Most firms faced with the need to increase their profits focus their energies on rigid control of finances. Implicit in this strategy is the belief that the greatest opportunities…
Abstract
Most firms faced with the need to increase their profits focus their energies on rigid control of finances. Implicit in this strategy is the belief that the greatest opportunities for increased effectiveness lie in tightening up budgetary control procedures and in the reallocation of budgets to areas yielding the most immediate payoffs. This often has unpleasant side effects for staff, increasing pressure on them to perform and forcing organisational change. The increased complexity of the job, frequently brought about by the need to cope with the realities of budget reductions, coupled with attempts to meet increasingly wider requirements with no additional resources, may foster dissent. This can lead to a deterioration in staff morale and commitment, fewer opportunities for promotion, staff training and salary increases. The net result may be that key staff seek jobs elsewhere and that those who stay may withdraw their goodwill. An alternative approach is the one proposed by Likert (1973). He suggests that the greatest opportunity for increasing the effectiveness of an organisation/division of a company frequently lies in harnessing the talents and skills of people. An approach based on the implementation of this strategy has been demonstrated to yield between 20 and 40 per cent in increased performance. However, one of the problems of seeking to implement this strategy is that senior management often does not possess sufficiently objective information about the ‘softer’ areas of employee performance upon which to base decisions. Reliable information on staff with regard to how they feel about their present status, job and the firm may be difficult to obtain. Staff may be unwilling to reveal their attitudes and prejudices to insiders in the firm directly. Nevertheless, this information may be vital for increasing performance. Furthermore, senior management's lack of sensitivity to these issues, can serve to accentuate and further reinforce this lack of communication. Hence management may be faced with a somewhat intractable problem, of how they can determine the current state of health of the human resources under their control. Current management thinking stresses the need to design in effective feedback channels of communication between those at higher and lower levels in the organisation. In addition, mechanisms often need to be built in to the system to tap the potential of staff‐generated ideas and suggestions. Frequently this dynamic element fails to have the impact that it deserves because senior levels of management may be unaware of the importance of being willing to listen and act on suggestions from lower levels. They may even actively suppress potentially good ideas, because they are unwilling to change existing procedures. The team carrying out the study examined in this paper was faced with the problem of providing senior management of a brewing organisation with this ‘soft’ information about the surveying staff in the maintenance management division and, further, making recommendations on a strategy which could be implemented to correct any imbalances found. The study was carried out by members of the Department of Surveying, Liverpool Polytechnic.
This paper focuses on how individuals and organisations can improve their performance by more effective time management. An approach is developed for examining employee's time…
Abstract
This paper focuses on how individuals and organisations can improve their performance by more effective time management. An approach is developed for examining employee's time performance and potential benefits for both individual and organisation are identified. A distinction is drawn between time mismanaged by the individual and that wasted due to inefficiencies in the structure of the organisation. Drawing case study material from an examination of the staff of the maintenance management division of a major commercial organisation, an approach is described which can be adopted in any enterprise. As organisations are in a state of constant change, there is an increasing need to engender greater effectiveness in employees. It therefore becomes vital to instil in individuals, no matter what their level in the organisation, a more disciplined approach to their use of time during the working day. In which case it is necessary to take a close look at the way the organisation, and each section of it, is functioning with respect to the way it makes demand on employee's time. If a strategy can be developed for both individual and organisation, major benefits can result, yielding greater effectiveness in time usage. An improvement in time management can provide the individual with free time to concentrate on important things and allow him to do those things he most enjoys doing. Insufficient time to prepare and to plan ahead often means tasks are rushed and, as a result, stress in the individual increases. Alternatively, those who are better organisers of their time, may find themselves more relaxed and capable of achieving their targets. Employees often find that a significant proportion of their day is spent losing time in futile meetings, handling unnecessary telephone calls, and in unproductive travelling time. Furthermore, time may be wasted dealing with trivial details and issues which subordinates or less highly trained staff should be doing, or coping with constant interruptions because the section/group in which they are working is not adequately structured for time efficiency. Staff often spend a significant proportion of their day attempting to cope with some of these distractions, which may be due in part either to organisational inadequacies, or to their own personal failure to manage time and contact patterns effectively. The incidence of these distractions will vary from company to company, but can be overcome if the right approach is adopted. A survey of the literature on the subject reveals relatively few studies which can provide guidance. Of these, some have concentrated on how managers/staff occupy their working day and only a handful have addressed the issue of time management for the employee. One exception is a study carried out by IBM in 1979 on how its managers spent their time. Among the findings was that over 50 per cent of an employee's working day is occupied by no more than five activities, namely writing, meetings, telephone calls, travelling and filing. Each of these areas can be prodigious time wasters, and yet few organisations have availed themselves of the countless studies which show how improvements in performance can be achieved.
Gerard P. Hodgkinson, Kristian J. Sund and Robert J. Galavan
This book comprises the second volume in the recently launched New Horizons in Managerial and Organizational Cognition book series. Volume 1 (Sund, Galavan, & Huff, 2016)…
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This book comprises the second volume in the recently launched New Horizons in Managerial and Organizational Cognition book series. Volume 1 (Sund, Galavan, & Huff, 2016), addressed the topic of strategic uncertainty. This second volume comprises a collection of contributions that variously report new methodological developments in managerial and organizational cognition, reflect critically on those developments, and consider the challenges that have yet to be confronted in order to further advance this exciting and dynamic interdisciplinary field. Contextualizing within an overarching framework the various contributions selected for inclusion in the present volume, in this opening chapter we reflect more broadly on what we consider the most significant developments that have occurred over recent years and the most significant challenges that lie ahead.
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Mark P. Healey, Gerard P. Hodgkinson and Sebastiano Massaro
In response to recent calls to better understand the brain’s role in organizational behavior, we propose a series of theoretical tests to examine the question “can brains manage?”…
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In response to recent calls to better understand the brain’s role in organizational behavior, we propose a series of theoretical tests to examine the question “can brains manage?” Our tests ask whether brains can manage without bodies and without extracranial resources, whether they can manage in social isolation, and whether brains are the ultimate controllers of emotional and cognitive aspects of organizational behavior. Our analysis shows that, to accomplish work-related tasks in organizations, the brain relies on and closely interfaces with the body, interpersonal and social dynamics, and cognitive and emotional processes that are distributed across persons and artifacts. The results of this “thought experiment” suggest that the brain is more appropriately conceived as a regulatory organ that integrates top-down (i.e., social, artifactual and environmental) and bottom-up (i.e., neural) influences on organizational behavior, rather than the sole cause of that behavior. Drawing on a socially situated perspective, our analysis develops a framework that connects brain, body and mind to social, cultural, and environmental forces, as significant components of complex emotional and cognitive organizational systems. We discuss the implications for the emerging field of organizational cognitive neuroscience and for conceptualizing the interaction between the brain, cognition and emotion in organizations.
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Gerard P. Hodgkinson, Robert P. Wright and Jamie Anderson
Developments in the social neurosciences over the past two decades have rendered problematic the main knowledge elicitation techniques currently in use by strategy researchers, as…
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Developments in the social neurosciences over the past two decades have rendered problematic the main knowledge elicitation techniques currently in use by strategy researchers, as a basis for revealing actors’ mental representations of strategic knowledge. Extant elicitation techniques were advanced during an era when cognitive scientists and organizational researchers alike were preoccupied with the basic information of processing limitations of decision makers and means of addressing them, predicated on an outmoded conception of strategists as affect-free, cognitive misers. The need to adapt these techniques to enable the investigation of the emotional content and structure of actors’ mental representations is now a pressing priority for the advancement of theory, research, and practice pertaining to several interrelated areas of strategic management, from dynamic capabilities development, to upper echelons theory, to strategic consensus formation. Accordingly, in this chapter, we report the findings of two studies that investigated the feasibility of adapting the repertory grid, a robust method, widely known and well used in strategic management, for this purpose. Study 1 elicited a series of commonly mentioned strategic issues (the elements) from a sample of senior managers similar in composition to the sample recruited to the second study. Study 2 participants evaluated the elements elicited in Study 1 in relation to a series of researcher-supplied bipolar attributes (the constructs), based on the well-known affective circumplex model of human emotions. In line with expectations, a series of vector-based multivariate analyses revealed a number of interesting similarities and variations among participants in terms of the basic structure and emotional salience of the issues under consideration.
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In light of the growing interest in neuroscience within the managerial and organizational cognition (MOC) scholarly domain at large, this chapter advances current knowledge on…
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In light of the growing interest in neuroscience within the managerial and organizational cognition (MOC) scholarly domain at large, this chapter advances current knowledge on core neuroscience methods. It does so by building on the theoretical analysis put forward by Healey and Hodgkinson (2014, 2015), and by offering a thorough – yet accessible – methodological framework for a better understanding of key cognitive and social neuroscience methods. Classifying neuroscience methods based on their degree of resolution, functionality, and anatomical focus, the chapter outlines their features, practicalities, advantages and disadvantages. Specifically, it focuses on functional magnetic resonance imaging, electroencephalography, magnetoencephalography, heart rate variability, and skin conductance response. Equipped with knowledge of these methods, researchers will be able to further their understanding of the potential synergies between management and neuroscience, to better appreciate and evaluate the value of neuroscience methods, and to look at new ways to frame old and new research questions in MOC. The chapter also builds bridges between researchers and practitioners by rebalancing the hype and hopes surrounding the use of neuroscience in management theory and practice.
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Anne Sigismund Huff, Frances J. Milliken, Gerard P. Hodgkinson, Robert J. Galavan and Kristian J. Sund
This book on uncertainty comprises the initial volume in a series titled “New Horizons in Managerial and Organizational Cognition”. We asked Frances Milliken and Gerard P…
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This book on uncertainty comprises the initial volume in a series titled “New Horizons in Managerial and Organizational Cognition”. We asked Frances Milliken and Gerard P. Hodgkinson, two well-known scholars who have made important contributions to our understanding of uncertainty to join us in this opening chapter to introduce this project. The brief bios found at the end of this volume cannot do justice to the broad range of their contributions, but our conversation gives a flavor of the kind of insights they have brought to managerial and organizational cognition (MOC). The editors thank them for helping launch the series with a decisive exploration of what defining uncertainty involves, how that might be done, why it is important, and how the task is changing. We were interested to discover that all five of us are currently involved in research that considers the nature and impact of uncertainty, and we hope that readers similarly find that paying attention to uncertainty contributes to their current projects. Working together, we can advance understanding of organizational settings and effective action, both for researchers and practitioners.
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Mark P. Healey, Mercedes Bleda and Adrien Querbes
In this chapter we examine some possibilities of using computer simulation methods to model the interaction of affect and cognition in organizations, with a particular focus on…
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In this chapter we examine some possibilities of using computer simulation methods to model the interaction of affect and cognition in organizations, with a particular focus on agent-based modeling (ABM) techniques. Our chapter has two main aims. First, we take stock of methodological progress in this area, highlighting important developments in the modeling of affect and cognition in other fields, including psychology and economics. Second, we outline how ABM in particular can help to advance managerial and organizational cognition by building and testing theoretical models predicated on the interaction of affect and cognition. We argue that using ABM for this purpose can improve the level of specificity of cognitive and affective concepts and their interrelationships in organizational theories, yield more behaviorally plausible models of behavior in and of organizations, and deepen understanding of the generative behavioral mechanisms of multi-level organizational phenomena. We highlight possibilities for using ABM to model affect–cognition interactions in studies of mental models, collective cognition, diversity in work groups and teams, and organizational decision-making.
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Mark P. Healey and Gerard P. Hodgkinson
For organizational neuroscience to progress, it requires an overarching theoretical framework that locates neural processes appropriately within the wider context of…
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For organizational neuroscience to progress, it requires an overarching theoretical framework that locates neural processes appropriately within the wider context of organizational cognitive activities. In this chapter, we argue the case for building such a framework on two foundations: (1) critical realism, and (2) socially situated cognition. Critical realism holds to the importance of identifying biophysical roots for organizational activity (including neurophysiological processes) while acknowledging the top-down influence of higher-level, emergent organizational phenomena such as routines and structures, thereby avoiding the trap of reductionism. Socially situated cognition connects the brain, body, and mind to social, cultural, and environmental forces, as significant components of complex organizational systems. By focusing on adaptive action as the primary explanandum, socially situated cognition posits that, although the brain plays a driving role in adaptive organizational activity, this activity also relies on the body, situational context, and cognitive processes that are distributed across organizational agents and artifacts. The value of the framework that we sketch out is twofold. First, it promises to help organizational neuroscience become more than an arena for validating basic neuroscience concepts, enabling organizational researchers to backfill into social neuroscience, by identifying unique relations between the brain and social organization. Second, it promises to build deeper connections between neuroscience and mainstream theories of organizational behavior, by advancing models of managerial and organizational cognition that are biologically informed and socially situated.
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Karen Nokes and Gerard P. Hodgkinson
Policy-capturing is an experimental technique potentially capable of providing powerful insights into the cognitive bases of work-related decision processes by revealing actors’…
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Policy-capturing is an experimental technique potentially capable of providing powerful insights into the cognitive bases of work-related decision processes by revealing actors’ “implicit” models of the problem at hand, thereby opening up the “black box” of managerial and organizational cognition. This chapter considers the strengths and weaknesses of policy-capturing vis-à-vis alternative approaches that seek to capture, in varying ways, the inner workings of people’s minds as they make decisions. It then outlines the critical issues that need to be addressed when designing policy-capturing studies and offers practical advice to would-be users concerning some of the common pitfalls of the technique and ways of avoiding them.