Technical change and work organisation

This thesis is an exploration of the social and political processes involved in the introduction of new technology to the shopfloor. Through a series of case studies of applications of microelectronics to batch manufacture, it attempts to uncover the ways in which the values and interests of managers, engineers, workers and others profoundly influence the choice and use of technology, and thus the work organisation which emerges. Previous analyses have tended to treat new technology as if it had "impacts" on work organisation - especially skills - which are inevitable in particular technical and economic circumstances. It is in opposition to this view that technical change is here treated as a matter for social choice and political negotiation, the various interested parties to the change being shown to attempt to incorporate their own interests into the technical and social organisation of work. Section one provides the relevant background to the case studies by summarising and criticising previous theoretical and empirical work in the area. The inadequacies of this work for our concerns are drawn out, and the need for detailed studies of the political aspects of technical change is justified. The case studies are presented in section two as a set of "episodes" of innovation, and section three analyses the empirical findings. The innovations are compared and contrasted in order to illustrate the social and political dynamics involved in the various stages of the innovation process. Finally some comments are made on policy issues for which the research has important implications.

Why organizational and community diversity matter:the emergence of incivility and organizational outcomes

Integrating sociological and psychological perspectives, this research considers the value of organizational ethnic diversity as a function of community diversity. Employee and patient surveys, census data, and performance indexes relevant to 142 hospitals in the United Kingdom suggest that intraorganizational ethnic diversity is associated with reduced civility toward patients. However, the degree to which organizational demography was representative of community demography was positively related to civility experienced by patients and ultimately enhanced organizational performance. These findings underscore the understudied effects of community context and imply that intergroup biases manifested in incivility toward out-group members hinder organizational performance.

Overall justice, work group identification and work outcomes:test of moderated mediation process

This study examined an integrated model of the antecedents and outcomes of organisational and overall justice using a sample of Indian Call Centre employees (n = 458). Results of structural equation modelling (SEM) revealed that the four organisational justice dimensions relate to overall justice. Further, work group identification mediated the influence of overall justice on counterproductive work behaviors, such as presenteeism and social loafing, while conscientiousness was a significant moderator between work group identification and presenteeism and social loafing. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

An examination of the relationship between work value similarity, work value fulfilment, leader-member exchange quality and work outcomes

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The influence of organizational and national culture on new product performance

The authors conduct a meta-analysis on the combined influence of organizational and national culture on new product performance. For this purpose, they refer to the effectiveness of value congruency and develop a conceptual model describing the fit between organizational culture types as suggested by the competing values framework and national culture, as described by Hofstede's cultural dimensions. The meta-analysis is based on 489 effect sizes taken from 123 manuscripts. The findings show that organizations with a market culture show the highest new product performance, while hierarchy-type organizations show the lowest performance. The influence of national culture variables supports the effect of value congruency, and shows that in individualistic cultures the impact of a clan culture decreases, the impact of an adhocracy culture type decreases with uncertainty avoidance, and the influence of a hierarchy culture type increases with power distance. The superior effect of a market culture type can be matched by other organizational orientations, but in particular national cultures only. The combined findings underline the importance for firms that seek to improve the success rate of new products on international markets to consider the fit of a national culture with a firm's organizational culture.

Effective decision making and problem solving in projects

Processing information and forming opinions pose special challenges when attempting to effectively manage the new or complex tasks that typically arise in projects. Based on research in organizational and social psychology, we introduce mechanisms and strategies for collective information processing which are important for forming opinions and handling information in projects.

When promoting positive feelings pays:Aggregate job satisfaction, work design features, and innovation in manufacturing organizations

This study investigates the relationship between aggregate job satisfaction and organizational innovation. In a sample of manufacturing companies, data were gathered from 3717 employees in 28 UK manufacturing organizations about their job satisfaction and aggregated to the organizational level. Data on innovation in technology/processes were gathered from multiple respondents in the same organizations 24 months later. The results revealed that aggregate job satisfaction was a significant predictor of subsequent organizational innovation, even after controlling for prior organizational innovation and profitability. Moreover the data indicated that the relationship between aggregate job satisfaction and innovation in production technology/processes was moderated by two factors: job variety and a commitment to "single status". Unlike previous studies, we conceptualize job satisfaction at the aggregate rather than the individual level and examine innovation rather than creativity. We propose that where the majority of employees experience job satisfaction, they will endorse rather than resist innovation and work collaboratively to implement as well as to generate creative ideas.

The psychology of work and organizations

From the challenges of sustainability to disruptive technology, work environments face unprecedented change and this major new textbook provides a cutting-edge introduction to how psychology and the world of work interact. Leading international academics, Steve Woods and Mike West, combine the latest research with truly global perspectives to leave students with a fully-rounded understanding of work psychology. Developed from wide-ranging lecturer feedback, three key themes of Ethics and Social Responsibility, Globalization and Cross-cultural Issues, and Environment and Sustainability are threaded throughout every chapter, while an attractive full-colour design and engaging pedagogical devices stimulate student interaction on this rapidly growing course. A full set of lecturer resources including Instructors Manual, PowerPoint Slides and Test Bank make this the complete resource for modern work psychology courses.

Personality across working life:the longitudinal and reciprocal influences of personality on work

Summary: This paper focuses on the role of personality at different stages of people's working lives. We begin by reviewing the research in industrial, work, and organizational (IWO) psychology regarding the longitudinal and dynamic influences of personality as an independent variable at different career stages, structuring our review around a framework of people's working lives and careers over time. Next, we review recent studies in the personality and developmental psychology domain regarding the influence of changing life roles on personality. In this domain, personality also serves as a dependent variable. By blending these two domains, it becomes clear that the study of reciprocal effects of work and personality might open a new angle in IWO psychology's long-standing tradition of personality research. To this end, we outline various implications for conceptual development (e.g., trait stability) and empirical research (e.g., personality and work incongruence). Finally, we discuss some methodological and statistical considerations for research in this new research domain. In the end, our review should enrich the way that IWO psychologists understand personality at work, focusing away from its unidirectional predictivist influence on job performance toward a more complex longitudinal reciprocal interplay of personality and working life. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Neuroimaging and psychophysiological measurement in organizational research:an agenda for research in organizational cognitive neuroscience

Although organizational research has made tremendous strides in the last century, recent advances in neuroscience and the imaging of functional brain activity remain underused. In fact, even the use of well-established psychophysiological measurement tools is comparatively rare. Following the lead of social cognitive neuroscience, in this review, we conceptualize organizational cognitive neuroscience as a field dedicated to exploring the processes within the brain that underlie or influence human decisions, behaviors, and interactions either (a) within organizations or (b) in response to organizational manifestations or institutions. We discuss organizational cognitive neuroscience, bringing together work that may previously have been characterized rather atomistically, and provide a brief overview of individual methods that may be of use. Subsequently, we discuss the possible convergence and integration of the different neuroimaging and psychophysiological measurement modalities. A brief review of prior work in the field shows a significant need for a more coherent and theory-driven approach to organizational cognitive neuroscience. In response, we discuss a recent example of such work, along with three hypothetical case studies that exemplify the link between organizational and psychological theory and neuroscientific methods.

'Taking a sickie':Job satisfaction and job involvement as interactive predictors of absenteeism in a public organization

Correlations between absenteeism and work attitudes such as job satisfaction have often been found to be disappointingly weak. As prior work reveals, this might be due to ignoring interactive effects of attitudes with different attitude targets (e.g. job involvement and organizational commitment). Drawing on basic principles in personality research and insights about the situational variability of job satisfaction judgments, we proposed that similar interactions should be present also for attitudes with the same target. More specifically, it was predicted that job involvement affects absenteeism more if job satisfaction is low as this indicates a situation with weak constraints. Both attitudes were assessed in a sample of 436 employees working in a large civil service organization, and two indexes of absence data (frequency and time lost) were drawn from personnel records covering a 12-month period following the survey. Whereas simple correlations were not significant, a moderated regression documented that the hypothesized interaction was significant for both indicators of absence behaviour. As a range of controls (e.g. age, gender, job level) were accounted for, these findings lend strong support to the importance of this new, specific form of attitude interaction. Thus, we encourage researchers not only to consider interactions of attitudes with a different focus (e.g. job vs. organization) but also interactions between job involvement and job satisfaction as this will yield new insights into the complex function of attitudes in influencing absenteeism. © 2007 The British Psychological Society.

To be(long) or not to be(long):social identification in organizational contexts

In the past few years, ideas of Social Identity Theory and Self-Categorization Theory have been successfully applied to the organizational domain. In this article, the authors provide an overview of these recent developments and present a concept of social identification in organizational contexts, based on these theories. The assumptions of this framework are that (a) social identification in organizational contexts is a multifaceted concept consisting of different dimensions and foci (or targets), (b) higher levels of identification are related to higher productivity and more positive work-related attitudes, and (c) identification is a very flexible concept that is linked to the situational context. The authors present the results of a series of field and laboratory studies in which the proposed relationships are analyzed and, in the main, confirmed. Copyright © 2006 Heldref Publications.

Out in psychology:lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer perspectives

There has been a recent explosion of interest in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans Perspective Psychology amongst students and academics, and this interest is predicted to continue to rise. Recent media debates on subjects such as same–sex marriage have fuelled interest in LGBTQ perspectives. This edited collection showcases the latest thinking in LGBTQ psychology. The book has 21 chapters covering subjects such as same sex parenting, outing, young LGBTQ people, sport, learning disabilities, lesbian and gay identities etc. The book has an international focus, with contributors from UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand List of Contributors. Foreword by Jerry J. Bigner. 1. Introducing Out in Psychology (Victoria Clarke and Elizabeth Peel). 2. From lesbian and gay psychology to LGBTQ psychologies: A journey into the unknown (Victoria Clarke and Elizabeth Peel) 3. What comes after discourse analysis for LGBTQ psychology(Peter Hegarty). 4. Recognising race in LGBTQ psychology: Power, privilege and complicity (Damien W. Riggs). 5. Personality, individual differences and LGB psychology (Gareth Hagger Johnson). 6. Heteronormativity and the exclusion of bisexuality in psychology (Meg Barker). 7. A minority within a minority: Experiences of gay men with intellectual disabilities.(Christopher Bennett and Adrian Coyle). 8. Closet talk: The contemporary relevance of the closet in lesbian and gay interaction (Victoria Land and Celia Kitzinger) 9. Romance, rights, recognition, responsibilities and radicalism: Same-sex couples’ accounts of civil partnership and marriage (Victoria Clarke, Carole Burgoyne and Maree Burns). 10. The experience of social power in the lives of trans people (Clair Clifford and Jim Orford). 11. What do they look like and are they among us? Bisexuality, (dis.closure and (Maria Gurevich, Jo Bower, Cynthia M. Mathieson and Bramilee Dhayanandhan). 12. Heterosexism at work: Diversity training, discrimination law and the limits of liberal individualism (Rosie Harding and Elizabeth Peel). 13. Out on the ball fields: Lesbians in sport (Vikki Krane and Kerrie J. Kauer). 14. Homophobia, rights and community: Contemporary issues in the lives of LGB people in the UK (Sonja J. Ellis). 15. Striving for holistic success: How lesbians come out on top (Faith Rostad and Bonita C. Long). 16. On Passing: The Interactional Organization of Appearance Attributions in the Psychiatric Assessment of Transsexual Patients (Susan A. Speer and Richard Green). 17. Alcohol and gay men: Consumption, promotion and policy responses (Jeffrey Adams, Timothy McCreanor and Virginia Braun). 18. Towards a clinical-psychological approach to address the hetero sexual concerns of intersexed women (Lih-Mei Liao). 19. Educational psychology practice with LGB youth in schools: Individual and institutional interventions (Jeremy J. Monsen and Sydney Bailey). 20. Que(e)rying the meaning of lesbian health: Individual(izing and community discourses (Sara MacBride-Stewart). 21. Transsexualism: Diagnostic dilemmas, transgender politics and the future of transgender care (Katherine Johnson). Index.