How innovation can alleviate negative consequences of demanding work contexts:The influence of climate for innovation on organizational outcomes

This study examines climate for innovation as a method by which negative organizational consequences of demanding work may be lessened. It was expected that a climate for innovation would enable employees to develop coping mechanisms or improved work-related processes which counteract negative consequences of work demands. Extending the job demands-resource model (Karasek, 1979), we predicted and found that among the sample of 22,696 respondents from 131 healthcare organizations, organizational climate for innovation alleviated the negative effects of work demands on organizational performance. Thus, this study informs climate theories and guides practitioners' efforts to support the employees. © 2007 The British Psychological Society.

The impact of organizational change on the perceptions of UK managers change

Redundancy, delayering, downsizing, and various other forms of organizational change have become increasingly prevalent. This article focuses on the impact of different forms of organizational change on managers' perceptions of the organizations they work within and the comparison between changes that involve redundancy and/or delayering and those that do not involve such changes. The literature has many accounts of the negative effects associated with redundancy and delayering, but are these effects unique to these types of change or are they a consequence of negative experiences of a range of organizational changes? Hypotheses were tested to assess, first, whether there are differences between different levels of management, notably between directors and nondirectors in the way they perceive organizational change, second, to assess how change has affected managers' perceptions of their organizations and their working lives, and third, to explore if different forms of change are associated with differences in managers' perceptions of their organizations “as a place to work”. Hypotheses were tested with data from a cross-sectional survey with 830 managers from the UK. Organizational changes include cost reduction and culture change programmes, delayering, mergers/demergers, outsourcing, redundancy programmes, and contract/ temporary workers. The analyses reported here indicate clearly that specific forms of change are associated with managers' reports of their experiences at work; some forms of change (notably redundancy and delayering) seem to have particularly damaging implications for managers' experiences in the workplace. The analyses also show that there is a difference in the way directors and nondirectors perceive the changes. Finally, the article considers strategies for ameliorating the effects of change including the role of HR.

Organizational climate and climate strengths in UK hospitals

In recent years, researchers have paid increasing attention to the idea of “climate strength”—the level of agreement about climate within a work group or organization. However, at present the literature is unclear about the extent to which climate strength is a positive attribute, and is concerned predominantly with small teams or organizational units. This article considers three theoretical perspectives of climate strength, and extends these to the organizational level. These three roles of climate strength were tested in 56 hospitals in the United Kingdom. Positive relationships were discovered between two of three climate dimensions (Quality and Integration) and expert ratings of organizational performance, and a curvilinear effect between Integration climate strength and performance was also found. Very high or very low Integration climate strength was less beneficial than a moderate level of climate strength. However, there were no interaction effects discovered between climate and climate strength. Implications for future climate strength research are discussed.

I don't see me like you see me, but is that a problem? Cultural influences on rating discrepancy in 360-degree feedback instruments

360-degree feedback from a variety of rater sources yields important information about leaders' styles, strengths and weaknesses for development. Results where observer ratings are discrepant (i.e., different) from self-ratings are often seen as indicators of problematic leadership relationships, skills, or lack of self-awareness. Yet research into the antecedents of such self-observer rating discrepancy suggests the presence of systematic influences, such as cultural values. The present study investigates the variation of rating discrepancies on three leadership skills (decision making, leading employees, and composure) in dependence of one exemplary culture dimension (power distance) on data from 31 countries using multilevel structural equation modelling. Results show that cultural values indeed predict self-observer rating discrepancies. Thus, systemic and contextual influences such as culture need to be taken into consideration when interpreting the importance and meaning of self-observer rating discrepancies in 360-degree instruments.

A model of service performance enhancement:the role of transactional and transformational leadership

This paper is concerned with the ways in which transactional and transformational leadership styles can improve the service performance of front-line staff. Past literature on services marketing has indicated the importance of leadership but has largely ignored the parallel literature in which leadership styles have been conceptualized and operationalized (e.g., sales management, organizational psychology). This paper seeks to build upon existing services marketing theory by introducing the role of leadership styles in enhancing service performance. Consequently, a conceptual framework of the effect of transactional and transformational leadership styles on service performance, anchored in a crossdisciplinary literature review, is developed. Managerial implications and future research directions are also discussed.

Enhancing service performance through transformational and transactional leadership styles

This paper is concerned with the effects that leadership styles can have upon service performance of front-line staff. Past literature on services marketing has indicated the importance of leadership but has largely ignored the parallel literature in which leadership styles have been conceptualized and operationalized (e.g., sales management, organizational psychology). Consequently, this paper develops a conceptual framework of the effect of leadership styles on service performance anchored in a cross-disciplinary literature review. Specific hypotheses are proposed and future research directions are presented.

The role of leader-member exchanges in mediating the relationship between locus of control and work reactions

The relationship between locus of control, the quality of exchanges between subordinates and leaders (LMX), and a variety of work-related reactions (intrinsic/extrinsic job satisfaction, work-related well-being, and organizational commitment) are examined. It was predicted that people with an internal locus of control develop better quality relations with their manager and this, in turn, results in more favourable work-related reactions. Results from two different samples (N=404, and N=51) supported this prediction, and also showed that LMX either fully, or partially, mediated the relationship between locus of control and all the work-related reactions.

'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.

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.

It's what you do and the way that you do it:team task, team size, and innovation-related group processes

This article describes a study of the relationships between team inputs (task type and team size) and team processes in 87 cross industry Portuguese teams, some of which had high and some low requirements to innovate. Team processes were measured using the Team Climate Inventory (TCI), which focuses on clarity of and commitment to team objectives, levels of participation, support for innovation, and quality emphases. Three hypotheses were tested. The first proposed that teams carrying out tasks with a high innovation requirement would have high scores on a measure of team processes. This was supported insofar as such teams reported higher levels of participation and support for innovation. The second hypothesis proposed that large teams would have poorer team processes. This hypothesis was confirmed. The third hypothesis concerned the interaction between size and innovation. The results suggested that large teams operating under a relatively high pressure to innovate have poorer team processes than large teams that do not have a high requirement to innovate.