A liderança e suas relações com o comprometimento organizacional

This study presents the results of field research of an exploratory descriptive character that seeks to identify the latent dimensions of leadership and organizational commitment as well as to discover the relationship between these two sets of indicators. In the study, 236 respondents were interviewed, 84 being managers or owners and 152 being sales personnel. The research was undertaken in five shopping centers in the municipality of Natal, capital of Rio Grande do Norte, and employed two different questionnaires. One of them was developed by Bass and Avolio, 1992 (in NORTHOUSE, 2004), contained 21 indicators of leadership and was completed by store managers. The other instrument, completed by sales personnel in the stores, was developed by Medeiros, Albuquerque, Marques and Siqueira (2003) and contained a total of 28 indicators of organizational commitment. For the analysis of the data, factor analysis techniques and structural equations modeling were used. Using the factor analysis, five dimensions of leadership and seven dimensions of organizational commitment were found, all of which have a theoretical basis for their explanation. Through the structural equations modeling, a relationship was established between leadership and organizational commitment, in which it was possible to observe that certain leadership styles influence in a positive form the commitment of the employee

CSR Communication - An Employee Perspective : Tailoring Internal Communication using Employee Preferences for Content, Style and Channel.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) represents a theory and practice that is well-known and communicating its content has shown to play an important role in order to exploit its advantages and engage stakeholders on CSR issues. Even though, CSR communication has shown to be a real challenge, since corporations are encouraged to engage in CSR, but not to communicate too loud about this engagement. This study was inspired by Jenny Dawkins (2005) and her initial idea that tailoring CSR messages by exploring stakeholder preferences for content, style and channel, would solve the communication challenge. One stakeholder group that corporations are highly dependent on is employees and exploring their preferences for CSR communication became the purpose of this thesis: to understand employee preferences for style and channel within the content of CSR. This was of specific interest, since existing research on CSR communication has mainly been centered around financial and external issues on the expense of internal. In addition, the idea of a tailored approach has not gained any interest in research so far, and a possible explanation might be its diffuse meaning, a problem this thesis has addressed. In order to understand employee preferences for internal CSR communication, a qualitative case study research was conducted with in-depth interviews, observations and exercises at site. A total of 20 interviews were arranged in order to collect primary data during a one week prolong engagement at the case. The empirical findings from the respondents’ answers were then transcribed and analyzed using both inductive and theoretical thematic analysis. Based on the findings, the authors of this thesis contribute with two models that help practitioners to understand how to best communicate about various CSR content to employees. The first model developed suggests an implementation of the tailored approach for content, style and channel, and demonstrates a relationship between nature of content and constraint recognition. Also, the model explains how practitioners can provide CSR explanation in order to reduce skepticism and enable endorsement processes where employees communicate CSR to third parties. To show a more dependent relationship between how changes in nature of content and constraint recognition affect employee preferences, the authors created the "CSR Communication Grid". The authors made a theoretical contribution by clarifying and providing a framework for the tailoring approach as initially developed by Dawkins (2005). Additionally, the authors managed to draw a relation between Public Relations (PR) and CSR by referring models of PR to communication styles, which filled this gap in previous research.

O Contributo dos Sistemas de Informação para a Eficácia da Liderança e para a Mudança do Comportamento Organizacional

O presente trabalho debruça-se sobre os constructos da liderança e do comportamento de auto-eficácia da liderança nas organizações. Reflecte-se sobre a importância dos sistemas de informação no clima organizacional, com efeitos sobre a eficácia na liderança. Trata-se de uma perspetiva pertinente na conjuntura organizacional atual, dado que incide sobre valores patrimoniais intangíveis que, quando dinamizados, dão suporte à performance organizacional. A nossa preocupação central é a auto-eficácia. Através dela pretende-se melhorar a eficiência organizacional, porque minimiza prejuízos e desperdícios. Também se relaciona a eficácia com o desempenho da liderança organizacional e com o capital ‘confiança’. Dessa forma, os novos caminhos passam por auscultar a percepção dos colaboradores sobre a importância da cultura organizacional face ao desempenho e à eficácia de longo prazo na organização. Com a presente reflexão, evidencia-se que a espiritualidade no local de trabalho é um factor de apoio ao desenvolvimento holístico dos colaboradores. Fica sublinhado que é fundamental que os líderes tenham noção e consciência de “si” e dos seus papéis, e como estes se reflectem no seu comportamento quotidiano na organização. O estudo assenta num trabalho de campo, elaborado numa organização intensiva em informação e que presta serviços de consultoria e informática. Os resultados apurados tentam dizer que, globalmente, no estudo longitudinal das hetero-percepções dos gestores directos e indirectos, o gap cultural diminuiu em todas as dimensões relativas às competências dos papéis, sendo vital destacar o quadrante designado por Apoio. As hetero-percepções dos gestores directos demonstram que o menor gap cultural mantem-se no quadrante de Objectivos Racionais e Competir no modelo de CVF, caracterizado por uma cultura de mercado, e relacionado com a fase da Combinação no modelo de SECI (processos que fomentam os relacionamentos e intercâmbios informais – conversão do conhecimento explícito para o explícito). Enquanto que o maior gap cultural reside no quadrante Apoio e Colaborar no modelo CVF, relacionado com a fase da Socialização no modelo de SECI (processos que fomentam os relacionamentos e intercâmbios informais – conhecimento tácito para tácito). Como o gap cultural diminuiu em todas as dimensões, pode realçar uma melhoria das percepções do desempenho organizacional. Contudo, um resultado inesperado está associado ao quadrante Apoio com a cultura de clã, uma vez que são os gestores indirectos na empresa em estudo que fomentam esta cultura, e não os gestores directos, conforme seria desejável. Um resultado favorável para o estudo da auto-eficácia da liderança demonstra que as médias são mais elevadas para atributos de Gestão e Resolução de Problemas. Os resultados que não corresponderam às expectativas iniciais estão associados às médias baixas relativamente aos atributos Sociais/de Comunicação, o que pode ser uma debilidade porque seria desejável que a equipa de gestão tivesse maior sensibilidade perante os capitais sociais, emocionais e espirituais, os quais estão relacionados com estes atributos.

Benefit News: Employee Benefit News, Department of Administrative Services, October 2016

Benefit News, brought to you by the DAS Benefits Team, providing you with the most up-to-date information about the state of Iowa’s employee benefits.

Effects of subsidizing the first employee – Empirical evidence from Finland

Small businesses form a significant share of all businesses and employ a large share of all employees. Therefore, governments are often interested in subsidizing them and especially employment in smaller firms. Nonemployer firms have received special interest, especially in Finland, due to their large share of all businesses. It has been argued that the government should encourage them to hire by subsidizing employment. However, there is no evidence on the effectiveness of such policies. In general, there is surprisingly little evidence on how small firms react to employment subsidies or of employment subsidies targeted according to firm characteristics. The subject of this thesis is the effects of subsidizing the first employee. While theoretical background suggests the subsidy might have efficiency gains, because there might be market inefficiencies that lead to too little employment in small firms. The focus of this research, however, is on the empirical evidence. There was a regional subsidy for hiring the first employee in Finland between 2007 and 2011. Nonemployer firms in the subsidy area were eligible for a wage subsidy for two years when they hired the first employee. The design of the subsidy enables studying the effects in a natural experiment framework that are nowadays popular in public economics. It can be shown that the area without the subsidy provides a good counterfactual to the area where the subsidy was available. Therefore, the effects of the subsidy can be estimated with difference-in-differences method. This method compares the change in the subsidy area to the change in the area without the subsidy. The data used is firm level data spanning from 2000 to 2013. The data is provided by the Finnish Tax Administration including tax declarations by all Finland based companies. The effects for hiring decisions are estimated by examining the effects for alternative variables such as employment, wage expenditure and turnover. According to the results, the subsidy did not have statistically significant effect on any of the variables of interest. Therefore, it can be concluded that the subsidy did not increase hires in nonemployer firms. This implies that the labour demand elasticity of nonemployer firms is very small. The results are in line with previous literature on the effectiveness of general employment subsidies in Scandinavia that suggest that labour demand elasticity is rather small resulting in small or no effects of employment subsidies. However, my research provides new evidence on labour demand of nonemployer firms especially that has not been studied before. The results are in line with the observation that most nonemployer firms are self-employed persons who are not interested in growing their business to employ others as well, but only provide for themselves. Because of this employment subsidies to the self-employed are not particularly well targeted. The theoretical grounds for the subsidy actually hold for other small firms as well, so it can be argued the subsidy would be more effective if it was extended for hiring the first few employees.

Avaliação de desempenho e o compromisso face ao superior hierárquico

Mestrado em Contabilidade e Gestão das Instituições Financeiras

Impacto da comunicação empresarial na atração dos colaboradores : TalenterTM, um estudo de caso

Dissertação de Mestrado, Ciências Económicas e Empresariais, 12 de Julho de 2016, Universidade dos Açores.

Adipose-derived stem cell adhesion on laminin-coated microcarriers improves commitment toward the cardiomyogenic lineage

International audience

Occupational safety and health for the Federal employee

Cover title.

The use of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to address psychological distress experienced by caregivers: a randomised controlled feasibility trial

Background: An extensive research literature has documented the impact of caring for an individual with acquired brain injury (ABI) on caregivers and family members, including role adjustment, psychological distress, social isolation, family tension and coping with the cognitive and behavioural difficulties of the injured person. Given these findings it is important this population have access to services and supports. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is an intervention that helps individuals to accept difficult experiences and commit to behaviour that is consistent with their values. Research into the effectiveness of ACT to support caregivers is at a preliminary stage. Aim: To investigate the feasibility of using ACT to reduce psychological distress and increase psychological flexibility in ABI caregivers. A secondary aim was to gain an understanding of the experience of caregivers in this context and how this can inform the development and delivery of interventions for this population. Method: Phase one was a randomised controlled feasibility trial of an ACT intervention for use with ABI caregivers. The parameters of this study were formulated around the PICO (population, intervention, control, and outcome) framework. Eighteen carers were recruited and randomised to ACT or an enhanced treatment as usual (ETAU) group. ACT was implemented over 3 sessions; and ETAU was implemented over 2 sessions. The General Health Questionnaire, Valuing Questionnaire, Acceptance and Action Questionnaire, Experiential Avoidance of Caregiving Questionnaire and the Flexibility of Responses to Self-Critical Thoughts Scale were administered to both groups at baseline and following the final session. Phase two used a retrospective qualitative design that involved conducting semi-structured interviews with four participants from phase one. Results: ACT and control participants were successfully recruited. Positive feedback was obtained from ACT participants suggesting that the intervention was acceptable. There were no significant differences between the ACT and ETAU groups on outcome measures. However, there were challenges retaining participants and the overall attrition rate was high (44.44%). Therefore a number of participants did not complete the full complement of sessions, which may have impacted on this result. Qualitative results illustrated the challenges this population face including significant adjustments in their life, the emotional impact of having a loved one with a brain injury and trying to adapt to the changes in the injured person. In addition, findings elucidated the types of support that this population would find helpful and the barriers to accessing same. Conclusions: Findings from this study highlight factors that will help the development of this intervention further for a caring population. Recommendations for future implementation include completing some preparatory work with carers before beginning the intervention, consideration of a larger sample and wider recruitment strategy from local services, barriers to attending interventions and the possibility of holding groups in local venues.

The importance of organizational commitment to knowledge management

In recent years, Knowledge Management (KM) has assumed great importance in the literature on business and management. However, we still have so little understanding of the human issues in KM processes. Thus, this research aims to contribute to analysing the importance of Organizational Commitment (OC) to KM. First, we used the Cardoso (2003) Knowledge Management Questionnaire (QGC) that embraces all organizational activities around knowledge processes and distinguishes four dimensions of KM. Secondly we applied the Quijano, Masip, Navarro and Aubert (1997) questionnaire (ASH-ICI) that distinguishes two types of commitment (personal and instrumental) into four dimensions. These two questionnaires were applied with 300 employees in the Portuguese industrial ceramics sector. Through multiple regression analysis we found that levels of organizational commitment are statistically important to KM dimensions. Furthermore, our analysis indicates that personal commitment is more important than need commitment. These results are discussed and Organizational Behaviour specialists and Work and Organizational psychologists are challenged to assume more responsibility and an active role in KM studies and practices and to explore human issues in this field.

Employee workplace rights.

"OSHA 3021-08R."