What roles do team climate, roster control, and work life conflict play in shiftworkers’ fatigue longitudinally?

The study aimed to examine shiftworkers fatigue and the longitudinal relationships that impact on fatigue such as team climate, work life conflict, control of shifts and shift type in shift working nurses. We used a quantitative survey methodology and analysed data with a moderated hierarchical multiple regression. After matching across two time periods 18 months apart, the sample consisted of 166 nurses from one Australian hospital. Of these nurses, 61 worked two rotating day shifts (morning & afternoon/evening) and 105 were rotating shiftworkers who worked three shifts (morning afternoon/evening and nights). The findings suggest that control over shift scheduling can have significant effects on fatigue for both two-shift and three-shift workers. A significant negative relationship between positive team climate and fatigue was moderated by shift type. At both Time 1 and Time 2, work life conflict was the strongest predictor of concurrent fatigue, but over time it was not.

Towards networked governance : improving interagency communication and collaboration for disaster risk management and climate change adaptation in Australia

Major disasters, such as bushfires or floods, place significant stress on scarce public resources. Climate change is likely to exacerbate this stress. An integrated approach to disaster risk management (DRM) and climate change adaptation (CCA) could reduce the stress by encouraging the more efficient use of pooled resources and expertise. A comparative analysis of three extreme climate-related events that occurred in Australia between 2009 and 2011 indicated that a strategy to improve interagency communication and collaboration would be a key factor in this type of policy/planning integration. These findings are in accord with the concepts of Joined-up Government and Network Governance. Five key reforms are proposed: developing a shared policy vision; adopting multi-level planning; integrating legislation; networking organisations; and establishing cooperative funding. These reforms are examined with reference to the related research literature in order to identify potential problems associated with their implementation. The findings are relevant for public policy generally but are particularly useful for CCA and DRM.

Managing impressions during institutional change – The role of organisational accounts in legitimation

Public relations literature has only recently drawn on institutional theory to provide insights into legitimacy that go beyond strategic organisational level processes. Many of the existing crisis management studies are approached from a strategic perspective, which have limitations in terms of how organizations manage their legitimacy in relation to broader and often changing social agendas. This study focuses on how impression management is used to deal with legitimacy gaps between organizations and public expectations that draw on an institutional theory perspective. This qualitative study examines the use of organizational accounts through a lens that marries institutional theory and impression management in order to understand how organizations manage their legitimacy. This study of accounts around legitimacy concerns of corporate social responsibility matters shows that organizations relied on their own tangible technical attributes rather than shared norms of what is considered responsible when there are no hard or institutionalised laws and regulations in place around corporate social responsibility concerns. This study offers insights into public relations concerns around impression management during institutional change and in doing so extends existing public relations approaches to crisis management.

Making climate change manageable : how accounting constructs new power-knowledge regimes

This paper examines the modern power of accounting to permeate new spheres and create new objects by examining how climate change becomes a new category for accounting’s attention. It outlines the socio-political problem space where accounting and climate change connect by tracing the emergence of the UK’s Climate Change Act (2008) to a specifically modern calculating attitude described here as ‘managing by the numbers’. It suggests the intersection of accounting and climate change was made possible by accounting’s role in tying disciplinary subjectivities and objectivities together whilst operating simultaneously at the level of individuals, organisations and government. Such that when faced with new unknowns we revert to previous ways of managing we have come to know and experienced throughout our formative years in schools, hospitals, firms and government departments. In this way, accounting’s emergence in the domain of managing climate change implies a transformation that cannot be explained merely as a practical response to a global warming problem, but rather as an example of a new power-knowledge regime that makes possible the management and control of a new organisational phenomenon called climate change.

Managing climate change ‘by the numbers’ in a UK energy company

This paper examines how ideas and practices of accounting come together in turning the abstract concept of climate change into a new non-financial performance measure in a large energy company in the UK. It develops the notion of ‘governmental management’ to explain how the firm’s carbon dioxide emissions were transformed into a new organisational object that could be made quantifiable, measureable and ultimately manageable because of the modern power of accounting in tying disciplinary subjectivities and objectivities together whilst operating simultaneously at the level of individual and the organisation. Examining these interrelations highlights the constitutive nature of accounting in creating not just new categories for accounting’s attention, but in turn new organisational knowledge and knowledge experts in the making up accounting for climate change. Significantly, it appears these new knowledge experts are no longer accountants: which may help explain accounting’s evolution into evermore spheres of influence as we increasingly choose to manage our world ‘by the numbers’.

The innovation imperative: The relationships between team climate, innovation, and performance in research and development teams

A team’s climate for innovation has been shown to be important for innovation in management and work teams. This article investigates the relationship of team climate with project team innovation and performance in research and development organizations. It is argued that the relationship between team climate and innovation will be stronger for research teams than development teams as research teams have greater scope for creating novel and innovative ideas. A sample of 193 scientists and technologists in 20 research teams and 18 development teams were measured on their team’s climate for innovation, team performance, and six indicators of innovation. Research and development teams showed similar ratings for team climate and for measures of innovation. However, the relationships between team climate and individual and team innovation were stronger for research teams than development teams. These findings are significant for fostering innovativeness and innovation in knowledge work teams.

The influence of organizational culture and climate on entrepreneurial intentions among research scientists

Over the past decades, universities have increasingly become involved in entrepreneurial activities. Despite efforts to embrace their ‘third mission’, universities still demonstrate great heterogeneity in terms of their involvement in academic entrepreneurship. This papers adopts an institutional perspective to understand how organizational characteristics affect research scientists’ entrepreneurial intentions. Specifically, we study the impact of university culture and climate on entrepreneurial intentions, including intentions to spin off a company, to engage in patenting or licensing and to interact with industry through contract research or consulting. Using a sample of 437 research scientists from Swedish and German universities, our results reveal that the extent to which universities articulate entrepreneurship as a fundamental element of their mission fosters research scientists’ intentions to engage in spin-off creation and intellectual property rights, but not industry-science interaction. Furthermore, the presence of university role models positively affects research scientists’ propensity to engage in entrepreneurial activities, both directly and indirectly through entrepreneurial self-efficacy. Finally, research scientists working at universities which explicitly reward people for ‘third mission’ related output show higher levels of spin-off and patenting or licensing intentions. This study has implications for both academics and practitioners, including university managers and policy makers.

A capability-based view of organisational renewal : Combining opportunity- and advantage-seeking growth in large, established European and North American wood-industry companies

The purpose of this study was to extend understanding of how large firms pursuing sustained and profitable growth manage organisational renewal. A multiple-case study was conducted in 27 North American and European wood-industry companies, of which 11 were chosen for closer study. The study combined the organisational-capabilities approach to strategic management with corporate-entrepreneurship thinking. It charted the further development of an identification and classification system for capabilities comprising three dimensions: (i) the dynamism between firm-specific and industry-significant capabilities, (ii) hierarchies of capabilities and capability portfolios, and (iii) their internal structure. Capability building was analysed in the context of the organisational design, the technological systems and the type of resource-bundling process (creating new vs. entrenching existing capabilities). The thesis describes the current capability portfolios and the organisational changes in the case companies. It also clarifies the mechanisms through which companies can influence the balance between knowledge search and the efficiency of knowledge transfer and integration in their daily business activities, and consequently the diversity of their capability portfolio and the breadth and novelty of their product/service range. The largest wood-industry companies of today must develop a seemingly dual strategic focus: they have to combine leading-edge, innovative solutions with cost-efficient, large-scale production. The use of modern technology in production was no longer a primary source of competitiveness in the case companies, but rather belonged to the portfolio of basic capabilities. Knowledge and information management had become an industry imperative, on a par with cost effectiveness. Yet, during the period of this research, the case companies were better in supporting growth in volume of the existing activity than growth through new economic activities. Customer-driven, incremental innovation was preferred over firm-driven innovation through experimentation. The three main constraints on organisational renewal were the lack of slack resources, the aim for lean, centralised designs, and the inward-bound communication climate.

On the importance of pro-environmental organizational climate for employee green behavior

In their call to action, Ones and Dilchert(2012) discuss several possible individual and some contextual determinants of employee green behavior that await examination by industrial and organizational I–O) psychologists. Although these authors briefly mentioned organizational climate, specifically ethical climate, as a potentially relevant predictor of green behaviors, they mostly emphasized the role of individual difference characteristics and traditional job performance determinants such as knowledge, skills, abilities, and other person factors (KSAOs).

Pro-Environmental Organizational Culture and Climate

This chapter reviews the concepts of organizational culture and climate and applies them to environmental sustainability. Though culture and climate are often used interchangeably, the chapter identifies key distinctions between them and highlights how they can complement one another. The two concepts are used to discuss how the organizational context for environmental sustainability, and employee perceptions thereof, influence individual pro-environmental behavior. Organizational climate is integrated with a dynamic model of organizational culture to describe how pro-environmental cultures and climates emerge. The chapter also highlights how organizations with different motivations can create pro-environmental cultures and climates. The chapter uses the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company as an archetype of an organization with a pro-environmental culture and climate. In the course of the discussion, the chapter nominates several imperatives for research and recommendations for practice.

Empowerment climate, supervisory support for creativity and work role performance in new product development settings: A team level investigation

This thesis is an examination of how organisational context variables affect the performance of new product development (NPD) teams. Specifically, the extent to how team empowerment climate and supervisory support for creativity impact NPD team performance. Moreover, this thesis is a step forward in the ongoing development of work role performance theory by examining Griffin et al.'s (2007) work role performance model in the context of NPD teams. This thesis addresses the lack of research exploring work role performance dimensions in NPD teams and the extent to which a team empowerment climate and supervisory support for creativity impact NPDs performance.

Bullying and organisational politics in competitive and rapidly changing work environments

This paper argues that workplace bullying can in some cases be a form of organisational politics, that is, a deliberate, competitive strategy from the perspective of the individual perpetrator. A cross-sectional study conducted among business professionals revealed that there was a correlation between a politicised and competitive climate and bullying. This finding implies that globalisation, increased pressures for efficiency, and restructuring, which limits the number of management positions and thereby contributes to increased internal competition, may lead to more bullying. The findings have important implications for management, since the possible political aspects of bullying must be taken into account in order to be able to undertake successful prevention and intervention measures.

Graduate education for leadership and organisational change in sustainable development

This paper reflects on the motivation, method and effectiveness of teaching leadership and organisational change to graduate engineers. Delivering progress towards sustainable development requires engineers who are aware of pressing global issues (such as resource depletion, climate change, social inequity and an interdependent economy) since it is they who deliver the goods and services that underpin society within these constraints. They also must understand how to implement change in the organisations within which they will work. In recognition of this fact the Cambridge University MPhil in Engineering for Sustainable Development has focussed on educating engineers to become effective change agents in their professional field with the confidence to challenge orthodoxy in adopting traditional engineering solutions. This paper reflects on ten years of delivering a special module to review how teaching change management and leadership aspects of the programme have evolved and progressed over that time. As the students who embark on this professional practice have often extensive experience as practising engineers and scientists, many have already learned the limitations of their technical background when solving complex problems. Students often join the course recognising their need to broaden their knowledge of relevant cross-disciplinary skills. The programme offers an opportunity for these early to mid-career engineers to explore an ethical and value-based approach to bringing about effective change in their particular sectors and organisations. This is achieved through action learning assignments in combination with reflections on the theory of change to enable students to equip themselves with tools that help them to be effective in making their professional and personal life choices. This paper draws on feedback gathered from students during their participation on the programme and augments this with alumni reflections gathered some years after their graduation. These professionals are able to look back on their experience of the taught components and reflect on how they have been able to apply this key learning in their subsequent careers. Copyright © 2012 September.

Resilience and Burnout in Child protection social work: Individual and organisational themes from a systematic literature review

Child protection social work is acknowledged as a very stressful occupation, with high turnover and poor retention of staff being a major concern. This paper highlights themes that emerged from findings of sixty-five articles that were included as part of a systematic literature review. The review focused on the evaluation of research findings, which considered individual and organisational factors associated with resilience or burnout in child protection social work staff. The results identified a range of individual and organisational themes for staff in child protection social work. Nine themes were identified in total. These are categorised under ‘Individual’ and ‘Organisational’ themes. Themes categorised as individual included personal history of maltreatment, training and preparation for child welfare, coping, secondary traumatic stress, compassion fatigue and compassion satisfaction. Those classified as organisational included workload, social support and supervision, organisational culture and climate, organisational and professional commitment, and job satisfaction or dissatisfaction. The range of factors is discussed with recommendations and areas for future research are highlighted.