The effects of perceived organizational support, perceived supervisor support and intra‐organizational network resources on turnover intentions: A study of Chinese employees in multinational enterprises

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of perceived organizational support (POS), perceived supervisor support (PSS) and intra-organizational network resources on the turnover intentions of the Chinese employees of multinational enterprises. Design/methodology/approach: The study utilized structured equation modeling to analyze survey data from 437 Chinese employees of five multinational enterprises operating in the Chinese service sector. Findings: The study found that POS was positively related to affective organizational commitment, which in turn was negatively related to turnover intentions. A direct relationship was revealed between PSS and turnover intentions, as well as a mediated relationship through POS. In contrast, the relationship between intra-organizational network resources and turnover intentions was fully mediated through POS. Research limitations/implications: The cross sectional design is a limitation of the study. Another limitation regards the generalisability of the findings outside the specific research context. Future research should be extended to different geographical and organizational settings. Practical implications: In order to promote employee retention, multinational enterprises operating in China could start by carefully targeting visible support on offer to their employees. Improving supervisor support is a relatively inexpensive and practical measure compared to the costly alternatives such as improving employee compensation, training and career development. Organizations should also consider improving co-worker support schemes in the workplace which enable individuals to build up their network resources. Originality/value: The study provided evidence for both a direct relationship between PSS and turnover intentions and a mediated one via POS, confirming the generalisability of previous findings to the Chinese context. In addition it made an original contribution by establishing that POS fully, rather than partially mediated the relationship between intra-organizational network resources and turnover intentions. This suggests that Chinese employees attribute instrumental and expressive support from others in the organization as coming from the organization itself.

The potential for improving intra-organizational communication in the process of mergers and acquisitions via accounting systems

As the number of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) continues to increase on a global basis, more managers are called upon to develop their M&A transition skills. While, undoubtedly, organizations realise the importance of good communications for successful implementation of change programs throughout the entire M&A process, they often find it hard to make this communication both constant and lucid. The article argues that accounting systems display the potential for improving intra-organizational communication by infusing managers and 'non-accountants' with a common financial vocabulary for communication and 'reading' the state of the business.

The influence of job, team and organizational level resources on employee well-being, engagement, commitment and extra-role performance : test of a model

Purpose – Worker well-being continues to be fundamental to the study of work and a primary consideration for how organizations can achieve competitive advantage and sustainable and ethical work practices (Cartwright and Holmes; Harter, Schmidt and Keyes; Wright and Cropanzano). The science and practice of employee engagement, a key indicator of employee well-being, continues to evolve with ongoing incremental refinements to existing models and measures. This study aims to elaborate the Job Demands-Resources model of work engagement (Bakker and Demerouti) by examining how organizational, team and job level factors interrelate to influence engagement and well-being and downstream outcome variables such as affective commitment and extra-role behaviour.

Design/methodology/approach – Structural equations modelling of survey data obtained from 3,437 employees of a large multi-national mining company was used to test the important direct and indirect influence of organizational focused resources (a culture of fairness and support), team focused resources (team climate) and job level resources (career development, autonomy, supervisor support, and role clarity) on employee well-being, engagement, extra-role behaviour and organizational commitment.

Findings – The fit of the proposed measurement and structural models met criterion levels and the structural model accounted for sizable proportions of the variance in engagement/wellbeing (66 percent), extra-role-behaviour (52 percent) and commitment (69 percent).

Research limitations/implications – Study limitations (e.g. cross-sectional research design) and future opportunities are outlined.

Originality/value – The study demonstrates important extensions to the Job Demands-Resources model and provides researchers and practitioners with a simple but powerful motivational framework, a suite of measures, and a map of their inter-relationships which can be used to help understand, develop and manage employee well-being and engagement and their outcomes.

Linking and leveraging resources for innovation and growth through collaborative value creation: a study of Indian OSPs

How do knowledge-intensive and technology-based service providers from emerging economies sustain their innovation to grow rapidly and become dominant global players in their fields? We explain this recent phenomenon for a sample of offshore service providers (OSPs) from India by drawing from the collaborative value creation theoretical perspective and Mathews’ (Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 23(1):5–27, 2006a) resource “linking and leveraging” concepts. This paper shows that OSPs from India develop high quality relationships to enable them access and exploit network resources in delivering customized and innovative services to clients globally. The findings of this research provide further evidence that Mathews’ (Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 23(1):5–27, 2006a) internationalization framework of emerging economy multinational enterprises can be generalized to service providers.

Phenomenological inquiry into the experience of web project managers

The advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web has been instrumental in bringing about the growth in the implementation of web-based information systems (WBIS). Such systems are designed with the aim of improving productivity, data accuracy, and the reduction of paperwork and administrative overheads. Moreover, unlike their conventional non-web-based predecessors, the WBIS are commonly aimed at users who are casual and untrained, geographically distributed and non-homogenous. The dissemination of WBIS necessitates additional infrastructure support in the form of a security system, workflow and transaction management, and web administration. WBIS are commonly developed using an evolutionary approach, whereby the version of the application, acquired from the vendor, is first deployed as a pilot, in order to gather feedback from the target users before the evolutionary cycles commence. While a number of web development methodologies have been proposed by existing research, there is a dearth of empirical evidence that elucidates the experiences of project initiators in pursuing the evolution of web services, a process that undoubtedly involves dealing with stakeholder issues. This research project presents a phenomenological investigation of the experiences of project managers with the implementation of web-based employee service systems (ESS), a domain that has witnessed a sharp growth in Australia in recent times. However, the project managers’ rich, multidimensional account of their experiences with the implementation of ESS revealed the social obstacles and fragility of intra-organizational relationships that demanded a cautious and tactful approach. Thus, the study provides a socio-organizational perspective to web projects in contrast to the functionalist paradigm of current web development methodologies. The research also confirms that consideration of the concerns of stakeholders by project managers is crucial to the successive cycles of ESS evolution. Project managers address stakeholder concerns by pursuing actions that are aimed at encouraging ESS usage, but at the same time, such actions can have consequences necessitating subsequent iterations of system enhancement and improvement. Finally, the research also discovered that despite the different socio-political climate prevalent in various organizations, in which ESS are being implemented, the experiences of project managers in dealing with stakeholder concerns can be captured and independently confirmed in terms of their perceived relevance and usefulness in problem-solving within the application domain.

Anycast services and its applications

Anycast in next generation Internet Protocol is a hot topic in the research of computer networks. It has promising potentials and also many challenges, such as architecture, routing, Quality-of-Service, anycast in ad hoc networks, application-layer anycast, etc. In this thesis, we tackle some important topics among them. The thesis at first presents an introduction about anycast, followed by the related work. Then, as our major contributions, a number of challenging issues are addressed in the following chapters. We tackled the anycast routing problem by proposing a requirement based probing algorithm at application layer for anycast routing. Compared with the existing periodical based probing routing algorithm, the proposed routing algorithm improves the performance in terms of delay. We addressed the reliable service problem by the design of a twin server model for the anycast servers, providing a transparent and reliable service for all anycast queries. We addressed the load balance problem of anycast servers by proposing new job deviation strategies, to provide a similar Quality-of-Service to all clients of anycast servers. We applied the mesh routing methodology in the anycast routing in ad hoc networking environment, which provides a reliable routing service and uses much less network resources. We combined the anycast protocol and the multicast protocol to provide a bidirectional service, and applied the service to Web-based database applications, achieving a better query efficiency and data synchronization. Finally, we proposed a new Internet based service, minicast, as the combination of the anycast and multicast protocols. Such a service has potential applications in information retrieval, parallel computing, cache queries, etc. We show that the minicast service consumes less network resources while providing the same services. The last chapter of the thesis presents the conclusions and discusses the future work.

Technology adoption : voices of teaching academics, educational designers and students

This folio presents three studies (a dissertation and two electives) which use qualitative case study methodologies to investigate technology adoption from three perspectives. Central to all three studies is the study context of Monash University. The Dissertation explores adoption of web-based learning and teaching approaches from the perspective of teaching academics as they incorporate these to facilitate their students’ learning. The study investigates teaching academics’ reasons for adopting these new technologies, the factors that influenced their adoption decisions, and the challenges they were confronted with, including the contributing factors that impacted on their adoption decisions. The study shows that while contextual factors such as power and politics of the school, department, faculty and the institution impact on adoption, supportive organisational infrastructures and policy frameworks are necessary to encourage adoption, including wider adoption. In turn, on going staff development, adoption of new work practices and being adaptive to changing work environments are key demands made on teaching academics as a result of adopting web-based teaching approaches. Elective 1, a smaller study, leads on from the dissertation and examines the impact of technology adoption on the evolving role of educational designers. The study identifies the educational designers’ role change in assisting teaching academics to move from more conventional forms of teaching to more technology based learner-centred collaborative models. An important aspect of the study is the managers’ perspectives of this role in a university that has adopted a strong flexible learning and technology policy. The findings show that educational designers now work as project managers in larger teams consisting of a wider range of professionals, their expanded role in introducing technology into learning designs, providing staff development in the area, and giving technical help including advice on copyright and intellectual property issues. Elective 2 explores student readiness to adopt these technologies for learning. The study is designed to achieve an understanding of three broad categories of learners from a first year design unit: (1) South East Asian and East Asian students, (2) all other international students, and (3) local Australian students are studied to examine their readiness for modes of learning that are flexible; their approaches to study in a creative discipline area; and their openness to using technology. Findings of the study are discussed under the key themes – dependence on the teacher and classroom environment, flexible learning and working alone, structure, communication and work patterns. The study concludes by discussing the possible cultural attributes that have an impact on the learning. The three studies found that the institution, its people, structures and processes must all adapt, evolve and grow in order to provide effective, engaging, student-centred web-based learning environments. Students in turn must be enabled to manage their study, make use of the technologies and maximise their learning experience. The findings revealed the stage of technology use reached at Monash University at the time of the study through the voices of the teaching academics, educational designers and students.

Helping teachers surf the information and communication technology tsunami

A range of factors, both internal and external, is creating changes in teaching and teachers’ professional lives. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is just one of the major changes impacting on the teaching profession. As teachers face intense pressure to adapt to this tsunami, this study aims to investigate ways in which teachers can be helped. In South Australia, where this study is set, all teachers in Government schools are expected to be "ICT Smart", i.e. able to use appropriate forms of ICT to enhance the teaching and learning environment of their classrooms. From the researcher’s involvement for over a decade in professional development for teachers, and from visits to many schools, it appears that numerous teachers have not reached this standard. The greatest need is in Reception to Year 7 schools where the average age of teachers is nearly 50. Because no state-wide data exists, this study is intended to establish if there is a problem and if there is, to identify specific needs and offer possible solutions. The study is comprised of four parts: Part A, the Introduction gives an overview of the inter-relationships between these parts and the overall Folio. It establishes the setting and provides a rationale for the study and its focus on Professional Development in Information and Communication Technology. Part B, the Elective Research Studies, follows the writer’s involvement in this field since the 1980s. It establishes the theme of "Moving best practice in ICT from the few to the many" which underlies the whole study. Part C, the Dissertation, traces the steps taken to investigate the need for professional development in ICT. This is achieved by analysing and commenting on data collected from a state-wide survey and a series of interviews with leading figures, and by providing a review of the relevant literature and past and existing models of professional development. Part D, Final Comments, provides an overview of the whole Folio and a reflection on the research that has been conducted. The findings are that there is widespread dissatisfaction with existing models and that there is an urgent need for professional development in this area, because nearly 20% of teachers either do not use computers or are considered to be novice users. Another 25% are considered to be below not yet "ICT Smart". Less than 10% of ICT co-ordinators have a formal qualification in the field but more than 85% of them are interested in a Masters program. The study offers solutions in Part B where there is a discussion of a range of strategies to provide on-going professional development for teachers. Chapter 9 provides an outline of a proposed Masters level program and offers suggestions on how it could be best delivered. This program would meet the identified needs of ICT co-ordinators. The study concludes with a series of recommendations and suggestions for further research. The Education Department must address these urgent professional development needs of teachers, particularly those in the more remote country regions. There needs to be a follow-up survey to establish to what extent teachers in South Australia are now "ICT Smart ".

Supporting blended learning in an E-learning environment

The main goal of this research was to develop a Blended Learning Model which incorporated traditional learning technologies into e-learning. The model is aimed at assisting students to learn in an environment that contains elements of their preferred learning style whilst still being emerged in the local learning environment.

Exploring online communities of practice for biology teachers in Botswana

This study, which sought to determine the potential of an online community of practice among biology teachers in Botswana, has identified teacher level, school level and systemic influences as shaping the process and outcome of an online intervention into a teacher professional development programme run by the University of Botswana.

The effectiveness of internet-based treatment for female sexual dysfunction

There has been limited evaluation of the effectiveness of psychological interventions for female sexual dysfunction (FSD). Further, none of these studies have evaluated the effectiveness of these interventions delivered over the internet. The current study evaluated an internet-based psychological treatment program for FSD. In total, 39 women (17 in treatment group, 19 in control group) completed the program. The results demonstrated that women who completed treatment reported improved sexual and relationship functioning in comparison to those who received no treatment. The portfolio draws on four case studies from the author's placement experience to demonstrate the role of negative life events, social support and psychological adjustment.

Image indexing for learning content in a mobile learning environment

The outcome of this research is a hybrid system called Image Indexing for Mobile Phone (ID4MP). It was developed based on a new hybrid algorithm called Ferial's Hybrids Algorithm (FHSA). The system has a good feature of efficiency, accuracy and performance in retrieving and delivering learning content to students' mobile phones.

The drivers of corporate social responsibility : a critical review

The paper criticises the dominant discourse of corporate social responsibility (CSR) by examining six sets of factors conventionally considered as promoting outcomes consistent with core principles of social responsibility: intra-organizational factors, competitive dynamics, institutional investors, end-consumers, government regulators and non-governmental organizations. Each factor is addressed conceptually, empirically, and with respect to its likely future significance in promoting outcomes consistent with CSR. Our overall conclusions are not promising on any of these dimensions.

The drivers of corporate social responsibility : a critical review

The paper criticises the dominant discourse of corporate social responsibility (CSR) by examining six sets of factors conventionally considered as promoting outcomes consistent with core principles of social responsibility: intra-organizational factors, competitive dynamics, institutional investors, end-consumers, government regulators and non-governmental organizations. Each factor is addressed conceptually, empirically, and with respect to its likely future significance in promoting outcomes consistent with CSR. Our overall conclusions are not promising on any of these dimensions.

The development of a generic framework for the implementation of a cheap, component-based virtual video-conferencing system

We address the problem of virtual-videoconferencing. The proposed solution is effected in terms of a generic framework based on an in-house Virtual Reality system. The framework is composed of a number of distinct components: model acquisition, head tracking, expression analysis, network transmission and avatar reconstruction. The framework promises to provide a unique, cheap, and fast system for avatar construction, transmission and animation. This approach affords a conversion from the traditional video stream approach to the management of an avatar remotely and consequently makes minimal demands on network resources.