Trust as a mediator of the relationship between organizational justice and work outcomes:test of a social exchange model

Data obtained from full-time employees of a public sector organization in India were used to test a social exchange model of employee work attitudes and behaviors. LISREL results revealed that whereas the three organizational justice dimensions (distributive, procedural and interactional) were related to trust in organization only interactional justice was related to trust in supervisor. The results further revealed that relative to the hypothesized fully mediated model a partially mediated model better fitted the data. Trust in organization partially mediated the relationship between distributive and procedural justice and the work attitudes of job satisfaction, turnover intentions, and organizational commitment but fully mediated the relationship between interactional justice and these work attitudes. In contrast, trust in supervisor fully mediated the relationship between interactional justice and the work behaviors of task performance and the individually- and organizationally-oriented dimensions of citizenship behavior.

A test of basic assumptions of Affective Events Theory (AET) in call centre work

Based on data from 2091 call centre representatives working in 85 call centres in the UK, central assumptions of affective events theory (AET) are tested. AET predicts that specific features of work (e.g. autonomy) have an impact on the arousal of emotions and moods at work that, in turn, co-determine job satisfaction of employees. AET further proposes that job satisfaction is an evaluative judgement that mainly explains cognitive-based behaviour, whereas emotions and moods better predict affective-based behaviour. The results support these assumptions. A clear separation of key constructs (job satisfaction, positive and negative emotions) was possible. Moreover, correlations between several work features (e.g. supervisory support) and job satisfaction were, in part, mediated by work emotions, even when controlling for gender, age, call centre type (in-house versus outsourced centres) and call centre size. Predictions regarding consequences of satisfaction and affect were partly corroborated as continuance commitment was more strongly related to job satisfaction than to positive emotions. In addition, affective commitment and health complaints were related to both emotions and job satisfaction to the same extent. Thus, AET is a fruitful framework for explaining why and how specific management strategies used for designing work features influence important organizational attitudes and well-being of employees. © 2006 British Academy of Management.

Science or practice? UK undergraduate experiences and attitudes to the MPharm degree

Objective: The debate surrounding the science/practice balance in the teaching of undergraduate pharmacy has been played out in the professional literature for years. The objective of this work was to explore the attitudes of pharmacy undergraduates on the practice-science debate. Setting: The study was undertaken as part of a national study of teaching, learning and assessment methods in United Kingdom (UK) schools of pharmacy. Method: Six focus groups were carried out. The sample was 44 volunteer students from nine UK schools of pharmacy, representing all 4 years of the MPharm programme. Groups were tape recorded and transcribed. Analysis of the transcripts was theme based by topic. Main Outcome Measure: Qualitative data on student attitudes and experiences. Results: Most students thought that there was too strong an emphasis placed on the science components of the course in the early part of their studies. Later in the course they realised that the majority of the science was necessary; it just had not been apparent to them at the time. There were strongly held attitudes across all 4 years that it would be beneficial to include more practice-related material at the beginning of their studies. This would be beneficial for three reasons: to make the course more interesting, to aid in the contextualisation of the science component and to assist the students in any early placement or vacational work. Conclusion: Internationally, changes to the role of the pharmacist from a traditional supply function to a more clinical role has resulted in differing educational needs for the pharmacist of the future. Pharmacy will remain a degree built on a strong scientific background, but students advise that the contextualisation and sequencing of material within the degree could make a considerable improvement to their learning. Consulting students helps us to understand the teaching, learning and assessment experience better by giving insights into ways of improving the delivery. In the case of the UK, there are legislative changes impending which may provide an opportunity to review the balance of practice-and science in the curriculum. © 2006 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

Role of organizational identification, on Implicit Leadership Theories ILTs, transformational leadership and work attitudes

This investigation explores the effects of organizational identification on employees’ Implicit Leadership Theories (ILTs) and the perception of leader behaviors. The study involved a cross-sectional survey of 439 employees from seven companies based in South Wales. Respondents completed two questionnaires that measured their organizational identification, ILTs, recognition of ILTs in their manager, manager’s leadership behaviors (transactional and transformational), and psychological reactions (job satisfaction, well-being, and turnover intentions). The level of organizational identification did not affect the prototype of an ideal work-based leader. However, high organizational identification was associated with more positive ratings on the actual manager, the extent to which their manager displayed transactional and transformational behaviors, and with more positive psychological reactions to work. Employees high in organizational identification based their judgments of their leader’s transactional and transformational behaviors on the extent to which they recognized their leader as possessing leadership traits. However, those low on organizational identification allowed their prototype of their ideal leader to bias their judgment of their actual leader’s behavior. Finally, there was partial support for the augmenting hypothesis (that tranformational leadership would predict additional variance in psychological outcomes above that predicted by transactional leadership) for those high in organizational identification but not for those low in organizational identification.

'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.

Job satisfaction and teamwork:The role of supervisor support

The link between teamwork and job satisfaction was investigated in a sample of 48 manufacturing companies comprising 4708 employees. Two separate research questions were addressed. First, it was proposed that supervisor support would be a weaker source of job satisfaction in companies with higher levels of teamworking. Multilevel analysis indicated that the extent of teamwork at the company level of analysis moderated the relationship between individual perceptions of supervisor support and job satisfaction. Second, it was proposed that the extent of teamwork would be positively related to perceptions of job autonomy but negatively related to perceptions of supervisor support. Further, it was proposed that the link between teamwork and job autonomy would be explained by job enrichment practices associated with teamwork. Analyses of aggregated company data supported these propositions and provided evidence for a complex mediational path between teamwork and job satisfaction. Implications for implementing teamwork in organizations are discussed. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Individual spirit at work and its relationship with employee work attitudes and organisational outcomes:An empirical examination in corporate Thailand

The purpose of this thesis is to conduct empirical research in corporate Thailand in order to (1) validate the Spirit at Work Scale (2) investigate the relationships between individual spirit at work and three employee work attitudinal variables (job satisfaction, organisational identification and psychological well-being) and three organisational outcomes (in-role performance, organisational citizenship behaviours (OCB), and turnover intentions) (3) further examine causal relations among these organisational behaviour variables with a longitudinal design (4) examine three employee work attitudes as mediator variables between individual spirit at work and three organisational outcomes and (5) explore the potential antecedents of organisational conditions that foster employee experienced individual spirit at work. The two pilot studies with 155 UK and 175, 715 Thai samples were conducted for validation testing of the main measure used in this study: Spirit at Work Scale (Kinjerski & Skrypnek, 2006a). The results of the two studies including discriminant validity analyses strongly provided supportive evidence that Spirit at Work Scale (SAWS) is a sound psychometric measure and also a distinct construct from the three work attitude constructs. The final model of SAWS contains a total of twelve items; a three factor structure (meaning in work, sense of community, and spiritual connection) in which the sub-factors loaded on higher order factors and also had very acceptable reliability. In line with these results it was decided to use the second-order of SAWS model for Thai samples in the main study and subsequent analysis. The 715 completed questionnaires were received from the first wave of data collection during July - August 2008 and the second wave was conducted again within the same organisations and 501 completed questionnaires were received during March - April 2009. Data were obtained through 49 organisations which were from three types of organisations within Thailand: public organisations, for-profit organisations, and notfor-profit organisations. Confirmatory factor analysis of all measures used in the study and hypothesised model were tested with structural equation modelling techniques. The results were greatly supportive for the direct structural model and partially supportive for the fully mediated model. Moreover, there were different findings across self report and supervisor rating on performance and OCB models. Additionally, the antecedent conditions that fostered employees experienced individual spirit at work and the implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed.

Sales manager problem resolution styles:measure development and an examination of their salesperson-related consequences

Personal selling and sales management play a critical role in the short and long term success of the firm, and have thus received substantial academic interest since the 1970s. Sales research has examined the role of the sales manager in some depth, defining a number of key technical and interpersonal roles which sales managers have in influencing sales force effectiveness. However, one aspect of sales management which appears to remain unexplored is that of their resolution of salesperson-related problems. This study represents the first attempt to address this gap by reporting on the conceptual and empirical development of an instrument designed to measure sales managers' problem resolution styles. A comprehensive literature review and qualitative research study identified three key constructs relating to sales managers' problem resolution styles. The three constructs identified were termed; sales manager willingness to respond, sales manager caring, and sales manager aggressiveness. Building on this, existing literature was used to develop a conceptual model of salesperson-specific consequences of the three problem resolution style constructs. The quantitative phase of the study consisted of a mail survey of UK salespeople, achieving a total sample of 140 fully usable responses. Rigorous statistical assessment of the sales manager problem resolution style measures was undertaken, and construct validity examined. Following this, the conceptual model was tested using latent variable path analysis. The results for the model were encouraging overall, and also with regard to the individual hypotheses. Sales manager problem resolution styles were found individually to have significant impacts on the salesperson-specific variables of role ambiguity, emotional exhaustion, job satisfaction, organisational commitment and organisational citizenship behaviours. The findings, theoretical and managerial implications, limitations and directions for future research are discussed.

The finance of biotechnology:investment in new biotechnology firms by British venture capitalists-attitudes to, and evaluation of, business proposals

A notable feature of the recent commercialisation of biotechnology has been the success of 200 or so new firms, established in America since 1976, in exploiting specialised market niches. A key factor in their formation has been the ready availability of venture capital funding. These firms have been instrumental in establishing America's lead in exploiting biotechnology. It is this example which Britain has attempted to emulate as part of its strategy for developing its own biotechnology capabilities. This thesis investigated some aspects of the relationship between biotechnology and venture capital, concentrating on the determinants of the venture capitalist's investment decision. Following an extensive literature survey, two hypothetical business proposals were used to find what venture capitalists themselves consider to be the key elements of this decision. It was found that venture capitalists invest in people, not products, and businesses, not industries. It was concluded that venture capital-backed small firms should, therefore, be seen as an adjunct to the development of biotechnology in Britain, rather than as a substitute for a co-ordinated, co-operative strategy involving Government, the financial institutions, industry and academia. This is chiefly because the small size of the UK's domestic market means that many potentially important innovations in biotechnology may continue to be lost, since the short term identification of market opportunities for biotechnology products will dictate that they are insupportable in Britain alone. In addition, the data analysis highlighted some interesting methodological issues concerning the investigation of investment decision making. These related especially to shortcomings in the use of scoresheets and questionnaires in research in this area. The conclusion here was that future research should concentrate on the reasons why an individual reaches an investment decision. It is argued that only in this way can the nature of the evaluation procedures employed by venture capitalists be properly understood.

The impact of the introduction of visual display terminals on the job characteristics, job satisfaction and well-being of users in government offices

The proliferation of visual display terminals (VDTs) in offices is an international phenomenon. Numerous studies have investigated the health implications which can be categorised into visual problems, symptoms of musculo-skelctal discomfort, or psychosocial effects. The psychosocial effects are broader and there is mixed evidence in this area. The inconsistent results from the studies of VDT work so far undertaken may reflect several methodological shortcomings. In an attempt to overcome these deficiencies and to broaden the model of inter-relationships a model was developed to investigate their interactions and Ihc outputs of job satisfaction, stress and ill health. The study was a two-stage, long-term investigation with measures taken before the VDTs were introduced and the same measures taken 12 months after the 'go-live' date. The research was conducted in four offices of the Department of Social Security. The data were analysed for each individual site and in addition the total data were used in a path analysis model. Significant positive relationships were found at the pre-implementation stage between the musculo-skeletal discomfort, psychosomatic ailments, visual complaints and stress. Job satisfaction was negatively related to visual complaints and musculo-skeletal discomfort. Direct paths were found for age and job level with variety found in the job and age with job satisfaction and a negative relationship with the office environment. The only job characteristic which had a direct path to stress was 'dealing with others'. Similar inter-relationships were found in the post-implementation data. However, in addition attributes of the computer system, such as screen brightness and glare, were related positively with stress and negatively with job satisfaction. The comparison of the data at the two stages found that there had been no significant changes in the users' perceptions of their job characteristics and job satisfaction but there was a small and significant reduction in the stress measure.

Human resource management, employee attitudes and business performance in Post Office Ltd

Whilst a consistent link between the adoption of human resource management (HRM) practices by organisations and their performance has been confirmed by numerous studies, there is a need for greater understanding of why such effects occur. Recently, the attention of researchers has shifted towards understanding the so-called ‘black box’ linking HRM and business performance. This study focuses on this area of research by testing processes through which HRM may affect performance, in particular the process of HR implementation, mediation mechanisms, and fit with internal and external boundary conditions. This research was based on a sample of 136 Post Office branches in the UK and investigated the role of HR implementation, employee attitudes and competitive environment. The study revealed that HR implementation, a climate for service, job satisfaction and effective organisational commitment predicted independent measures of economic and service performance in branches. Employee attitudes moderated the relationship between implemented HRM and service performance, and both job satisfaction and commitment were found to mediate relationships between a climate for service and service performance. Finally, relative levels of competition faced by branches moderated the relationship between employee attitudes and sales. The findings demonstrate how the process of HR implementation, interactions with employee attitudes and moderation by external competition all influence the impact of HR systems on service and economic performance outcomes. These results illustrate the need for greater attention to processes of internal and external fit within HRM research in order to develop theory relating to why HR systems affect performance.

Too old to choose? The effects of age and age related constructs on consumer decision making

Ageing of societies is a major challenge to academic research as well as to management. The unstoppable trend of an aging society in most western societies offers opportunities and challenges at the same time. This paper sheds light on the impact of age as well as age-related constructs on relevant consumer attitudes and behavior. More precisely, the empirical study, conducted in the market for cars, examining the relationships between four distinct age constructs and assesses the impact of these age constructs on information gathering, a consumer’s evoked set, and on rand loyalty.

Work-related stressors and psychological strain in the sales force:the role of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation

The contemporary workplace appears rife with psychological strain, which can have considerable deleterious outcomes to the firm and the individual. However, research on strain in the sales force is underdeveloped. This paper reports the results of a study of the antecedents and consequences of psychological strain in the sales force, with particular attention to the roles of role ambiguity, emotional exhaustion, and intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Emotional exhaustion is found to increase strain. Intrinsic motivation reduces strain under conditions of relatively high role ambiguity, but leads to more strain under conditions of low role ambiguity. Strain is found to have a J-shaped relationship with turnover intentions, and is linearly related to lower job satisfaction and lower job performance.

Workplace isolation, salesperson commitment, and job performance

Workplace isolation has been recognized as a critical issue facing salespeople in field offices. Studies have recognized that field salespeople are physically and psychologically isolated, but there is little empirical research on the effects of perceived isolation on important job outcomes. One important issue that has yet to be considered is the effect of workplace isolation on trust in supervisors and coworkers. The current study uses a sample of pharmaceutical salespeople to replicate previous results pertaining to workplace isolation effects and to test an integrated model of workplace isolation, salesperson satisfaction, trust, organizational commitment, and overall job performance. The results reveal that perceptions of workplace isolation negatively affect trust in supervisors and coworkers and that the relationship between trust (in supervisors and coworkers) and organizational commitment is mediated by satisfaction with supervisors and coworkers. Further, the findings confirm previous research that indicates that organizational commitment is positively related to salesperson job performance.

The impact of relational demography on the quality of leader-member exchanges and employees' work attitudes and well-being

This study investigated the role of differences in age, organizational tenure and gender between manager and employee as potential moderators between employees' leader-member exchanges (LMX) and related work outcomes. The results support the interaction effect of manager-employee organizational tenure difference with LMX and outcome variables. Employees with a high organizational tenure difference from the manager reported the worst work outcomes when they perceived LMX was of low quality, whereas when the quality of LMX was high, they reported the highest work attitudes and well-being.