Examines some of the reasons women remain under-represented at the top of organizations, despite developments in management thinking that appear to reward areas where women…
Abstract
Purpose
Examines some of the reasons women remain under-represented at the top of organizations, despite developments in management thinking that appear to reward areas where women traditionally excel.
Design/methodology/approach
Looks at some of the research into leadership skills and draws conclusions regarding the paucity of women in management.
Findings
Considers some of the obstacles to women becoming managers to be: the attitudes of male managers, the lack of suitable role models for women, women’s reticence to network, and lack of confidence.
Practical implications
Urges organizations to work harder to reduce the significance of these obstacles.
Social implications
Shows how organizations – and through them society as a whole – would benefit from having more women in top jobs.
Originality/value
Argues that having more women in leadership positions – that is, more positive role models – would help to give women more confidence in their ability to be great leaders and would encourage more women to push themselves forward for leadership opportunities.
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Keywords
– Questions whether organizational well-being strategies always recognize the differences between men and women when it comes to mental health.
Abstract
Purpose
Questions whether organizational well-being strategies always recognize the differences between men and women when it comes to mental health.
Design/methodology/approach
Shows why men’s mental health is an area of concern and reveals how to ensure that an organization’s well-being strategy looks after men, as well as women.
Findings
Describes how the limited research that exists regarding the mental health of men paints a picture of men experiencing mental ill health in a different way from women. This makes it less likely that it will be identified, recognized or addressed using the current “female model” of mental health.
Research limitations/implications
Advises organizations to: train their managers to recognize the different symptoms of reduced mental health that men present with, so that they can identify when male staff are experiencing mental ill health; raise awareness of the fact that men experience mental ill health and that it is alright to talk about feelings; and remember that men may be very reluctant to talk to someone in the workplace about how they feel and may not want to talk to their doctor for the same reasons.
Practical implications
Advises organizations to: train their managers to recognize the different symptoms of reduced mental health that men present with, so that they can identify when male staff are experiencing mental ill health; raise awareness of the fact that men experience mental ill health and that it is alright to talk about feelings; and remember that men may be very reluctant to talk to someone in the workplace about how they feel and may not want to talk to their doctor for the same reasons.
Social implications
Considers that there has been a wealth of research into the mental health of women but still relatively little into the mental health of men.
Originality/value
Provides a set of practical recommendations for organizations to ensure that they are taking account of the mental health of their male employees.
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Keywords
What is the role of managing knowledge within organizations? This is one of the fundamental research and practical questions which has animated and moved forward the rich…
Abstract
Purpose
What is the role of managing knowledge within organizations? This is one of the fundamental research and practical questions which has animated and moved forward the rich scientific debate around the management of knowledge resources. This article aims to introduce the focus of the special issue. Its fundamental premise is that organizations invest their scarce resources only if these investments are capable of enhancing the business value creation capacity. Thus managers are interested in managing knowledge not for the sake of knowledge management, but because the planning, design, assessment and revision of the organizational knowledge resources and processes can support the business performance improvements.
Design/methodology/approach
The selection of the articles collected in this special issue is largely based on the work of the conference “International Forum on Knowledge Assets Dynamics – IFKAD” which took place in June 2011 in Tampere, Finland. IFKAD gathers leading experts in the field of the strategic knowledge‐based development of micro and macro organizations paying great attention to the knowledge dynamics affecting organizational value creation capacity.
Findings
Knowledge represents one of the fundamental constituent parts of any organization and it can be incorporated into people's abilities or ingrained into structural and technological capital. Thus management of knowledge is at the core of organization's business growth. In the light of this reflection this special issue pays attention to two main perspectives. First, recognizing that knowledge, likewise any other organization's resource, needs management means to support its allocation and development, the frameworks and tools aiming to identify, manage and assess the critical knowledge resources for growth are focused on. Second, acknowledging that the translation of knowledge into business outcomes requires management mechanisms, and then considering the knowledge processes grounding the improvement of performance.
Originality/value
The special issue explores the phenomena integrating the organizational, group and individual perspectives. This integration overcomes some limitations about the understanding of the issues under investigation.
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Keywords
Qian Chen, Mats Magnusson and Jennie Björk
Firms increasingly rely on both external and internal crowdsourcing to capture ideas more broadly and enhance innovative problem-solving. Especially in internal crowdsourcing…
Abstract
Purpose
Firms increasingly rely on both external and internal crowdsourcing to capture ideas more broadly and enhance innovative problem-solving. Especially in internal crowdsourcing, knowledge sharing that contributes to develop or further the understanding of the problem the idea is focused on solving can take place between critical employees, and in that way improve ideas generated by others. This far, most crowdsourcing practices have focused on identifying solutions to proposed problems, whereas much less is known about how crowds can be used to share problem-related knowledge. There is thus an untapped potential in leveraging crowds not just to generate solution-oriented ideas but also to share knowledge to improve ideas and even to reframe problems. This paper aims to explore the effect of problem- and solution-related knowledge sharing in internal crowdsourcing for idea development.
Design/methodology/approach
Data on ideas and comments were collected from an idea management system in a Swedish multinational company. The investigation captures the influences of the problem- and solution-related knowledge sharing on ideas based on content analysis and logistic regression analysis.
Findings
The results from this study show that sharing knowledge related to solutions in idea development impacts idea acceptance positively, whereas sharing knowledge related to problems in idea development has a negative effect on the likelihood of idea acceptance and these effects of knowledge sharing are moderated by the active author responses.
Practical implications
This research provides managerial implications for firms to deliberately manage knowledge sharing in peer communities in internal crowdsourcing, especially by providing suggestions on problem reframing and solution refining for ideas.
Originality/value
The results contribute to existing theory in terms of extending the view of crowdsourcing in ideation to include how crowds contribute to the development of the problem and the solution during the development of ideas and providing new insights on knowledge sharing in internal crowdsourcing based on problem-solving theory.