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1 – 7 of 7Roland Kadefors, Ewa Wikström and Rebecka Arman
This work was undertaken in order to develop a conceptual model for identification of the capability of an organization to implement age management measures.
Abstract
Purpose
This work was undertaken in order to develop a conceptual model for identification of the capability of an organization to implement age management measures.
Design/methodology/approach
Barriers to delayed retirement were reviewed; observations retrieved from a research consortium study were used to identify main attributes that needed to be taken into consideration in the development of the model.
Findings
The capability of organizations to react to the demographic challenge by introduction of age management measures can be classified operatively as “proactive”, “reactive”, “passive” or “chained”, depending on their resources and preferences.
Practical implications
The model may be useful to HR as a point of departure in the development of a business case for age management and a didactic tool to be used in internal marketing.
Originality/value
The concept “organizational capability” was developed as a corollary to the individual aspects of capability; recognizing preference and resource as main drivers made it possible to develop a typology that is new and is easy to understand and apply.
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Lotta Dellve, Robin Jonsson, Rebecka Arman, Nanna Gillberg and Ewa Wikström
This study aims to explore whether participation in employer-provided skills and learning programs can strengthen older workers’ abilities to carry out their work in a meaningful…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore whether participation in employer-provided skills and learning programs can strengthen older workers’ abilities to carry out their work in a meaningful way so that it increases work attractiveness and a willingness to remain in the current job position.
Design/methodology/approach
A survey was distributed to assistance nurses, nurses and teachers, aged 55 years and older in a Swedish City (n = 1,342), analyzed descriptively and with structural equation modeling.
Findings
This paper showed positive relationships between active participation in organizational learning programs (OLPs) and autonomy, relatedness, competence and also attractive work. Associations are observed between participation in learning programs, e.g. mentorship, through the strengthened basic needs at work with work attractiveness and lower intention to leave, but not prolonged retirement preference.
Research limitations/implications
The cross-sectional quantitative design restricts drawing causal conclusions about associations.
Practical implications
OLPs at work may be seen as potential measures to strengthen work conditions, fulfilling basic psychological needs at work and increase work attractiveness in strained welfare sectors.
Social implications
There are some welfare sectors that – more than others – are strained by challenges to maintain, sustain and develop quality, knowledge and staff due to poor economic and social resources with regard to sustainability, e.g. in the educational and caring sectors. Strengthening organizational measures is needed to support sustainable development.
Originality/value
This study applies advanced statistical methods, in a large empirical sample, and shows the importance of skills and learning programs for job attractiveness among older workers in female-dominated, strained welfare sectors.
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Ewa Wikström, Rebecka Arman, Lotta Dellve and Nanna Gillberg
The purpose of the paper is to contribute to an understanding of the relational work carried out in mentoring programmes and the implications for learning capabilities in future…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the paper is to contribute to an understanding of the relational work carried out in mentoring programmes and the implications for learning capabilities in future practices.
Design/methodology/approach
This study is based on field research of a mentoring programme bringing together senior and newly graduated workers in a large Swedish health care organisation. In total, 54 qualitative interviews with mentors, mentees, HR, managers and union representatives are included.
Findings
The findings point to the role of trust and a psychological sense of community in the socialisation work that goes on in relationships between the mentor and the mentee. This in turn leads to increased social capital in the form of learning and retaining workers. The conditions for being vulnerable and asking questions, as well as daring to be independent, are an essential and decisive part of constructing bonding within the professional group and bridging out to other professions and parts of the organisation.
Practical implications
The practical contribution from this study is the workplace conditions that are central to organising mentoring programmes, with implications for learning capabilities in future practices.
Originality/value
With its theoretical focus on social capital, the study shows the importance of relationships for learning and retaining both newly graduated and experienced employees in a context of high employee turnover. It is central to achieving strong and mutually beneficial relationships through continual and trustful interaction between actors. By using the concepts of social capital, socialisation agents and psychological sense of community, this study contributes to an understanding of mentoring and workplace learning.
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Ellinor Tengelin, Rebecka Arman, Ewa Wikström and Lotta Dellve
The purpose of this paper is to explore managers' boundary setting in order to better understand their handling of time commitment to work activities, stress, and recovery during…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore managers' boundary setting in order to better understand their handling of time commitment to work activities, stress, and recovery during everyday work and at home.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper has qualitatively‐driven, mixed method design including observational data, individual interviews, and focus group discussions. Data were analyzed according to Charmaz' view on constructivist grounded theory.
Findings
A first step in boundary setting was to recognize areas with conflicting expectations and inexhaustible needs. Second, strategies were formed through negotiating the handling of managerial time commitment, resulting in boundary‐setting, but also boundary‐dissolving, approaches. The continuous process of individual recognition and negotiation could work as a form of proactive coping, provided that it was acknowledged and questioned.
Research limitations/implications
These findings suggest that recognition of perceived boundary challenges can affect stress and coping. It would therefore be interesting to more accurately assess stress, coping, and health status among managers by means of other methodologies (e.g. physiological assessments).
Practical implications
In regulating managers' work assignments, work‐related stress and recovery, it seems important to: acknowledge boundary work as an ever‐present dilemma requiring continuous negotiation; and encourage individuals and organizations to recognize conflicting perspectives inherent in the leadership assignment, in order to decrease harmful negotiations between them. Such awareness would benefit more sustainable management of healthcare practice.
Originality/value
This paper highlights how managers can handle ever‐present boundary dilemmas in the healthcare sector by regulating their time commitments in various ways.
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Alexander Styhre and Rebecka Arman
Institutional theorists treat law and regulations as external factors that is part of the organization’s environment. While institutional theory has been criticized for its…
Abstract
Purpose
Institutional theorists treat law and regulations as external factors that is part of the organization’s environment. While institutional theory has been criticized for its inability to recognize the role of agents and to theorize agency, the growing literature on institutional work and institutional entrepreneurship, partially informed by and co-produced with practice theory, advances a more dynamic view of processes of institutionalization. In order to cope with legal and regulatory frameworks, constituting the legal environment of the organization, there are evidence of organizational responses in the form of bargaining, political negotiations, and decoupling of organizational units and processes. The purpose of this paper is to report how legal and regulatory frameworks both shape clinical practices while at the same time they are also informed by the activities and interests of professional communities and commercial clinics.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper reports an empirical study of the Swedish-assisted conception industry and is based on a case study methodology including the use of interviews and formal documents and reports issues by governmental agencies.
Findings
The empirical material demonstrates how scientists in reproductive medicine and clinicians regard the legal and regulatory framework as what ensures and reinforces the quality of the therapies. At the same time, they actively engage to modify the legal and regulatory framework in the case when they believe it would benefit the patients. The data reported presents one successful case of how PGD/PGS can be used to develop the efficacy of the therapy, and one unsuccessful case of regulatory change in the case of patient interest groups advocating a legalization of commercial gestational surrogacy. In the former case, scientific know-how and medicinal benefits served to “push” the new clinical practice, while in the latter case, the “demand-pull” of patient interest groups fails to get recognition in regulatory and policy-making quarters.
Originality/value
The study contributes to the literature on agency in institutional theory (e.g. the emerging literature on institutional work) by emphasizing how legal and regulatory frameworks are in a constant process of being modified and negotiated in the face of novel technoscientific practices and social demands. More specifically, this process include many scientific, technological, economic, political and social relations and resources, making the legal environment of organizations what is the outcome from joint negotiations and agreements across organizational and professional boundaries.
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Ann Svensson, Ulrika Lundh Snis and Irene Cecilia Bernhard
The purpose of this paper is to address the geographic mobility of organisations by focusing on an instance of a rural community hosting a mobile phone plant in Romania. The paper…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to address the geographic mobility of organisations by focusing on an instance of a rural community hosting a mobile phone plant in Romania. The paper depicts the process of changes in the community and outlines the effects during the lifecycle of the investment: starting from the plant’s re-location from Germany to Romania until its closure and re-location to Southern China.
Design/methodology/approach
This study emerged from a 16 month ethnography in the community conducted between 2011 and 2013. The quotes and observations come from recorded interviews and field notes taken during this time.
Findings
The outcome of this work is to show how firms generate relationships not only with each other, but also with local communities, their labour markets and economies. As the author argue in this work, those relationships, despite their intensity and transformative power, are unstable and contrary to expectations might prove to be fragile and temporary.
Originality/value
A number of approaches, such as world-system theory, political economy or the global value chain theory, try to describe the ongoing re-location of manufacturing industry by employing a top-down perspective. In this work, the author goes beyond this view and instead focus on the cultural meanings of this process. The author’s bottom-up perspective focuses on the particular geographic location of a production node, an important part of the global value chain of a major producer of consumer electronics. The unique value of this work is also that it shows the local outcomes of the investment and the way that workers understand their participation in global production at different stages of organisational life.
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