Communautés, enjeaux environmenentaux et recherche en éducation relative à; l'environment

This article will draw upon two recent international community-based environmental projects to explore issues concerning the nature, status and role of research in environmental education. A number of features of community-based environment development projects in two different cultures will be described, illustrating the complexity and contextuality of the processes by which environmental issues are resolved. The implications for research that seeks to acknowledge and respect relationships within community contexts will also be considered.

Enhancing hotel managers’ organisational commitment : an investigation of the impact of structure, needfor achievement and participative budgeting

This study investigates the role of decentralised structure and managers’ need for achievement as antecedents of participative budgeting, and the impact of the concurrent relationships of all three preceding variables on organisational commitment. Ninety-one managers from the Australian hotel industry participated in the study and data were analysed using path analysis. Direct and positive relationships were found between the two antecedent variables: decentralised structure and managers’ need for achievement, and participative budgeting. Participative budgeting, in turn, was found to have a direct and positive relationship with organisational commitment. The results of the study have implications for the design of effective management control processes and for human resource management of hospitality organisations.

The impact of participative leadership on job performance and organizational citizenship behavior: distinguishing between the mediating effects of affective and cognitive trust

This study examines the mediating effects of cognitive trust and affective trust on the relationship between supervisors' participative leadership behavior and subordinate work outcomes, using data obtained from 247 dyads in a manufacturing organization located in mainland China. Structural equation modeling revealed that while affective trust fully mediated the relationships between participative leadership of supervisor and subordinate job performance and organizational citizenship behavior, cognitive trust had non-significant effects. These findings underscore the importance of interpersonal interactions between the supervisor and subordinate for engendering subordinate work outcomes. They also lend support to the exchange (relationship)-based explanation as to how trust enhances the response of subordinates to the participative leadership behavior of their immediate supervisor, given that affective trust involves a process of social exchange between both parties over an extended period of time. © 2014 © 2014 Taylor & Francis.

Participative leadership and the organizational commitment of civil servants in China: The mediating effects of trust in supervisor

The present study examines whether participative leadership engenders organizational commitment amongst Chinese civil servants and analyses the mechanisms by which it transmits its effects. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling revealed that there was a significant relationship between supervisor-level participative leadership and the affective and normative commitment of subordinates, but no relationship with continuance commitment. Affective trust was also identified as the mediator variable underlying the relationship between participative leadership and organizational commitment. We show that participative leadership of supervisors elicits higher levels of trust and leads subordinates to reciprocate through exhibiting higher levels of organizational commitment. Our study also reveals that Chinese civil servants who accept an unequal distribution of power between supervisors and subordinates typically exhibit lower levels of affective and normative commitment to the organization than those who do not. Our results provide greater support for the deepening of administrative reforms and the dissemination of participative leadership practices in China's new civil service system. © 2013 British Academy of Management.

The role of participative leadership and trust-based mechanisms in eliciting intern performance: evidence from China.

In this article, we investigate the relationship between participative leadership and job performance within the internship setting. Based on two-waves of survey data obtained from 309 intern-supervisor dyads, we find that participative leadership has a positive relationship with job performance, and that affective trust mediates that relationship. We also find that although cognitive trust is not significantly related to intern job performance, it mediates the relationship between participative leadership and affective trust. Our findings contradict those of previous research which question the effectiveness of participative leadership in short-term employment situations such as internships. They also highlight the importance of designing internships to be reflective of typical performance situations, characterized by participative leadership practices, rather than more directive leadership practices.