Organizational citizenship behavior and organizational commitment in Nepal

The present study examines the structure of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and its relation to organizational commitment in Nepal. Four-hundred and fifty employees of five Nepalese organizations filled out standardized questionnaires. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses revealed two factors of OCB, altruism and compliance, replicating Western models of extra-role behavior. Structural equation analysis showed a positive relation between affective and normative commitment on the one hand and both citizenship factors on the other. Continuance commitment was negatively related to compliance and unrelated to altruism. The findings thus confirmed the structure and usefulness of the concepts in an under-researched geographical area. Findings of the research are discussed within the Nepalese sociocultural context. © Blackwell Publishing Ltd with the Asian Association of Social Psychology and the Japanese Group Dynamics Association 2005.

Constructing institutional change: emergence, contestation and convergence of business models in the field of Java application servers

How are innovative new business models established if organizations constantly compare themselves against existing criteria and expectations? The objective is to address this question from the perspective of innovators and their ability to redefine established expectations and evaluation criteria. The research questions ask whether there are discernible patterns of discursive action through which innovators theorize institutional change and what role such theorizations play for mobilizing support and realizing change projects. These questions are investigated through a case study on a critical area of enterprise computing software, Java application servers. In the present case, business practices and models were already well established among incumbents with critical market areas allocated to few dominant firms. Fringe players started experimenting with a new business approach of selling services around freely available opensource application servers. While most new players struggled, one new entrant succeeded in leading incumbents to adopt and compete on the new model. The case demonstrates that innovative and substantially new models and practices are established in organizational fields when innovators are able to refine expectations and evaluation criteria within an organisational field. The study addresses the theoretical paradox of embedded agency. Actors who are embedded in prevailing institutional logics and structures find it hard to perceive potentially disruptive opportunities that fall outside existing ways of doing things. Changing prevailing institutional logics and structures requires strategic and institutional work aimed at overcoming barriers to innovation. The study addresses this problem through the lens of (new) institutional theory. This discourse methodology traces the process through which innovators were able to establish a new social and business model in the field.

Overcoming network overload and redundancy in inter-organizational networks:the roles of potential and latent ties

This paper builds on Granovetter's distinction between strong and weak ties [Granovetter, M. S. 1973. The strength of weak ties. Amer. J. Sociol. 78(6) 1360–1380] in order to respond to recent calls for a more dynamic and processual understanding of networks. The concepts of potential and latent tie are deductively identified, and their implications for understanding how and why networks emerge, evolve, and change are explored. A longitudinal empirical study conducted with companies operating in the European motorsport industry reveals that firms take strategic actions to search for potential ties and reactivate latent ties in order to solve problems of network redundancy and overload. Examples are given, and their characteristics are examined to provide theoretical elaboration of the relationship between the types of tie and network evolution. These conceptual and empirical insights move understanding of the managerial challenge of building effective networks beyond static structural contingency models of optimal network forms to highlight the processes and capabilities of dynamic relationship building and network development. In so doing, this paper highlights the interrelationship between search and redundancy and the scope for strategic action alongside path dependence and structural influences on network processes.

Creativity and innovation:the role of team and organizational climate

This chapter argues that creative, innovative organizations are places where there is a firm and shared belief among most members in an inspirational vision of what the organization is trying to achieve. There is a high level of interaction, discussion, constructive debate, and influence among the members of the organization as they go about their work. Trust, cooperative orientations, and a sense of interpersonal safety characterize interpersonal and intergroup relationships. Members of the organization, particularly those at the upper echelons (and there are few echelons) are consistently positive and open to members' ideas for new and improved ways of working, providing both encouragement and the resources for innovation. Creativity is heralded as key for organizational survival and success. As global economic models become the norm and competitiveness assumes an international character, leaders realize that, in order to prosper in a highly challenging environment, companies must innovate. The source of organizational innovation is unquestionably the ideas generated by individuals and teams. © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The effect of transformational leadership and regulatory effect on creativity:testing two competitive models

Presentation of an abstract

Making the organization fly:organizational identification and citizenship in full-service and low-cost airlines

Recently, the service industry has seen a low-cost sector emerge alongside the traditional full-service sector. We explored whether these business models have different implications for employee cooperation, one factor that plays an important role in organizational functioning. Drawing on the social identity perspective, we argue that employees will identify less strongly with the lower-status, low-cost organizations, reducing their intrinsic motivation for such cooperation. We tested these relationships among employees in Thailand's airline industry. In line with expectations, flight attendants working for low-cost airlines (N = 77) perceived their organizations to have lower status than those working for the full-service airlines (N = 77), and this was associated with reduced organizational identification. This in turn predicted lower levels of organizational citizenship behaviour and a stronger desire for organizational exit. © 2010 Hogrefe Publishing.

The impact of creative organizational climate on the innovation activity of medical devices manufacturing firms in Hungary

The purpose of this study was to empirically investigate the impact of creative organizational climate on the innovation activity of medical devices manufacturing firms in Hungary. We applied a combined qualitative and quantitative research model, focusing on two firm’s case studies that are active in the above mentioned sector and differ to a substantial degree in their innovation activities. The connection between innovative climate and innovation was analyzed by comparing their organizational climate and perceptions of organizational members of innovation activities. Our findings revealed that classical models of creative organizational climate explain only partially the differences, although on the level of individual perceptions of climate and innovativeness we can find some connections. We found one factor that differentiated the two firms in terms of organizational climate in the predicted direction: the amount, quality, sincerity and depth of debates going on in the organization. The level of challenge (high involvement, commitment and challenging goals) and the time devoted to think about new ideas and innovative solutions (idea time) turned out to be contrary to the expectations based on previous research – although these results are less significant statistically. The results trigger further research into the sources of competitiveness in the Hungarian medical devices manufacturing sector.

Using structural equation modeling to assess two theoretical models that explain dropout

This study evaluated the relative fit of both Finn's (1989) Participation-Identification and Wehlage, Rutter, Smith, Lesko and Fernandez's (1989) School Membership models of high school completion to a sample of 4,597 eighth graders taken from the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988, (NELS:88), utilizing structural equation modeling techniques. This study found support for the importance of educational engagement as a factor in understanding academic achievement. The Participation-Identification model was particularly well fitting when applied to the sample of high school completers, dropouts (both overall and White dropouts) and African-American students. This study also confirmed the contribution of school environmental factors (i.e., size, diversity of economic and ethnic status among students) and family resources (i.e., availability of learning resources in the home and parent educational level) to students' educational engagement. Based on these findings, school social workers will need to be more attentive to utilizing macro-level interventions (i.e., community organization, interagency coordination) to achieve the organizational restructuring needed to address future challenges. The support found for the Participation-Identification model supports a shift in school social workers' attention from reactive attempts to improve the affective-interpersonal lives of students to proactive attention to their academic lives. The model concentrates school social work practices on the central mission of schools, which is educational engagement. School social workers guided by this model would be encouraged to seek changes in school policies and organization that would facilitate educational engagement. ^

Latent Space and Social Psychological Models of Diffusion

The problem of social diffusion has animated sociological thinking on topics ranging from the spread of an idea, an innovation or a disease, to the foundations of collective behavior and political polarization. While network diffusion has been a productive metaphor, the reality of diffusion processes is often muddier. Ideas and innovations diffuse differently from diseases, but, with a few exceptions, the diffusion of ideas and innovations has been modeled under the same assumptions as the diffusion of disease. In this dissertation, I develop two new diffusion models for "socially meaningful" contagions that address two of the most significant problems with current diffusion models: (1) that contagions can only spread along observed ties, and (2) that contagions do not change as they spread between people. I augment insights from these statistical and simulation models with an analysis of an empirical case of diffusion - the use of enterprise collaboration software in a large technology company. I focus the empirical study on when people abandon innovations, a crucial, and understudied aspect of the diffusion of innovations. Using timestamped posts, I analyze when people abandon software to a high degree of detail.

To address the first problem, I suggest a latent space diffusion model. Rather than treating ties as stable conduits for information, the latent space diffusion model treats ties as random draws from an underlying social space, and simulates diffusion over the social space. Theoretically, the social space model integrates both actor ties and attributes simultaneously in a single social plane, while incorporating schemas into diffusion processes gives an explicit form to the reciprocal influences that cognition and social environment have on each other. Practically, the latent space diffusion model produces statistically consistent diffusion estimates where using the network alone does not, and the diffusion with schemas model shows that introducing some cognitive processing into diffusion processes changes the rate and ultimate distribution of the spreading information. To address the second problem, I suggest a diffusion model with schemas. Rather than treating information as though it is spread without changes, the schema diffusion model allows people to modify information they receive to fit an underlying mental model of the information before they pass the information to others. Combining the latent space models with a schema notion for actors improves our models for social diffusion both theoretically and practically.

The empirical case study focuses on how the changing value of an innovation, introduced by the innovations' network externalities, influences when people abandon the innovation. In it, I find that people are least likely to abandon an innovation when other people in their neighborhood currently use the software as well. The effect is particularly pronounced for supervisors' current use and number of supervisory team members who currently use the software. This case study not only points to an important process in the diffusion of innovation, but also suggests a new approach -- computerized collaboration systems -- to collecting and analyzing data on organizational processes.

A MODEL FOR EVALUATING IMPACT OF BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT IN ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE

Business Process Management (BPM) is able to organize and frame a company focusing in the improvement or assurance of performance in order to gain competitive advantage. Although it is believed that BPM improves various aspects of organizational performance, there has been a lack of empirical evidence about this. The present study has the purpose to develop a model to show the impact of business process management in organizational performance. To accomplish that, the theoretical basis required to know the elements that configurate BPM and the measures that can evaluate the BPM success on organizational performance is built through a systematic literature review (SLR). Then, a research model is proposed according to SLR results. Empirical data will be collected from a survey of  larg and mid-sized industrial and service companies headquartered in Brazil. A quantitative analysis will be performed using structural equation modeling (SEM) to show if the direct effects among BPM and organizational performance can be considered statistically significant. At the end will discuss these results and their managerial and cientific implications.Keywords: Business process management (BPM). Organizational performance. Firm performance. Business models. Structural Equation Modeling. Systematic Literature Review.

Organizational responses to technological discontinuities: the case of the American College of Radiology (ACR)

A long history of organizational research has shown that organizations are affected significantly by changes in technology. Scholars have given particular attention to the effects of so-called disruptive or discontinuous technological changes. Studies have repeatedly shown that established, incumbent organizations tend to suffer deep performance declines (and even complete demise) in the face of such changes, and researchers have devoted much attention to identifying the organizational conditions and processes that are responsible for this persistent and widespread pattern of adaptation failure. This dissertation, which examines the response of the American College of Radiology (ACR) to the emergence of nuclear magnetic resonance imaging technology (NMR), aims to contribute to this well-established research tradition in three distinct and important ways. First, it focuses on a fundamentally different type of organization, a professional association, rather than the technology producers examined in most prior research. Although technologies are well known to be embedded in “communities” that include technology producers, suppliers, customers, governmental entities, professional societies, and other entities, most prior research has focused on the responses and ultimate fate of producers alone. Little if any research has explored the responses of professional organizations in particular. Second, the study employs a sophisticated process methodology that identifies the individual events that make up the organization’s response to technological change, as well as the overall sequence through which these events unfold. This process approach contrasts sharply with the variance models used in most previous studies and offers the promise of developing knowledge about how adaptation ultimately unfolds (or fails to). Finally, the project also contributes significantly through its exploration of an apparently successful case of adaptation to technological change. Though nuclear magnetic resonance imaging posed a serious threat to the ACR and its members, this threat appears to have been successfully managed and overcome. Although the unique nature of the organization and the technology under study place some important limits on the generalizablity of this research, its findings nonetheless provide some important basic insights about the process through which social organizations can successfully adapt to discontinuous technological changes. These insights, which may also be of substantial relevance to technology producer organizations, will also be elaborated.

Incremental revolution: Organizational change in highly turbulent environments

Established models for understanding organizational change processes seem inadequate for explaining changes undergone by organizations facing highly turbulent environments. We propose an alternative model that depicts change as constant regeneration rather than revolutionary episodes. We then propose a set of structures and processes that facilitate this constant regeneration.

Influences of change strategies to achieve organizational flexibility: a system dynamics approach.

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What are the implications of changing treatment delivery models for patients with inflammatory bowel disease : a discussion paper

An integrated model of care has been used effectively to manage chronic diseases; however, there is limited, yet encouraging evidence on its introduction in the management of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), a chronic gastrointestinal condition. Here, the rationale for and implications of introducing an integrated model of care for patients with IBD are discussed, with a particular focus on psychology input, patient-centred care, efficiency as perceived by patients and doctors, financial implications and the possible means of model introduction. This is a discussion paper on the integrated model of care for IBD against a background of what has been learned from an integrated model of care established in other chronic conditions. Although limited, the emerging data on an integrated model of care in IBD are encouraging with respect to patient outcomes and savings in healthcare costs. In other conditions, the model has been well received by both patients and practitioners, although the loss of autonomy by doctors is listed among its drawbacks. The cost-effectiveness data are now sufficiently convincing to recommend the model's acceptance in principle. The model should be promoted at the policy level rather than by individual practitioners to facilitate equal access for patients with IBD on a larger scale than currently.

The significant role of third-party logistics (3pl) operators as fosterers of organizational performance in colombian companies

La eliminación de barreras entre países es una consecuencia que llega con la globalización y con los acuerdos de TLC firmados en los últimos años. Esto implica un crecimiento significativo del comercio exterior, lo cual se ve reflejado en un aumento de la complejidad de la cadena de suministro de las empresas. Debido a lo anterior, se hace necesaria la búsqueda de alternativas para obtener altos niveles de productividad y competitividad dentro de las empresas en Colombia, ya que el entorno se ha vuelto cada vez más complejo, saturado de competencia no sólo nacional, sino también internacional. Para mantenerse en una posición competitiva favorable, las compañías deben enfocarse en las actividades que le agregan valor a su negocio, por lo cual una de las alternativas que se están adoptando hoy en día es la tercerización de funciones logísticas a empresas especializadas en el manejo de estos servicios. Tales empresas son los Proveedores de servicios logísticos (LSP), quienes actúan como agentes externos a la organización al gestionar, controlar y proporcionar actividades logísticas en nombre de un contratante. Las actividades realizadas pueden incluir todas o parte de las actividades logísticas, pero como mínimo la gestión y ejecución del transporte y almacenamiento deben estar incluidos (Berglund, 2000). El propósito del documento es analizar el papel de los Operadores Logísticos de Tercer nivel (3PL) como promotores del desempeño organizacional en las empresas colombianas, con el fin de informar a las MIPYMES acerca de los beneficios que se obtienen al trabajar con LSP como un medio para mejorar la posición competitiva del país.