Purpose
This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.
Design/methodology/approach
This ...briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.
Findings
In early 2012 various researches around employee engagement found their way into the mainstream press in the UK. Studies show, said the reports, that the majority of firms' employees seemed to enjoy working for their companies and were satisfied with their working life. However only a very small percentage actually engaged with their firms, to the extent that they were willing to go the extra mile to make them successful.
Practical implications
The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.
Originality/value
The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to digest format.
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of multi-level forms of efficacy and organisational interactions necessary for promoting effective work engagement. ...Design/methodology/approach: Work engagement is explored from a multi-level efficacy perspective (self, collective and organisational). Based on the ideas of Bandura, workplace interactions are investigated through the theoretical lens of social cognitive theory (SCT). Findings: The ability to conceptualise engagement from individual, group and organisational perspectives, helps researchers and HR practitioners appreciate the complexities involved. The paper also highlights a need for developing new organisational interactions that promote engagement, as opposed to reinforcing stale managerial policies, or one-sided strategies for short term productivity gains. Organisational interactions should respond to job demands at both individual and collective levels. The paper also suggests that new interactions and stronger communication helps promote collective and organisational efficacy. Research limitations/implications: This is a theoretical discussion piece that attempts to set the scene and examine broad issues, and thus there is no measurement or empirical analysis attempted. Additional work is required to operationalise constructs further, as part of a case study protocol for future in-depth empirical analysis. Originality/value: This thought-piece paper is significant for managers in retail and researchers alike, when developing organisational interactions from a multi-level efficacy perspective. The conceptual contribution of the paper is a fresh macro-analytical perspective concerning efficacy and work engagement. Some ideas are also presented for future research. (Contains 1 figure.)
Purpose The relationship between participation quality and commitment has received relatively limited attention in the industrial relations IR and human resource management HRM literature. This paper ...seeks to fill some of the gaps in prior research. It aims to answer three questions How do participation justice and satisfaction influence affective and normative organisational commitment Does leadermember exchange LMX influence satisfaction and perceived justice with participation Do the three assumed indicators of participation quality mediate the relationship between LMX and affective and normative organisational commitment Designmethodologyapproach The research was conducted at three faculties of a Dutch university, and involved faculty staff. Emails and online questionnaires were distributed in Dutch. Hypotheses were tested. Three indicators of direct participation quality satisfaction with participation, perceived distributive justice concerning participation, and procedural justice were included. Findings It was found that two indicators of participation quality mediate the LMX and affective organisational commitment relationship satisfaction with direct participation and perceived distributive justice concerning direct participation. As a consequence, it can be concluded that supervisors' skills in fostering direct participation quality contribute to employees' positive attitudes towards the overall employment relationship and thereby perhaps also to organisational performance. Originalityvalue The paper explores the relationships between LMX, direct participation quality, and affective and normative organisational commitment.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe the policies and practices that have helped to make Santander UK a great place to work.
Design/methodology/approach
Explains the reasons for the ...policies, the form they take and the results they have achieved.
Findings
Details specific policies in areas such as work‐life balance, caring for carers, diversity, employee development, employee health, employees with school‐age children, employee engagement and community involvement.
Practical implications
Advances the view that a major factor in engagement is in employees feeling that the company, and particularly senior leaders, genuinely cares about their well‐being. That is the culture the bank strives for.
Social implications
Reveals that the bank matches the money raised by employees in their fund‐raising activities in the community.
Originality/value
Discusses the wide range of benefits available to employees at Santander UK and assesses the impact on individuals and the organization as a whole.
Purpose - It is ironic that in stressful economic times, when new ideas and positive behaviors could be most valuable, employees may not speak up, leading to reduced employee participation, less ...organizational learning, less innovation and less receptiveness to change. The supervisor is the organization's first line of defense against a culture of silence and towards a culture of openness. The purpose of this paper is to ask what helps supervisors to hear prosocial voice and notice defensive silence.Design methodology approach - The authors conducted a cross-sectional field study of 142 supervisors.Findings - The results indicate that prosocial voice is increased by supervisor tension and trust in employees, while defensive silence is increased by supervisor tension but reduced by unionization of employees and trust in employees. This indicates that, as hypothesized by others, voice and silence are orthogonal and not opposites of the same construct.Research limitations implications - The data are measured at one point in time, and further longitudinal study would be helpful to further understand the phenomena.Practical implications - This research highlights the potential for supervisors in stressful situations to selectively hear voice and silence from employees.Social implications - This research also has implications for supervisors who work in a unionized environment. Although seemingly counter-intuitive, there is a value to employee unionization in terms of either reducing the level of actual defensive silence, or at least reducing supervisors' perceptions of defensive silence.Originality value - The paper adds to our knowledge of prosocial voice and defensive silence by testing supervisors' perceptions of these constructs during difficult times. It provides valuable empirical insights to a literature dominated by conceptual non-empirical papers. Limited research on silence might reflect how difficult it is to study such an ambiguous and passive construct as silence (often simply viewed as a lack of speech). The paper contributes also to trust literature by identifying its role in increasing supervisor's perceptions of prosocial voice and reducing perceptions of defensive silence.
Purpose
This paper aims to detail some of the policies that have helped Midcounties Co‐operative to become one of the Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For.
Design/methodology/approach
It ...underlines the importance of good internal communications and employee development.
Findings
It observes that the society's graduate program provides an opportunity for students with a 2:2 honours degree or better to gain experience across the society. They undertake six, four‐month placements in different areas of the business. The graduates also carry out a project relevant to their placements.
Practical implications
The paper describes the experiences of a number of people on the society's graduate program and reveals that training opportunities are among the reasons that employees rate the company as good to work for.
Social implications
It reveals that employees are allowed to spend up to three paid days a year volunteering.
Originality/value
The paper shows why employees rate highly the experience of working at Midcounties Co‐operative.
Purpose
This paper aims to explore employee empowerment at the Shanghai Hanye Information Technology Company.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper describes the various forms that employee ...empowerment takes at the company, its limitations and the advantages it has brought.
Findings
It reports that empowerment is serving to encourage: honest, open, co‐operative and harmonious communications and relationships in the workplace; loyalty to the company; greater participation in the cultural life of the organization and its decision‐making processes; and a more unified enterprise spirit.
Practical implications
The paper explains that employees are expected to: contribute ideas that could help to overcome organizational difficulties; sacrifice self‐interest in favor of the interests of the organization; work on regardless if misunderstandings or conflicts occur; and serve as intermediary for building relationships with other organizations.
Social implications
The paper reveals that this type of “spiritual” HR is part of the prevailing ethos in the People's Republic of China.
Originality/value
This study provides interesting detail, from an insider perspective, on employee empowerment in a Chinese context.
Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore how traditional Jewish sources view workplace relations, with particular attention to how those sources may aid individuals to best meet the ...challenges of the contemporary organizational world.Design methodology approach - This work examines the desired nature of employer-employee relations via an examination of pertinent Jewish sources from a variety of time-periods and locations.Findings - Traditional Jewish sources address a wide array of topics associated with the respective obligations and rights of employers and employees at the workplace. These sources allow for an additional way to meet the challenges of a workplace plagued by the lack of trust and common purpose often associated with the contemporary business organization.Practical implications - The paper provides a conceptual framework through which to understand workplace relations. It presents and explicates various aspects of employer and employee responsibilities, while suggesting possible means by which business leaders can best organize and maintain workplace relations.Originality value - There currently exists both an increasing interest in spirituality at the workplace and the acknowledgement that traditional sources may provide important insights into the challenges of contemporary organizations and those who lead them. The paper is the first piece of research addressing how traditional Jewish wisdom can be leveraged to advance on of the most vexing problems in contemporary organizations: the advancement of mutual trust between employer and employee.
Purpose - A labor union's strength is a crucial factor when considering outcomes such as its constituents' empowerment. One of the most important goals of any labor union is to achieve increased ...balance-of-power between the labor and management groups; hence, union strength is an accomplishment of this fundamental aim. It follows that stronger unions, measured by their perceived effectiveness in dealing with management, will contain more empowered constituents. Previous union-related research typically considered employee empowerment at the group-level of analysis (e.g. improved work rules, pay, and benefits for entire groups of employees). The purpose of this paper is to propose and test hypotheses on the relationship between perceived union strength, a micro- or workplace-level analog of union bargaining power, and perceptions of shared leader-member expectations using supervisor-subordinate dyads as a unit of analysis.Design methodology approach - Working adults across the USA were sampled (n=347), through the use of a survey software company that makes survey panels commercially available. Respondents were racially ethnically diverse, with a mean age of about 41 years (range of 18 to over 62 years), and slightly more females than males (about 65 percent female). Also, about 13.5 percent were members of a labor union.Findings - Employees who belonged to more powerful unions (i.e. compared to employees who belonged to less powerful unions) demonstrated increased shared-leadership expectations with their supervisors. In support of Hypothesis 1, non-union employees also possessed increased shared leadership expectations in comparison to union workers where the union was perceived as weak. As proposed in Hypothesis 2, unions perceived as strong produced more empowered constituents relative to unions perceived as weak. Finally, non-union employees did not appear to differ in shared-leadership expectations from employees perceiving strong unions, contrary to Hypothesis 3.Originality value - A contribution of the present study is to show that unions also have significant connections with supervisor-subordinate relations (i.e. shared leadership), and that simply having a unionized workplace does not guarantee increased employee empowerment; unions must also be strong.
