Leonard Branson, Thomas S. Clausen and Chung‐Hsein Sung
Face‐to‐face (F2F) teams form and function differently than computer‐mediated (virtual) teams. The social processes associated with effective team work are different in F2F and…
Abstract
Face‐to‐face (F2F) teams form and function differently than computer‐mediated (virtual) teams. The social processes associated with effective team work are different in F2F and virtual teams. These differences affect the ability of groups of people to successfully form a team that can function effectively. This study found that computer‐mediated teams differ significantly from F2F teams along important group style dimensions as measured by the Group Style Inventory (GSI).
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Thomas Clausen and Vilhelm Borg
This paper aims to identify longitudinal associations between job demands, job resources and experience of meaning at work.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to identify longitudinal associations between job demands, job resources and experience of meaning at work.
Design/methodolgy/approach
Using data from a longitudinal survey study among 6,299 employees in Danish eldercare who were divided into 301 work‐groups, experience of meaning at work was predicted from a series of job demands and job resources measured at individual level and group level.
Findings
A combination of individual‐level and group‐level measures of job demands and job resources contributed to predicting meaning at work. Meaning at work at follow‐up was predicted by meaning at work at baseline, role ambiguity, quality of leadership, and influence at work at individual level and emotional demands at group level. Individual‐level measures of job demands and job resources proved stronger predictors of meaning at work than group‐level measures.
Research limitations/implications
Psychosocial job demands and job resources predict experience of meaning at work.
Practical implications
Experience of meaning at work constitutes an important organizational resource by contributing to the capacities of employees to deal with work‐related stresses and strains, while maintaining their health and well‐being.
Social implications
Experience of meaning at work is positively associated with well‐being and reduces risk for long‐term sickness absence and turnover. Attention towards enhancing employee experiences of meaning at work may contribute towards the ability of western societies to recruit the necessary supply of labour over the coming decades.
Originality/value
This is the first study to provide longitudinal, multi‐level evidence on the association between job demands, job resources and experience of meaning at work.
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Clive Bingley, Edwin Fleming and Allan Bunch
THE WELCOME NEWS, late in November, that the government has finally given the go‐ahead to the first phase of building the new British Library headquarters at Somers Town next to…
Abstract
THE WELCOME NEWS, late in November, that the government has finally given the go‐ahead to the first phase of building the new British Library headquarters at Somers Town next to St Pancras railway station has reawakened the campaign by Professor Hugh Thomas and others to retain the Reading Room at the British Museum as the BL'S centre‐point. Professor Thomas wants the new building to be merely a warehouse for the book collections, and to have books ferried down to readers at Great Russell Street on demand.
Elisabeth Hoff-Clausen and Øyvind Ihlen
The prime goal of this chapter is to discuss what the notion of rhetorical citizenship as a normative aspiration might entail for corporations.
Abstract
Purpose
The prime goal of this chapter is to discuss what the notion of rhetorical citizenship as a normative aspiration might entail for corporations.
Methodology/approach
The chapter draws on a pilot study of the Facebook pages of two banks. A rhetorical criticism of these pages was conducted.
Findings
We suggest that while corporations are assuredly entities very different from the individual citizens who hold civil, social, and political rights – which do not directly apply to corporations – rhetorical citizenship is nevertheless a suggestive and constructive metaphor for corporations to communicate by.
Research limitations/implications
Rhetorical citizenship for corporations must, we argue, be(come) rooted in organizational reality, and should involve a continued critical questioning as to what might constitute citizenly communication for corporations under any given circumstances. The chapter is, however, built on limited data from a pilot study and needs to be complemented.
Practical implications
We suggest from our pilot study that the active engagement of corporations in social media may currently be seen as one form of rhetorical citizenship that the public expects corporations to enact. Thus, we argue, corporations in general might as well attempt to do their best to act as rhetorical citizens.
Originality/value
The chapter highlights how communication is a set of practices in which social responsibility must be enacted. We find that this is not a prevalent perspective in the existing literature on CSR and communication.
Michelle Davey, Gerard McElwee and Robert Smith
Building on previous work from Frith, McElwee, Smith, Somerville and Fairlie this chapter further explores entrepreneurship as practiced by an entrepreneur (who is also a drug…
Abstract
Purpose
Building on previous work from Frith, McElwee, Smith, Somerville and Fairlie this chapter further explores entrepreneurship as practiced by an entrepreneur (who is also a drug dealer) in a rural, UK, northern, small-town context and how he does ‘strategy’.
Methodology/approach
This research was conducted in a broadly grounded approach using a conversational research methodology (Feldman, 1999). A series of conversations were conducted with a career drug dealer, guided by a very basic agenda-setting question of ‘how do you earn money?’ Emergent themes were explored through further conversation before being compared with literature and triangulated with third party conversations.
Research limitations/implications
Implications for research design, ethics and the conduct of such research are identified and discussed. As a research project this work is protean and as a case study the generalisations that can be made from this piece are necessarily limited. Access to and ethical approval for research directly with illegal entrepreneurs is fraught with difficulty in the risk-averse environment of academia. This limits the data available directly from illegal entrepreneurs. The credibility of data collected from third parties is limited by their peripheral interest in and awareness of entrepreneurship discourse, entrepreneurial life themes and the entrepreneurial dimension to crime, as well as by the structural bias implicit in the fact that many of these third parties deal only with what might be termed the unsuccessful entrepreneurs (i.e., those that got caught!) Findings represent a tentative indication of potential themes for further research.