Career opportunity and organizational attachment in a blue-collar unionized environment

Organizations and the larger socio-economic environment have always presented the context in which careers unfold and evolve over time. One notable change is that promotion opportunities have been drastically reduced as organizations flatten their hierarchies and restructure. Reduced commitment by both organizations and their members are increasingly characteristic of the emerging employment relationship. This study investigated an alternative to mobility opportunity in a blue-collar unionized sample and finds that perceived role enhancement opportunity (i.e., expanding task complexity and more autonomy in the near future) related positively to attitudinal outcomes historically associated with promotion opportunity (i.e., organizational commitment, work involvement, and career opportunity satisfaction) and, in fact, explained more criterion variance. This was especially true of incumbents with two or less years of position tenure.     

The interactive effects of organizational politics and exchange ideology on manager ratings of retention

This study examined the moderating effect of exchange ideology on the relation between perceptions of organizational politics and manager-rated retention. Data collected from 178 employees of a distribution services organization indicated that employees’ perceptions of organizational politics related negatively related to manager assessments of retention. However, the variables were only related among employees with a moderate to strong exchange ideology. These individuals were more sensitive to a political environment than individuals with a weak exchange ideology. Implications for employees seeking to actively manage their careers are discussed.     

The effect of company recruitment web site orientation on individuals’ perceptions of organizational attractiveness

The use of company web pages to attract prospective job applicants has experienced tremendous growth in recent years. To date, very little is known about the process by which recruitment web sites influence individuals’ desire to pursue employment with an organization. This study attempts to address this issue by using an experimental design to investigate the relationships among recruitment web site orientation, individuals’ expectations concerning the use of Internet technology, web site usability, and organizational attractiveness. Survey results from 252 business students indicated that web site orientation and outcome expectancy influenced organizational attractiveness perceptions through influencing the perceived usability of the website. The implications of such results for firms interested in using recruitment web sites to attract applicants are discussed.     

La justice organisationnelle comme levier pour promouvoir la qualité de vie au travail

The goal of this study is to show the relevance of organizational justice principles in interventions to prevent psychosocial risks. Following an introduction identifying organizational justice as a predictor of health and quality of work life, we illustrate its application to a diagnosis and an intervention for hospital staff. The responses of 685 employees to a questionnaire identified a lack of support and justice by managers; thus, sensitivity to organizational justice was incorporated into a training program on management and psychosocial risks. A quasi-experiment in which hospital staff participated revealed a beneficial effect of the manager training on justice perceptions of the staff, confirming in part our hypotheses. The illustration in our study of the benefits of using justice principles in manager training offers new perspectives for promoting quality of life at work and reducing psychosocial risks.     

Organizational justice and job insecurity as mediators of the effect of emotional intelligence on job satisfaction: A study from China

The current study aimed to explore how individual difference in emotional intelligence influenced job satisfaction, and mainly focused on the confirmation of the mediator roles of organizational justice and job insecurity. A total of 420 staffs from a large-scale IT enterprise in China completed the self-reported emotional intelligence scale, the organizational justice scale, the job insecurity scale and Minnesota job satisfaction questionnaire. The results revealed that emotional intelligence, organizational justice, job insecurity and job satisfaction were significantly correlated with each other. Structural equation modeling indicated that emotional intelligence can significantly influence job satisfaction and the relationship between EI and satisfaction was partially mediated by organizational justice and job insecurity.     

Entitlement and conscientiousness in the prediction of organizational deviance

Responding to Wu and LeBreton’s (2011) call for further study, this paper examines dispositional predictors of organizational deviance. In a sample of 428 participants, self-report data were collected anonymously. Using hierarchical regression, the dispositional variables of entitlement and conscientiousness were similarly strong and statistically significant predictors of organizational deviance. The total variance explained in deviance by these variables and some demographic variables was .31. Additionally, the specificity matching principle suggests that narrow band traits like entitlement are better at predicting narrowly measured behaviors like deviance than are broad band traits like conscientiousness. Using dominance analysis, entitlement was a stronger predictor of organizational deviance than is conscientiousness.     

Relational attachment and ethical workplace decisions: The mediating role of emotional burnout

Working is an inherently relational act that requires the management of relationships in many of the same ways as other domains in our lives. In two studies, the association between attachment orientation and unethical decisions in different workplace scenarios was examined. In both studies, attachment avoidance was associated with more unethical workplace decisions. In Study 2, emotional exhaustion mediated the association between avoidance and unethical decisions. Findings are discussed with respect to individual differences in ethical decision-making in organizations.     

Price-directive decision making in hierarchical systems with conflicting preferences

In this paper we consider a classical model of price-directive decision making in hierarchical organizations, namely Dantzig-Wolfe decomposition, well known from single-objective programming. Here, however, we allow for preference differences that are usually observed between a central unit and a subunit in an organizational structure. The procedure models, therefore, how decision making may evolve in a context with decentralized information as well as intra- and interpersonal conflicts. Several numerical experiments with the procedure have been performed. The results of those experiments demonstrate that the procedure in many instances converges towards an efficient solution, despite the differences in the criteria weights used in the master problem and the subproblem respectively. This suggests that some amount of goal discordance need not prohibit efficient decision making in a hierarchical organization.     

Unobtrusive indicators of culture for organizations: a systematic review

ABSTRACT

We systematically reviewed the literature using unobtrusive measures to study organizational culture. To synthesize, theorize, and evaluate this research, we introduce the concept of an unobtrusive indicator of culture (UIC) for organizations. A UIC measures organizational culture through collecting data without engaging employees, and is conceptualized in terms of cultural artefacts. We identified thirty-five articles, containing 135 distinct UICs, drawn from 16 distinct data sources. UICs coalesced into two groups. First, textual UICs, with culture measured through language patterns in annual reports, employee online reviews, and emails. Second, UICs focusing on organizational practices, for instance, organizational policies or executive rewards. Over two-thirds (68%) of UICs measured values for integrity, results orientation, and clan cultures, and we conjecture that UICs may be most useful for studying aspects of culture sensitive to reporting biases, and benchmarking large samples of organizations. Forty-eight percent of UICs had good or promising construct validity: many were textual UICs, and those focusing on organizational practices were less established. UICs can potentially advance the study of organizational culture, yet must be developed and applied cautiously, with careful consideration of their advantages and limitations, and how they complement existing measurements and conceptualizations of culture.     

ACADEA—a decision support system for faculty performance reviews

ACADEA, a multi‐criteria decision support system for the performance review of individual faculty, is presented. Developed from the point of view of a department that is facing exogenously as well as self imposed objectives, the support system looks upon the aggregate performance of an academic department as the result of individual faculty member's multi‐criteria evaluations. Five objectives, research output, teaching output, external service, internal service and cost, are operationalized into criteria. The system is applied to a university department with 30 faculty members evaluated over a 3‐year period. The results identify promotional candidates and reveal underlying problems in managerial consistency, departmental sub‐groupings and the incentive structure. The outcomes of the support system are consistent with the position that equity in faculty governance does not necessarily imply equal loads on all tasks. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.