The relation between decentralised structure, budgetary participation and organisational commitment : the moderating role of managers' value orientation towards innovation

Reports the results of a study which investigated the moderating role of managers’ value orientation towards innovation (VOI) on the relationships between managers’ organisational commitment and two management control features – decentralised organisational structure and budgetary participation. Data for the study were collected from 116 managers in manufacturing firms. The results indicate that managers’ VOI has a significant moderating effect on the relationships between the two management control features and managers’ organisational commitment. The results reveal that the relationships are stronger for managers with high VOI than for managers with low VOI. These results have implications for enhancing managers’ organisational commitment through the design of management control systems appropriate for the extent of innovative work values promoted by organisations.

A note on work-related values, budget emphasis and managers’ organisational commitment

Managers’ work-related values (WRVs) have important implications for designing appropriate management accounting systems (MAS) in organisations. This paper examines the effect of the interaction between managers’ WRV for innovation and budget emphasis (an integral part of MAS) on their organisational commitment. The sample consisted of 109 managers from production, marketing and support departments within Australian manufacturing firms. Hypotheses were tested using both quantitative and qualitative data collected by a questionnaire survey and post-survey interviews. The results indicate that the adoption of low budget emphasis led to high organisational commitment when managers’ WRV for innovation was high, but not when managers’ WRV for innovation was low. The results also indicate that marketing managers held higher WRV for innovation than production managers. The post-survey interviews provide further insight into how a more customer- and competitor-focused subculture of marketing managers and a more technical- and efficiency-focused subculture of production managers may promote the difference in their WRV for innovation, and affect their attitudes towards budget emphasis. The findings of the study have implications for design of performance evaluation systems for managers in functionally differentiated organisations.

'By the facts we add to our store' : Lorimer Fison, Lewis Henry Morgan and the spread of kinship studies in Australia

The formal study of kinship was introduced to the South Pacific Islands and the Australian colonies by Methodist missionary Lorimer Fison who distributed schedules and collected kinship data from around the region in collaboration with the founder of Anthropology in America, Lewis Henry Morgan. This article is a sequel to H. Gardner, 2008 'The origins of kinship in Oceania', Oceania, 78:2, 137-150. It traces Lorimer Fison's return to the Australian colonies from his mission post in Fiji and the subsequent spread of kinship schedules to settlers, missionaries and administrators around Australia. Based on unpublished correspondence, the article investigates Fison's gradual disillusionment with Morgan's evolutionist hypothesis of the development of the human family and his disdain for the speculation of much metropolitan anthropology in the 1870s.

Agency nursing work in acute care settings: perceptions of hospital nursing managers and agency nurse providers

• There is a paucity of research in investigating agency nursing work from the perspectives of hospital nursing managers and agency nurse providers.

• This exploratory paper examines the hospital nursing managers' and agency nurse providers' perceptions and experiences of agency nursing work.

• Individual, in-depth interviews were conducted with three agency nurse providers and eight hospital nursing managers. Because of the lack of previous research in this area, an exploratory, semi-structured interviewing technique was deemed appropriate.

• Three major themes emerged from interview data: planning for ward allocation, communication and professionalism.

• In planning for ward allocation, hospital managers were primarily concerned with maintaining adequate numbers of nursing staff in the ward settings. A major concern for agency nurse providers was inappropriate allocation of temporary staff.

• Communication was valued in different ways. While hospital managers focused on communication between the agency nurse and other permanent members of the health care team, agency providers were concerned with exchanges between agencies and hospital organizations, and between the agencies and agency nurses.

• For both groups, responsibility for professional development and the status of agency nursing as a career choice for graduate and experienced nurses were the focal aspects for consideration.

• A limitation of this study is the small number of individual interviews conducted with hospital nursing managers and agency nurse providers. Nevertheless, the findings represent the views of 11 individuals in senior managerial roles.

• The findings reinforce the need to enhance collaboration between hospitals and nursing agencies, and to examine how divergent views of agency nursing work could be reconciled – with the aim of providing quality patient care.

Analysis of employee turnover amongst construction managers in Hubei Province

This study determined the most important factors affecting turnover intention and developed a prediction model of construction manager turnover in Hubei Province, China. This prediction model can help human resource managers take appropriate actions to reduce the rate of construction manager turnover and keep good construction managers.

Overseas Chinese as expatriate managers in China : is their recruitment a solution to cross-cultural management problems for multinationals operating in China?

The rapid economic development has gravitated businesses into the Chinese market. It’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001 made her an even more formidable player in the global economy and direct foreign investment surged. Yet it is acknowledged that for the foreign investor in China, cross-cultural issues create difficulty at every level, from the intercultural level relating to communication and negotiation, to the organizational level relating to decision making, human resource management practices, corporate legal institutions and dealing with governments. Western multinationals have considered the advantages of posting overseas Chinese, from Southeast Asian countries, Taiwan Hong Kong and etc. But has this policy been successful? In terms of language expertise and cultural literacy this would seem to be a good strategy, yet organizational case material contradicts this in reality. Overseas Chinese, while sharing some elements of Chinese culture with mainland Chinese, the Confucian heritage and other aspects such as language, diet, etc, nevertheless have different world views and values and behave differently from mainland Chinese in areas critical to business management. As a survival strategy, overseas Chinese often developed dual identities operating simultaneously. For many of them, for political and historical reasons, they have had to adapt to the local culture or even hide their own ethnicity in order to survive. On the other hand, the mainland Chinese are different in the sense that their behaviour has only had to be Chinese, but overlaid with this has been the experience of participating in a communist political environment for decades, which has left its mark on mainland Chinese culture. On the basis of this, in the current business environment in China confusion, difficulties and conflict may occur for the overseas Chinese. This paper aims to provide insights of the cultural differences between the overseas Chinese and mainland Chinese. It provides evidence that overseas Chinese are not often favoured by the local Chinese. This problem has yet to be researched in depth within international business and international management studies. It draws the attention to issues on how to manage the local Chinese.