Digital Commons Network^™

Strategies For Increasing Employee Productivity In Small Technology Consulting Businesses, Dalinda Yvonne Milne

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Unproductive employees in technology consulting small businesses negatively affect organizational output and profits. Investing in employee productivity is beneficial to ensuring an organization’s ability to improve their profits and sustainability as business leaders have an influential role in identifying and addressing the root causes of employee productivity issues in their organizations. The conceptual framework that grounded this doctoral study was Thomas Gilbert’s behavioral engineering model. The participants in this study consisted of 8 leaders in a Texas technology consulting small business with experience in increasing employee productivity. Data were collected through in-person semistructured interviews and business documents. Methodological triangulation was …

Organizational Climate And Employee Engagement, Romie Mejalli

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Although research shows that disengaged employees contribute to increased health and hiring costs in for-profit organizations, there is a gap in the literature concerning the relationship between organizational climate (OC) and employee engagement (EE) in nonprofit organizations (NPOs). In this study, it was hypothesized that employee answers to the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale-17 (UWES-17) and OC surveys (for example, of management styles and innovation) would predict EE in a NPO. The study further addressed the question of whether age or the division in which the employees worked influenced the relationship between OC and EE. Kahn’s engagement theory served as the …

Guiding The Future Of The Supply Chain With Succession Planning, Dana Martin Beal

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Some supply chain leaders in the transportation sector lack the succession planning strategies needed to fill leadership positions. The failure to create succession planning strategies will negatively impact an organization’s supply chain through tacit knowledge loss. Grounded in the social exchange theory, the purpose of this qualitative exploratory single-case study was to explore the succession planning strategies transportation industry supply chain business leaders use to fill organizational leadership positions to reduce tacit knowledge loss. The participants consisted of 6 supply chain leaders working in the Northeastern region of the United States who successfully utilize succession planning strategies to fill leadership …

Ethiopian Construction Project Management Maturity Model Determination And Correlational Prediction Of Project Success, Hailemeskel T. Hailemarkos

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In Ethiopia, although the construction industry is booming, the practice of effective project delivery in time, cost, and quality remains a challenge. Construction project success comes through the application of knowledge-based, critically essential factors. The industry's effectiveness is dictated by the level of project management knowledge built in each company. The purpose of this quantitative, correlational study was to evaluate project management maturity level of construction industry and the predictability of project success from project management knowledge maturity of 193 project managers working in contractors, consultants, and clients. The study, which was informed by the project management body of knowledge …

Staff Engagement And Training In Supported Addiction Recovery Program For Adults With Intellectual Disabilities, Hannah Carlson Jurewicz

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The prevalence of substance use disorder (SUD) is similar among individuals with intellectual or developmental disabilities (ID/DD) and the general population, yet there is a disparity between treatment and outcomes for these two groups due to a lack of appropriately adapted treatment and staff training. The purpose of this case study was to examine how leaders in a behavioral health organization understand the engagement and training experience for staff who provide substance abuse treatment for individuals with ID/DD. Governance and operational data were collected and analyzed from internal archival sources and organizational leader interviews. Themes identified from coding indicated that …

A Phenomenological Study Of Millennials' Different Lived Perspectives Of Employee Engagement, Delores Grant

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Employee engagement is vital to the success of organizations. Employee disengagement continues to contribute to organizational failure. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to identify and report millennials different perspectives of employee engagement by exploring the research question. The central research question dealt with the lived experiences of millennials about employee engagement in the United States. The study sample consisted of 25 participants with at least 3 years of working experience in the United States. The data collection process consisted of semistructured interviews with participants of the millennial generation. Data analysis included coding of descriptive words by means of …

Transformational Leadership Effects On Employee Engagement And Counterproductive Work Behavior's Influence As A Moderating Variable, Cybil M. Johnson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Many organizations have the daunting task of dealing with counterproductive work behavior (CWB) at various levels in the workplace. This study sought to examine if transformational leadership (TFL) has an impact on employee engagement (EE) and if CWB has a moderating influence on this relationship in the U.S. Postal Service. This study’s intent was to address a gap in the literature regarding CWB exhibited by employees and the positive intentions of TFL on EE. A quantitative study was conducted utilizing an anonymous online survey to assess the relationship among employees of the U.S. Postal Service. The study was conducted using …

Performance Management: Quo Vadis?, Filip Lievens, Philipp Schapers, Christoph N. Herde

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Traditionally performance management has been described as a powerful tool in Human Resource Management (HRM) because it has potentially a wide array of application possibilities for various HR topics. However, the reality in practice is different. Various surveys reported that more than 90 percent of the performance management systems are unsuccessful. Further studies have shown that up to 75% of staff feel that their organization’s performance management system does not help them to improve their performance and is largely a waste of time (e.g., Capelli & Tavis, 2016; Pulakos, 2009). Economic analyses of the return on investment (as compared to …

The Relationships Among External Environments, Organizational Structures, And Performance In Pursuit Of The Clinical And Academic Missions At Academic Health Centers, Eric J. Strucko

Theses and Dissertations

Clinical and academic missions place Academic Health Centers (AHCs) at the center of the American health care system, and the future viability of these institutions requires successful performance in competitive environments. AHCs are organizations involving hospitals, physician group practices, and medical schools, and treat patients with complex conditions, conduct bio-medical and health science research, and educate future physicians and health professionals. AHCs account for 20% or $540 billion of national health care expenditures, conduct over 80% of all heart, liver, and lung transplants, utilize over $27 billion in annual sponsored research funding, and graduate approximately 17,300 medical doctors annually. Financial …

Knowledge And Skill Predictors Of Voice Behavior: Voice As An Upward Influence, Zitong Sheng

Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a growing body of research focused on improving our understanding of employee voice behavior. Yet this literature focuses mainly on factors that influence employees’ decisions regarding whether to speak up (i.e., quantity of voice behavior), rather than factors that influence whether voice behavior turns out to be effective. As a result, job attitudes and personality characteristics have been identified as the major personal factors predicting voice behavior. The current study contributes to the voice literature by viewing voice from an upward influence angle, examining the influences of the quality of content and …

Identifying The Leadership Skills Needed To Develop The Competencies To Lead In A Postcrisis Organization: A Delphi Study, Paul Turgeon

Dissertations

Purpose: Organizational leaders play a pivotal role in postcrisis activities. There is abundant research in the actions of leaders in a crisis; however, there is limited research regarding the leadership competencies required postcrisis, and a gap remains in knowing which leadership skills are needed postcrisis. The purpose of this Delphi study was to identify the leadership skills needed to promote organizational resilience, to act with integrity, and to possess a learning orientation of organizational leaders in the postcrisis phase.

Methodology: This study used a 3-round Delphi technique to identify the leadership skills that support the possession of the competencies needed …

Contextual Influences On Human Resources Development: Considerations And Evaluations On The Various External And Internal Factors That Shape And Influence Hrd In Organisations, Charles Alves De Castro

Articles

This article aims to briefly understand and evaluate the main external and internal factors that impact directly on human resources development area within the organisations, mainly related to multinational companies. Also, it discusses the various aspects and influences on HRD-(Human Resources Development) such as societal, organisational/local, global, that impacts on costs, environment, regulations, policies, culture, beliefs, technology and values. This research was carried out by way of a literature review. This is important to demonstrate, explain and evaluate the current existent literature about this specific theme covered in this article. Furthermore, through this review we compared previous research on HRD. …

African American Female Law Enforcement Officers' Lived Experiences And Mentoring: A Thematic Narrative, Harold Wilson

Doctoral Dissertations

Black female officers are an underrepresented sub-group of the law-enforcement profession. The bulk of research on women’s policing has focused on the growth of women in law enforcement, barriers, sexual harassment, gender differences, why women are deterred from law enforcement, physical limitations, and instruments used during the recruitment process, and the stress endured after entry into the profession. When looking at Black female officers’ lived experience and perceptions around mentoring; research is lacking. Eight Black female officers from the San Francisco Bay Area participated in this study. Findings revealed that all of the women have faced a recurring sense of …

Threat Recognition In Incumbent Firms: A Case For Organizational Velocity, Alan Amling

PhD in Business Administration Dissertations

Change is not new, but the speed of change is new. Fueled by a combination of connecting and thinking technologies, the business environment is becoming increasingly dynamic and uncertain. Incumbent firms face a wider variety of threats that vary in frequency of occurrence and financial impact. How effectively firms see these threats, internalize them as important (or not) and act on them in a timely manner (or not) can be critical to their survival. However, the academic literature is incomplete on how firms navigate this threat recognition process from initial observation through action and across different organizational contexts.

This qualitative …

Success And Failure Rates, Factors, And Alignment With Change Models: A Meta-Ethnographic Analysis Of Planned Organizational Change Qualitative Case Study Literature, Diana Mcburnett

Human Resource Development Theses and Dissertations

The literature on planned organizational change contains numerous theories and models proposed and many references to success and failure rates and factors. However, the literature does not currently provide a synthesized body of evidence on such rates and factors and the effectiveness of specific models. The literature was reviewed to provide a brief historical overview of organizational change, evidence on change success and failure rates and factors, and an overview of contingency and paradox theories which provided the theoretical underpinnings for the study. This study provided a meta-ethnographic synthesis of 298 articles reporting qualitative case studies of planned organizational change …

Framing Matters: The Influence Of Group-Image Threat On Reactions To Affirmative Action Policies, Kisha S. Jones, Anuradha Anantharaman, Anjali Bhatt

Personnel Assessment and Decisions

Affirmative action (AA) attempts to rectify the institutional effects of prior employment discrimination toward minority groups. Although AA has played a large role in increasing workplace diversity, organizations may vary in their perspectives towards diversity itself, ranging from a sole focus on increasing diversity to appreciating the value diversity may add. Support for AA has been considered as a form of White identity management (Knowles, Lowery, Chow, & Unzueta, 2014) and is impacted by the extent to which White people experience group-image threat to their racial identity. Our findings suggest that the level of group-image threat experienced by White people …

Should All Stakeholders Be Treated Fairly? Identifying Stakeholders That Legitimately Matter, Desmond Ng

Organization Management Journal

A key contribution of stakeholder research is that a firm’s purpose and objective is influenced by those stakeholders who have a legitimate stake in a firm’s business activities. Yet, identifying those that have a legitimate stake remains a challenge in stakeholder research. This research draws on legitimacy arguments to explain how stakeholders develop accountability and reliability in their legal and moral claims and how legitimacy influences a firm-manager’s obligations of fairness to these stakeholder groups. A concept of directness, consisting of close and relational specific exchanges, is introduced to explain this legitimation process. Directness offers accountability and reliability when an …

The Role Of Sensemaking And Organizational Identification In Employee Engagement For Sustainability, Kent D. Fairfield

Organization Management Journal

This exploratory study examines how sensemaking and organizational identification occur inside an organization and how they can affect how employees engage in managing for sustainability. Qualitative data suggest a positive effect of organizational identification on support for sustainability goals and actions and, conversely, how individual sustainability actions may in turn increase organizational identification. The findings from interviews of a sample of eight companies reveal many different goals, challenges, and means of seeking sustainability. Analysis points toward the dynamics of cognitive and emotional processing across this diverse sample, suggesting implications for practitioners and further research.

Big-Data Talent Analytics In The Public Sector: A Promotion And Firing Model Of Employees At Federal Agencies, Rabih Neouchi

Operations Research and Engineering Management Theses and Dissertations

Talent analytics is a relatively new area of focus to researchers working in analytics and data science. Talent Analytics has the potential to help companies make many informed critical decisions around talent acquisition, promotion and retention. This work investigates data science to predict “shiny star” employees in the U.S. public sector, defined as top-notch performers over the years of a given time span. Its scope falls within talent analytics, also called people analytics, a relatively new research area.

We clean a data set made available by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and present two models to predict the …

A Delphi Study: Retention Of Women In Leadership Positions In Stem Disciplines, Kimberly T. Luthi

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Theses & Dissertations

This Delphi study explores barriers and support systems that impact women’s professional advancement in STEM disciplines. There were 20 expert panelists who committed to participate in the study and 15 panelists completed the four rounds of the study after attrition. The panelists were selected based on specific criteria including educational background, diversity within STEM disciplines, experience as a former or current female administrator who served at two-year degree offering institutions, leadership and membership within women’s advocacy organizations in STEM and related workforce education fields, and depth of knowledge and understanding of the research questions. Through the four rounds of the …

Rethinking Educational Reforms Through A Complex Dynamical Systems Approach: Preliminary Report From An Empirical Research, Eugenia Tsiouplis, Dimitrios Stamovlasis

Northeast Journal of Complex Systems (NEJCS)

Literature on educational reforms is rich of cases where changes have been attempted, without however to attain success. Likewise the Greek education system had experienced a lot of reforms, most of which have failed to make the intended changes and they attenuated shortly after their implementation or they ceased at the stage of legislative planning. On the other hand, the traditional research have failed to develop a coherent theoretical perspective and provide satisfactory interpretations of the perpetually unsuccessful reforms. This paper is part of wider project which attempts to address the above issue following the Complex Dynamical Systems (CDS) perspective, …

The Persistence Of Omniscience In Knowledge Management: Implications Or Future Research, Conor Horan, Conor P. Horan, John Finch

Conference papers

Abstract: This paper demonstrates the persistence of omniscience in Knowledge Management (KM) research. Omniscience as a concept has two dimensions ubiquity and utility. This idea of ubiquity is more prevalent when the management goal focuses on processing or transferring pre-existing knowledge efficiently to those who can make use of it. Ubiquity assumes that knowledge is freely available within the firm i.e. is omnipresent, waiting for it to be processed or transferred. The idea of utility assumes that knowledge and its relevance is fully understood by the firm. The firms and its managers are assumed to know the value and quality …

Promoting An Image Of Independence: An Institutional Perspective On Nonprofit Organizational Strategies, Kristina Tamm Hallström, Ola Segnestam Larsson

Journal of Ideology

This article focuses on how the alleged value of independence in nonprofit organizations should be conceptualized, researched, and advanced. Through the conceptualization of independence as an institutional norm, the article makes several contributions to research on strategies for independence in nonprofit organizations. Rather than focusing on independence as a tangible organizational quality, the article studies and analyzes overarching strategies with which nonprofit organizations promote an image of independence. Recategorizations of results from previous research and illustrations from case studies of Swedish nonprofit ecolabeling serve as the main empirical material. By conceptualizing how nonprofit organizations employ multiple, and sometimes even contradictory, …

Leadership Behaviour And Worker Performance In The Nigerian Construction Industry, Abiodun Kolawole Oyetunji, John Adebiyi, Nathaniel Ayinde Olatunde

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

Leadership is a dynamic process in which an individual influence other to contribute to the achievement of an assigned task. This paper investigates leadership behaviour and its impact on construction workers’ performance in Lagos, Nigeria. Purposive sampling technique was adopted to select 50 site-supervisors and 250 construction-workers involved in simple construction works. An investigation was carried out using a questionnaire survey method. The leadership variables investigated were ranked, regressed and correlated to workers performance. From the primary data analysis, leadership behaviour exhibited by supervisors were found to influence the site workers commitment to achieving the goal of the construction projects. …

Psychological Underpinnings Of The Work-Site Selection Process Of Knowledge Workers, April J. Spivack, Ashay Desai

Organization Management Journal

As a result of technological advances, knowledge workers have become increasingly mobile; people can perform work in a variety of new locations via an assortment of new working arrangements. Knowledge workers are now faced with the question of where to work. We argue that the process of work-site selection depends on the relationship between a variety of individual factors such as motivation, cognitive and affective evaluation, and regulatory focus as they interact with self-regulatory resources. Specifically, we use a dynamic interactionist perspective to integrate components of social exchange, self-determination, regulatory focus, and selfregulation theories. The resulting conceptual model contributes to …

Toward A Typology Of Organizational Creativity, Gilbert Tan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Both researchers and practitioners realize the importance of organizational creativity as a source of competitive advantage and long-term organizational success. Although, research on organizational creativity abounds, many researchers and practitioners view organizational creativity as a unidimensional construct. This narrow view of creativity limit our understanding on how organizations generate creative ideas to compete in the market. This paper examines organizational creativity using a two-by-two matrix along 2 dimensions: Thinking Approach (Analytical versus Intuitive) and Problem Type (Bounded versus Unbounded). According to the framework, there are four types of organizational creativity: (1) Imaginative Creativity (application of intuitive approach to unbounded problem); …

A Case Study Of Participant Responses To Organizational Change Involving Technology In The National Security Domain: How Informal Processes Iterate Structure And Outcomes, Brian E. Martinez

School of Public Service Theses & Dissertations

Nuanced differences between organizations and the pace of change within the national security domain have routinely produced equivocal results involving information and communication technology (ICT) development. These results are characterized by unpredictable costs, unrealistic delivery schedules, and dubious ICT performance in-use. This research is a case study exploration of organizational change involving technology (also referred to as ICT) in the national security domain of the public sector.

This research used machine learning and manual content analysis to compare the results of three experiments on interview transcripts. The first experiment investigated linkages between empirical and interpretive elements of organizational change. Empirical …

Can Algorithms Help Us Decide Who To Trust?, David De Cremer, Jack Mcguire, Yorck Hesselbarth, Ke M Mai

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms is increasing within organizations to manage business processes, hire employees, and automate routine organizational decision making. This comes as no surprise, since the application of simple linear algorithms have been shown to outperform human judgment in the accuracy of many administrative tasks. A 2017 Accenture survey also revealed that 85% of executives want to invest more extensively in AI-related technologies over the next three years.

Employee Engagement And Burnout: A Quantitative Study Of Their Correlations With Job/Organizational Satisfaction, Sarah Burnett

Dissertations

Since Kahn introduced the concept of employee engagement in 1990, the focus on motivating employees has been en vogue in practitioner literature. The federal government as well now measures its agencies annually on how well they implement conditions conducive to engagement. Federal agencies are also ranked annually as “Best Places to Work” based on their aggregated score on three survey items deemed to represent job/organizational satisfaction. The concept of burnout, or the so-called “erosion of engagement”, however, has received significantly less attention. To begin to fill this void in the literature, secondary survey data from the 2017 Organizational Assessment Survey …

Balancing Exploration, Exploitation, And Efficiency : A Framework Of Entrepreneurial Learning., Shaun Paul Digan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Entrepreneurial learning (EL), defined as “learning in the entrepreneurial process through which individuals acquire new knowledge, either vicariously or from direct experience, which has the potential to change the range of entrepreneurial actions”, is a key construct in the pursuit and development of entrepreneurial opportunities. However, the field of entrepreneurship has yet to produce a theory of learning explaining under what conditions individuals engage in differing types of entrepreneurial learning. Further, the limited research within this line of inquiry is diverse and disconnected. In this research, I attempt to advance the literature on organizational and entrepreneurial learning through the examination …