Taking a managerial position involves not only taking on managerial tasks and responsibilities but also developing an identity as manager. Recent work on manager learning thus proposes that identity ...work is a significant part of learning to become manager. This work has, however, rarely focused on first-time managers and, despite the emphasis on process, has rarely examined identity work over time. Against this background, we present a longitudinal study of six newly appointed managers. Adopting a Ricoeurian perspective, we construct “small stories” to explore how they made sense of themselves and how to relate to others in light of new experiences in their everyday lives as nascent managers. The study provides insight into the process through which they were learning to become managers. Specifically, it highlights how the manager’s identity work oscillated over time by pointing to the ongoing dialectic between continuity and change, progress and stand-still, knowing and not-knowing, and excitement and despair.
Background:
Promoting work engagement is of interest to organizations across sectors due to the associated positive outcomes. This interest warrants research on the evidence of work engagement ...interventions. Intervention research increasingly advocates a bottom-up approach, highlighting the role of employees themselves. These workplace interventions often encourage employees to identify, develop, and make use of workplace resources. The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis is to investigate the effectiveness and potential underlying mechanisms of these bottom-up, resource-developing interventions.
Method:
Systematic searches were conducted in the online databases Web of Science, Academic Search Complete, Business Source Ultimate, PsycInfo, PsycArticles, SCOPUS, and Google Scholar. Publication year range was 2000–2020. Eligibility criteria were defined using PICOS. To be eligible for the systematic review, the intervention study identified had to aim at promoting working individuals’ work engagement by developing workplace resources from bottom-up. Work engagement had to be measured using the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale. The systematic review included one-, two-, or multiple-armed – randomized or non-randomized – intervention studies with various study designs. Further, a meta-analysis was conducted on a sub-set of the studies included in the systematic review. To be eligible for the meta-analysis, the studies had to be two- or multiple-armed and provide the information necessary to compute effect sizes.
Results:
Thirty-one studies were included in the systematic review. The majority reported that overall work engagement increased as an effect of the intervention. The evidence regarding the sub-components of work engagement was scattered. Potential underlying mechanisms explored were intervention foci, approach, and format. Dimensions of satisfaction and performance were identified as secondary outcomes. Participant experiences were generally described as positive in most of the studies applying mixed methods. The meta-analysis showed a small but promising intervention effect on work engagement (24 studies, SMD: −0.22, 95% CI: −0.34 to −0.11, with
I
2
=53%, indicating moderate inconsistency in the evidence).
Conclusion:
The synthesized evidence suggests that bottom-up, resource-developing interventions are effective in the promotion of work engagement. The meta-analysis suggests that focusing on strengths use or mobilizing ego resources and adopting a universal approach increase intervention effectiveness.
Background
Organizations worldwide increasingly adopt inclusive talent management, and this approach appears to rhyme particularly well with the Nordic welfare model. Questions about its value remain ...understudied, however. The inclusive approach is rooted in positive psychology and focuses on recognizing each employee's individual talents and assessing whether they fit the long-term needs of the organization, since a fit is assumed to be associated with employees' wellbeing. In the present study, we test this assumption focusing specifically on a key talent management practice, talent identification, and the social dimension of employee wellbeing.
Method
Data were collected through an employee survey conducted within the Finnish units of four international manufacturing organizations and analyzed using logistic regression (
n
= 618).
Results
We found that the recognition of individual talents for long-term deployment by the organization is positively associated with social wellbeing in terms of supervisor support and social climate in the work unit, as perceived by the employees.
Conclusion
Our results tentatively suggest that inclusive talent management creates value through the identification of employees' individual talents as this practice can be associated with their enhanced wellbeing.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the development of a deeper understanding of the conceptual and empirical boundaries of talent management (TM) so that scholars and practitioners ...may enhance their knowledge of what TM actually is and how it is carried out.
Design/methodology/approach
A comparative study was conducted of the TM practices of 30 organizations based in Sweden. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with 56 organizational representatives. The transcribed interviews were analyzed using qualitative content analysis.
Findings
The findings comprise a typology consisting of four distinct TM types that exist in practice: a humanistic type, a competitive type, an elitist type and an entrepreneurial type. Descriptions are provided that probe into how specific practices are differently shaped in the different types.
Research limitations/implications
The study design enabled the generation of an empirically rich understanding of different TM types; however, it limited the authors’ ability to draw systematic conclusions on the realized outcomes of different types of TM.
Practical implications
The descriptions of different TM types give practitioners insight into how TM may be practiced in different ways and point to important decisions to be made when designing TM.
Originality/value
The paper addresses two main shortcomings identified in the academic literature on TM: conceptual ambiguity and the paucity of in-depth empirical research on how TM is carried out in actual organizational settings. The empirically derived typology constitutes an important step for further theory development in TM.
Existing literature on employee selection contains an abundance of knowledge of how selection should take place but almost nothing about how it occurs in practice. This paper presents an ...ethnomethodological-discourse analytical real-time study of how selection decisions are made in situ. The main findings suggest that selection decision making is characterized by ongoing practical deliberation involving four interrelated discursive processes: assembling versions of the candidates; establishing the versions of the candidates as factual; reaching selection decisions; and using selection tools as sensemaking devices. In addition, this paper identifies two basic forms of selection decision making: one characterized by initial agreement and one characterized by initial disagreement. In each basic form of decision making, selectors reason through the four discursive processes in a methodical, situated and practical manner in order to construct local versions of the candidates and make ‘reasonable’ selection decisions.
Research on service purchasing commonly acknowledges that different types of services require different purchasing approaches. This has generated a plethora of service classifications that focus on ...different characteristics inherent to the service. Recently, the use to which a service is put in an organization and the organizational context have been argued to influence the way in which the service is purchased, thereby shifting attention away from inherent service characteristics. The current paper extends this line of research by focusing on the buyer's understanding of the service and its impact on the supplier selection process. Based on an interpretive, phenomenographic analysis of 32 interviews with buyers of pension and insurance advice services (PIAS) in Sweden, the current study identifies four fundamentally different ways of understanding these services and shows how different conceptions of a service give rise to different approaches to selecting suppliers and different criteria for evaluating them.
Abstract
Background
Few large-scale, comparative studies have examined both the positive mental well-being outcomes of work–life balance and the broader socio-economic context by which it is shaped. ...Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the association between work–life balance and work engagement across a wide range of European welfare states, as well as to examine whether work–life balance varies across European countries and whether this variance can be explained by welfare regime, controlling for individual-level factors.
Methods
This study utilized data from the 2015 European Working Conditions Survey. In total, 35 401 workers from 30 European countries could be classified into the adopted welfare regime typology. Work engagement was measured using an ultra-short version of the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale, and work–life balance with a question on the fit between working hours and family or social commitments. Due to the hierarchical structure of the data, multilevel regression models were applied.
Results
A statistically significant positive association between work–life balance and work engagement across the European workforce was found. Between-country variance in work–life balance was demonstrated and this can in part be explained by welfare regime.
Conclusions
While it has long been recognized that occupational stress and work-related mental health problems are shaped by the socio-economic context and thus regarded as public health concerns in Europe, our results suggest that this applies to well-being at work and related support factors as well.
Abstract
Performance management can play an important role in the implementation of strategic change, by aligning employees’ mindsets and behavior with organizational goals. However, the ways in ...which employees react to change efforts aided by performance management practices are far from straight-forward. In this chapter, we develop a conceptual framework for understanding employees’ reactions to strategic change as a consequence of their occupational identities and their performance management outcome. We further apply the framework to an empirical study of a strategic change initiative in a school organization that was supported by a new performance management practice. We show how variations in perceived identity threat translate into four distinct patterns of emotional and behavioral reactions, where only one represents whole-hearted change acceptance. The study contributes to our understanding of individual- and group-level heterogeneity in reactions to strategic change, and also to a more nuanced conception of identity threat.
Denna avhandling handlar om hur rekryteringsprocesser går till. Den handlar särskilt om rekryteringsprocesser där bedömning och beslutsfattande sker i grupper som består av rekryterare, linjechefer ...och blivande kollegor. Hur hanterar dessa bedömare den mångtydiga situation som en rekrytering innebär? Hur går det till när de diskuterar kandidater och kommer överens om vem som skall rekryteras? Hur fastställer de tillsammans om en kandidat är en ”klockren stjärna” eller ett ”stolpskott”, en socialt kompetent person eller en ensamvarg, en specialist eller en generalist? Vilken roll spelar rekryteringsverktygen i detta arbete? Blir bedömningen mindre rättvis om den sker under en informell diskussion mellan erfarna kollegor än om bedömarna endast tar hänsyn till objektiva fakta? Dessa är några av de frågor som diskuteras i denna avhandling. Den bygger på studier som omfattar intervjuer med rekryterare och observationer av beslutsmöten där olika bedömare samlas för att diskutera kandidater som sökt arbete och besluta huruvida dessa skall erbjudas anställning.
Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögsk., 2002
PDF
