Search results

The purpose of this paper is to extend the “Happy-Performing Managers” thesis to show that managers’ job-related affective well-being and affective job satisfaction mediate the impact of their role stressors (ambiguity, conflict and overload) on their contextual job performance.

Results from an online survey of 305 managers from the private, public and third sectors in Western Australian support most of the hypotheses. The psychometric properties of all the scales were analysed using confirmatory factor analysis and the conceptual model was tested using structural equation modelling.

Role stressors have a direct negative effect on the managers’ affective well-being and affective job satisfaction, which, in turn, mediate the negative effects of the three role stressors on the managers’ contextual performance.

Conceptual and managerial contributions along with methodological limitations and future research directions are discussed.

Contemporary managers face a wide range of intrinsic and extrinsic role and environmental stressors. This research suggests that organisations may need to redesign manager roles to reduce their role stressors (ambiguity, conflict and overload) in order to optimise their contextual performance.

The purpose of this paper is to emanate from an enduring stream of research into individual performance and organisational productivity where happy employees are believed to perform better. Decades of research have been unable to establish a strong link between workplace happiness and performance. A variation on the enduring employee happiness‐productivity debate is evolving the “happy‐performing managers” proposition.

An empirical investigation reports on the impact of two important aspects of job happiness – self‐rated affective wellbeing and intrinsic job satisfaction – on superiors' ratings of managers' contextual and task performance. An ancillary methodological objective of the study is to establish the structure of managers' performance.

A partial model of managers' affective wellbeing, intrinsic job satisfaction and performance contributed an understanding to how specific indicators of affective wellbeing and intrinsic job satisfaction predict certain dimensions of managers' performance.

Changes in the workplace emphasises are needed to ensure managers can retain and improve their positive affective wellbeing by working smarter and faster, rather than harder and longer.

A contribution of this paper is to provide qualified support for the “happy‐performing managers” proposition by linking the conceptual bases relating to managers' affective wellbeing, intrinsic job satisfaction and to their performance. These findings progress the debate as to how work might be structured to improve managers' affective wellbeing and consequently their performance. Perhaps, it is timely to consider moving away from the negative forms of psychology and affirm managers' future by embracing the “happy‐performing managers” proposition.

Examines the current situation facing Australian higher education institutions engaged in the export of their services. Considers current trends in the world market for international education services, as well as current and future developments in the Australian higher education system. Recent research evidence suggests that the international market for education is reaching maturity. Contends that Australia’s international education sector, especially in the area of higher education, requires greater differentiation and more careful marketing in order to deal with this trend. Outlines some suggestions as to appropriate future strategies for the Australian international education sector.

Gives a deliberately cynical view on the requirements of managers for succeeding in a bureaucracy where personal moral standards must be adapted to fit the prevailing culture in politics, style, patronage, etc. For example, social expertise is valued more than the ability to meet targets. In general, the distinction between the Protestant Work Ethic and the bureaucratic ethic is emphasized in favour of the latter.

Quality, Deming reminds us, is made in the board‐room, or, in the educational context, in Senate or Council. The quality of the decisions made by the incumbents of these offices will be conditional on the information which is available and accessible to them. People and information will be the focus of advances in strategic management systems – in both educational and commercial/industrial circumstances. Accurate, germane and timely data are a prerequisite, though not a guarantee, of quality decisions. Describes a quality framework applicable to higher education, with specific reference to personnel and human resource management. Follows with an examination and consideration of the factors governing the acquisition, storage and retrieval of data pertinent to a human resource information system (HRIS). Concludes with the generation of a set of criteria which should be applied to the choice or development of such a system.

The purpose of this paper is to raise and critically analyse controversial issues facing the future directions of the academic discipline organisational behaviour (OB).

Specifically, the commercial benefits for basic and applied OB research conducted by academics are considered. Arguments are advanced which cast doubt on the discipline's current directions.

Proponents of traditional research in this field are accused of methodological myopia, inaccessibility, lack of relevance to practitioners and an inability to integrate research with successful practice. Such shortcomings have the potential to render OB theories, research and recommended practices irrelevant in many commercial environments.

Better integration is recommended between popularist management practices and ideas with traditional research techniques to produce more business focussed outcomes. New modes of investigation are proposed which adopt dynamic research methodologies based on “coarse grained theorising” using the “3p” test of performance, productivity and profitability. In this context, coarse grained theorising must be capable of verification in the field with tangible commercial benefits.

Narrowing the theory‐practice gulf requires a more concerted effort to embrace practitioner generated ideas to develop these into theories closely related to organisational concerns rather than purely academic predilections. In this situation, only the most robust of existing theories, with utility for organisations, would survive and continue to be promulgated. A future scenario for OB is envisaged where hybridized theorizing and research are developed and communicated to a wider practitioner audience.

The introductory chapter includes how to design-in good practices in theory, data collection procedures, analysis, and interpretations to avoid these bad practices. Given that bad practices in research are ingrained in the career training of scholars in sub-disciplines of business/management (e.g., through reading articles exhibiting bad practices usually without discussions of the severe weaknesses in these studies and by research courses stressing the use of regression analysis and structural equation modeling), this editorial is likely to have little impact. However, scholars and executives supporting good practices should not lose hope. The relevant literature includes a few brilliant contributions that can serve as beacons for eliminating the current pervasive bad practices and for performing highly competent research.