Quelles méthodes et quelle modélisation d’analyse de l’activité de travail de l’encadrement ? L’exemple de l’encadrement des chantiers de la construction

By referring to the ergonomic analysis of work and to the management sciences, the authors propose an analysis model of the managers’ activity. Until then, few researchs were realized in ergonomics science with this population which has to prepare and to organize the works of other operators. According to the authors, it is possible to apply to this population the model of “the centre de décision”. It allows to understand how their activity is determined by “upstream” centres and then how it determines the activity of centres “approval”. Applied to the project and site managers, this model brings solutions to transform their work and the work of the workmen.     

中澳管理者人格类型的性别差异研究

采用MBTI对中国和澳大利亚管理者人格类型的性别差异进行了比较研究.结果表明,在人格的维度、维度组合、类型上,澳大利亚管理者比中国管理者有更大的性别差异;而两国男性管理者在人格的维度、维度组合、类型上的差异比两国女性管理者的差异更大.研究同时发现,中国男、女管理者人格类型的分布都较集中,澳大利亚男、女管理者的人格类型分布都较均衡.     

Mobilizing positive reinforcement in communities to reduce youth access to tobacco

A community intervention to mobilize positive reinforcement for not selling tobacco to young people was evaluated. The intervention had five components: (a) mobilization of community support, (b) merchant education, (c) changing consequences to clerks for selling or not selling to those under 18, (d) publicity about clerks’ refusals to sell, and (e) feedback to store owners or managers about the extent of their sales to adolescents. A multiple baseline design experiment was conducted, in which two small Oregon communities received the intervention, while two others continued in baseline. Outlets’ willingness to sell was assessed repeatedly by teenage volunteers. The intervention significantly reduced the proportion of stores willing to sell. Mobilizing socia and material reinforcement for stores not selling tobacco to young people is a viable means of reducing such sales. It may be especially valuable in communities where laws against sales to minors go unenforced. This paper supported in part by the National Cancer Institute Grant CA38273.     

Better communication between engineers and managers

This article is concerned with ways better communication between engineers and their managers might help prevent engineers being faced with some of the ethical problems that make up the typical course in engineering ethics. Beginning with observations concerning the Challenger disaster, the article moves on to report results of empirical research on the way technical communication breaks down, or doesn’t break down, between engineers and managers. The article concludes with nine recommendations for organizational change to help prevent communications breakdown. The author holds a National Science Foundation grant to integrate ethics into technical courses. Among his recent publications are: To Make the Punishment Fit the Crime (Westview, 1992), AIDS: Crisis in Professional Ethics (Temple, 1994), and Justice in the Shadow of Death (Rowman and Littlefield, 1996).     

Organizational downsizing and stress-related illness

Epidemiological evidence of physical correlates of stress for midlevel workers threatened by organizational restructuring, reorganization, and downsizing was obtained for seamen in the U. S. merchant fleet, an industry which has lost 75% of its jobs in a working lifetime. Illness reports of 22,763 seamen were analyzed to ascertain the relationship between job-related and situational stress factors and the occurrence of eight stress-related diseases (cardiovascular disease, hypertension, heart attack, psychoneurosis, suicide, peptic ulcer-gastritis, arthritis, and asthma). Rank difference was revealed as the primary determinant of disease occurrence rate. The licensed group, midlevel managers in both deck and engine departments, showed a significantly higher percentage of stress related illness than did the unlicensed group. Licensed deck personnel showed higher rates of cardiovascular disease, heart attack, psychoneurosis, suicide, and asthma. Licensed engine personnel showed higher rates of heart attack and asthma. Explanations for high stress levels among licensed personnel center around declining job opportunity due to downsizing and end-of-career anxiety. Other factors include the burdens of supervisory responsibility in an era of eroding management authority, accommodation to technological and situational change, and general aging of the merchant marine workforce.     

A Different Look at Assessment Centers: Views of Assessment Center Users

This study aims to shed light on possible problems of assessment center users and designers when developing and implementing assessment centers. Semi-structured interviews with a representative sample of assessment center users in Flanders revealed that, besides a large variability in assessment center practice, practitioners experience problems with dimension selection and definition, exercise design, line/staff managers as assessors, distinguishing between observation and evaluation, and with the content of assessor training programs. Solutions for these problems are suggested.     

The Dimensionality of Honey and Mumford’s Learning Styles Questionnaire

The Learning Style Questionnaire (LSQ) developed by Honey and Mumford (1986) is one of several measures of individual learning style. Despite its popularity in the UK there is little published evidence for construct validity. This survey of 329 British managers used cluster and factor analysis to assess the validity of the LSQ. Cluster analysis revealed learning style profiles dominated by Reflector/Theorist traits. The factor structure of the LSQ does not cleanly reflect the four-stage Learning Cycle relied upon for a theoretical foundation. The observed structure is more indicative of a three-stage learning cycle of Action, Reflection and Planning.     

管理人员对影响新产品开发决策宏观动力场因素的认知

在先前一系列研究的基础上,利用问卷考察了管理人员对宏观动力场因素不确定性质的认知,它涉及全国三个地区１２１名管理人员和１５家工厂企业。研究证实了从管理人员角度看,宏观因素变化性的主要维度是波动性、趋势性和时距性,经营信息不确定度、外部管理与招工不确定度、供应与公关不确定度,构成了总的动力场不确定性。最后,研究管理人员的认知结构对新产品开发决策具有的理论意义和实践意义。     

Selling with technology: understanding the resistance to mobile sales assistant use in retailing

The rise of online competitors and increasingly well-informed customers have spurred stationary retailers to take measures to increase the quality of face-to-face selling as a key differentiator. Mobile sales assistants (MSAs) represent an intensively discussed technological approach to address these challenges in the salesperson–customer dyad. However, in many cases, salespeople do not or only sporadically use MSAs. Prior research provides inadequate answers as to why this is the case, as extant technology acceptance and resistance theories have limited applicability to MSAs. To address these research gaps, the authors conduct a qualitative, theory-building approach and identify 21 factors associated with resistance. In a subsequent quantitative survey study, they validate these factors and refine their conceptual structure. The results show that several largely unknown factors are associated with salespeople’s resistance to MSA use: The three higher-order constructs, ‘incongruence’, ‘relationship deterioration’, and ‘operational imperfection’, are newly introduced to the literature on technology resistance. The findings extend prior technology acceptance and resistance theories and provide comprehensive insights for retail managers.     

JPSSM since the beginning: intellectual cornerstones,knowledge structure,and thematic developments

Bibliometric analyses are applied to 35,975 citations from 721 articles published in the Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, spanning the journal’s first 35 years of existence (1980–2015). For each of three time periods (1980s, 1990s, and 2000s), the sales literature’s most influential article publications are objectively identified. Multidimensional scaling is then used to identify key intellectual themes across time. Based on the citation data, historical developments in the literature regarding (1) relationship marketing, (2) sales force technology, (3) sales force control systems, and (4) salesperson role stress are traced and briefly explored in some article-level depth. Co-citation trends and recently influential papers are used to identify opportunities for future research. Altogether, this paper presents a first-of-its-kind view of sales literature’s intellectual cornerstones, knowledge structure, and thematic developments over 35 years.