To assess the relationship between quality management and employee commitment.
Abstract
Purpose
To assess the relationship between quality management and employee commitment.
Design/methodology/approach
Analysis of the state of affairs with respect to (T)QM programs in The Netherlands based on the literature and interviews with key informants.
Findings
Description of an approach that tries to integrate employee commitment and quality management based on the concept of employees’ psychological contracts with their organization (ideas about mutual obligations between them and their employer).
Research limitations/implications
The interviews with key informants provide limited information; the study is done in only one country. Research in a broader context and on a larger scale would give a more general overview.
Practical implications
The crucial factor in making quality management work can be better described by “quality fails when employees’ psychological contracts are neglected” than by “quality fails when system fails”.
Originality/value
This paper highlights the essential relationship between quality management and employee commitment and offers suggestions on how to approach this issue.
Details
Keywords
To assess the relationship between quality management and employee commitment.
Abstract
Purpose
To assess the relationship between quality management and employee commitment.
Design/methodology/approach
Analysis of the state of affairs with respect to (T)QM programs in The Netherlands based on the literature and interviews with key informants.
Findings
Description of an approach that tries to integrate employee commitment and quality management based on the concept of employees' psychological contracts with their organization (ideas about mutual obligations between them and their employer).
Research limitations/implications
The interviews with key informants provide limited information: the study is done in only one country. Research in a broader context and on a larger scale would give a more general overview.
Practical implications
The crucial factor in making quality management work can better be described by “quality fails when employees' psychological contracts are neglected” than by “quality fails when the system fails”.
Originality/value
This paper highlights the essential relationship between quality management and employee commitment and offers suggestions on how to approach this issue.
Details
Keywords
Niels van der Baan, Inken Gast, Wim Gijselaers and Simon Beausaert
The present study proposes coaching as a pedagogical intervention to prepare students for transitioning to the labour market. Taking a competence-based approach, the proposed…
Abstract
Purpose
The present study proposes coaching as a pedagogical intervention to prepare students for transitioning to the labour market. Taking a competence-based approach, the proposed coaching practice aims to enhance students' employability competences to facilitate a smoother school-to-work transition. However, what transition coaching looks like remains largely unclear. Moreover, in competence-based education, teachers are expected to be highly skilled coaches, facilitating students' transition to the labour market. The present study aims to map the core competencies of a transition coach.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative design was adopted to map the core competences of a transition coach. Data were collected from two focus groups, consisting of coaches in higher education and in the workplace.
Findings
Results show that, to create the necessary support conditions, a coach creates a safe coaching environment and supports students in setting goals, guide them in the activities they undertake to attain these goals, and asks reflective questions. Moreover, the coach stimulates students' ownership by putting the student in the centre of the decision-making process. Furthermore, the results emphasize the importance of the coach's professional attitude and knowledge about the transition process and the labour market.
Practical implications
The article concludes with practical implications for novice transition coaches and teachers in higher education.
Originality/value
The present study adds to the agenda of graduate work readiness by proposing a coaching practice aimed at preparing students for their transition to the labour market.
Details
Keywords
Alana Vandebeek, Wim Voordeckers, Jolien Huybrechts and Frank Lambrechts
The purpose of this study is to examine how informational faultlines on a board affect the management of knowledge owned by directors and the consequences on organizational…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine how informational faultlines on a board affect the management of knowledge owned by directors and the consequences on organizational performance. In this study, informational faultlines are defined as hypothetical lines that divide a group into relatively homogeneous subgroups based on the alignment of several informational attributes among board members.
Design/methodology/approach
The study uses unique hand-collected panel data covering 7,247 board members at 106 publicly traded firms to provide strong support for the hypothesized U-shaped relationship. The authors use a fixed effects approach and a system generalized method of moments approach to test the hypothesis.
Findings
The study finds that the relationship between informational faultlines on a board and organizational performance is U shaped, with the least optimal organizational performance experienced when boards have moderate informational faultlines. More specifically, informational faultlines within boards are negatively related to organizational performance across the weak-to-moderate range of informational faultlines and positively related to organizational performance across the moderate-to-strong range.
Research limitations/implications
By explaining the mechanisms through which informational faultlines are related to organizational performance, the authors contribute to the literature in a number of ways. By conceptualizing how the management of knowledge plays an important role in the particular setting of corporate boards, the authors add not only to literature on knowledge management but also to the faultline and corporate governance literature.
Originality/value
This study offers a rationale for prior mixed findings by providing an alternative theoretical basis to explain the effect of informational faultlines within boards on organizational performance. To advance the field, the authors build on the concept of knowledge demonstrability to illuminate how informational faultlines affect the management of knowledge within boards, which will translate to organizational performance.
Details
Keywords
This study examines how two important situational factors (corporate diversification and business unit strategy) and two elements of a firm’s administrative system…
Abstract
This study examines how two important situational factors (corporate diversification and business unit strategy) and two elements of a firm’s administrative system (accounting‐based budgetary controls and associated incentives) affect the presence of slack in business unit budgets in diversified firms. The relationships among these variables are established by building on theories from organizational economics, the information‐processing view of organizations, and organizational behavior. Data are collected from 37 firms and 153 business units within these firms. The main results indicate: that corporate diversification is positively associated with slack in business unit budgets; and that tight budgetary controls and high‐powered incentives effectively curtail such slack. However, diversification does not seem to drive corporate managers to rely more on these systems to reduce higher budgetary slack associated with diversification. This suggests: that diversified firms employ a conscious strategy of slack at the business unit level to reduce information‐processing needs at the top; or that the design of the internal management control system is a function of factors other than corporate diversification. With respect to the latter explanation, the results indicate that business units that pursue a differentiation strategy receive less tight budgetary controls, which leaves them with the necessary slack to effectively pursue the critical success factors on which their strategies are built.
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Keywords
Our news compiler of the last three and a half years, Paul Blake, is no longer able to take on this task following his promotion to Editor of our sister publication Information…
Abstract
Our news compiler of the last three and a half years, Paul Blake, is no longer able to take on this task following his promotion to Editor of our sister publication Information World Review. Their gain is our loss. One result of this move is a slightly different format to the News Roundup: we continue to give the main stories of the last two months, following which stories are given by overall subject rather than by vendor.
C.C. Pain, J.L.M.A. Gomes, Eaton, C.R.E. de Oliveira and A.J.H. Goddard
To present dynamical analysis of axisymmetric and three‐dimensional (3D) simulations of a nuclear fluidized bed reactor. Also to determine the root cause of reactor power…
Abstract
Purpose
To present dynamical analysis of axisymmetric and three‐dimensional (3D) simulations of a nuclear fluidized bed reactor. Also to determine the root cause of reactor power fluctuations.
Design/methodology/approach
We have used a coupled neutron radiation (in full phase space) and high resolution multiphase gas‐solid Eulerian‐Eulerian model.
Findings
The reactor can take over 5 min after start up to establish a quasi‐steady‐state and the mechanism for the long term oscillations of power have been established as a heat loss/generation mechanism. There is a clear need to parameterize the temperature of the reactor and, therefore, its power output for a given fissile mass or reactivity. The fission‐power fluctuates by an order of magnitude with a frequency of 0.5‐2 Hz. However, the thermal power output from gases is fairly steady.
Research limitation/implications
The applications demonstrate that a simple surrogate of a complex model of a nuclear fluidised bed can have a predictive ability and has similar statistics to the more complex model.
Practical implications
This work can be used to analyze chaotic systems and also how the power is sensitive to fluctuations in key regions of the reactor.
Originality/value
The work presents the first 3D model of a nuclear fluidised bed reactor and demonstrates the value of numerical methods for modelling new and existing nuclear reactors.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to examine the history of the Dutch cooperative Rabobank to understand how the structure of an organisation determines how individual employees…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the history of the Dutch cooperative Rabobank to understand how the structure of an organisation determines how individual employees validate norms within that organisation.
Design/methodology/approach
Data over an approximately 10-year period starting 25 years ago are analysed, and the value of relating a historical analysis and narrative approach to ethical and institutional theories in economics and management science is demonstrated.
Findings
Regulation in the banking sector appears to have a strong normative aspect. The choice between state and private ownership is based on ideology. The author argues that the private ownership model was based primarily on an ideology surrounding economic efficiency, but that in fact there are other logics that also promote economic development. This contributes to the understanding of the interaction between sector standards, organisational structures and the values of organisations and individual employees. The structure of an organisation enables key employees to deviate slightly from the organisation’s prevailing norms in response to pressures from the wider environment, and those individuals thereby become symbols of that organisation.
Originality/value
The perspective on management history put forward in this paper enables assessing the distinction between normative notions in institutional environments and the organisation as a whole as represented in its governance structure and narratives that key employees disseminate about the organisation. This in turn helps us to understand the interaction between sector standards, organisational characteristics and values represented by individual employees. The author reveals the strong normative impact of banking regulation in line with an older ideological model focused on economic efficiency rather than market logics and the interests of society.