’ relational justice-emotional experiences links sporadic?

Data elicited from N = 139 Pakistani undergraduate students participating in an online scenario-based experiment were used to employ repeated measures analysis and partial least square structural equation modeling techniques.

Results suggest that employees’ relational justice is likely to be higher when managers use a collaborative negotiation style than when they use competitive style in performance review meetings. Moreover, per managers’ different negotiation styles, employees’ relational justice perceptions may predict their positive emotions differently. That is, when managers use collaborative negotiation style, employees’ relational justice perceptions may positively predict their hope but not optimism, whereas when managers use competitive negotiation style, employees’ relational justice perceptions may positively predict their optimism but not hope. Furthermore, the positive relationship between employees’ relational justice and their optimism is stronger when their trust in manager is low than when it is high.

The study is of value for performance management theorists who aim to address the issue of ineffectiveness of the practice through relational means. The study includes the recently explicated concept of relational justice and examines its links with employee emotional reactions to performance reviews. Moreover, the study unveils how managers’ negotiation styles in performance review meetings cause variations in the links between employees’ perceptions of relational justice and their emotional experiences.

Using the broaden-and-build theory, this study aims to examine whether (1) employees have hateful emotional responses and think the overall performance review is fair at different levels of managers’ emotional flexibility; and (2) the difference in employees’ hateful emotional responses mediates the relationship between managers’ emotional flexibility and employees’ perceptions of performance review fairness across flexibility conditions.

A sample of 110 Pakistani undergraduates participated in the seven waves of online scenario-based experimental research. For a one-way repeated-measures analysis, the general linear model was used, and for a two-condition within-subject mediational path analysis, the mediation and moderation analysis for repeated measures (MEMORE) was used.

Employees experience a high level of performance review justice and a low level of hateful emotional responses when managers are more emotionally flexible during the meeting, and vice versa. A manager’s emotional flexibility may also prevent employees from responding hatefully during performance reviews, which in turn makes them perceive the overall performance review as just.

The study expands on the thought–action repertoire and personal resources, supporting the broaden-and-build theory. The research applies this notion to performance reviews, which are an emotional experience for managers and employees. The study timely addresses organizations’ need for performance management system overhauls by suggesting managers to use emotional flexibility until an alternate performance review system is available.

While integrating resource drain theory with ego depletion theory, this paper aims to understand the mechanism underlying the relationship between research supervisors’ interrole conflicts and their supervisees’ reactions. Specifically, this paper makes a case for supervisors’ ego depletion and supervisees’ perception of abusive supervision to mediate the relationship between supervisors’ work and family conflicts and supervisees’ satisfaction with research supervision.

The study uses data collected in three waves from 306 research supervisees (Level 1) nested in 100 research supervisors (Level 2), involved in MS/PhD research theses at different Pakistani universities.

Based on multilevel modeling, the study finds that supervisors’ interrole conflicts negatively predict supervisees’ satisfaction with supervision. Moreover, supervisors’ ego depletion and supervisees’ perception of abusive supervision mediate the above relationship, both singly and serially. Notably, supervisors’ family–work conflict predicts supervisees’ satisfaction with supervision more negatively than work–family conflict.

This study is unique in that unlike previous research studies on abusive supervision which used victimization approach the present study uses the perpetration approach.