Research has shown that people make inferences about the personality traits organizations possess, and that these inferences affect their perceptions of organizational attraction. The nature of the relationship between personality trait inferences and organizational attraction is unclear, however, as the results of prior studies have been somewhat inconsistent, have had several distinct limitations, and have only been conducted using US samples. We present new evidence regarding the nature of this relationship, with data on a much larger number of firms, using a multi-cultural sample. Our exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses find a seven-factor structure of personality trait inferences that includes the five factors identified by previous researchers, suggesting that while the five factors have some generalizability outside the US, there may also be important differences. Our results also provide additional support that personality trait inferences are related to perceptions of organizational attraction.

This theoretical research endeavors to find common ground in the ostensibly inconsistent results of studies on the impact of cultural similarities and differences on strategic partnerships. Some findings suggested that partners have to possess similar cultural characteristics in order to achieve success while others showed that cultural distance had a positive effect on efficiency and the competitiveness of partnerships. This paper systematically analyzes the equivocal evidence of influence of both commonalities and differences on partnerships' outcomes, highlighting conditions under which they can be either beneficial or dysfunctional. Several propositions are formulated in regard to the role of qualitative and quantitative differences in both organizational and national cultures. Further, the theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.

System dynamics models are typically used to simulate the behaviour of the problem system under discussion environment, to help understand and solve complex problems. Group model building is a social process for including client groups in the system dynamics modelling process. Recent evidence suggests group model building is useful in supporting durable group decisions by supporting the mental models of participants to become more aligned. There have been several mechanisms proposed to explain these effects. This paper creates a combined model that links the five best-supported mechanisms. The combined model suggests five core conditions of group model building that contributes to its success: completing a structured task, producing a tangible artefact, representing system complexity, the portrayal of causal links, and easy modification or transformation of the artefact by participants. Practitioners are encouraged to use group decision approaches that integrate these conditions.

Human resource (HR) flexibility emerges as the most critical source of flexibility for professional services firms (PSFs), given that the success of these companies depends on the knowledge, expertise and behaviors of their employees. Nonetheless, few empirical studies have analyzed the extent to which the characteristics of the workforce explain the results of this type of firm. This study attempts to advance in this line of research by analyzing the influence of HR resource flexibility dimensions (skill flexibility – SF and behavior flexibility – BF) on PSF performance. It also examines whether HR coordination flexibility (CF) strengthens the effect of SF and BF on performance. Matched data from 97 general managers and 291 professionals in a sample of Spanish PSFs is used to test the hypotheses through structural equation modeling methodology. The study demonstrates that employee BF has a significant effect on the development of new services in PSFs. The moderation model shows that HR CF increases the influence of BF on the development of new services. Contrary to what was expected, no significant relationship between SF and PSF performance was found.

The service sector in general has become far more important in recent decades. This development can also be seen with respect to services in the investment goods industry or in the so called provision of industrial services. This paper raises the issue that industrial services are the main growth driver of today's economies and have a major potential for companies to increase their revenues. After the introduction and a short definition of services and service systems the paper will clarify the importance of industrial services on a theoretical basis. The paper aims to enhance the service systems model to broaden the understanding of the development of service innovations in the investment goods industry. The service systems approach will be used to discuss the influences on the development of service innovations on a theoretical basis.

This paper examines the impact of personality trait of dispositional affect and contextual variables of multiple commitments on organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) in two occupational groups. Three dimensions of OCBs were considered: helping, civic virtue and sportsmanship behaviors. We used positive and negative affectivity scale to measure dispositional affect. For commitments, we examined affective and normative organizational and occupational commitments. The data were collected from 180 engineers and 180 teachers. The findings show that affect, multiple commitments and occupation all have significant impacts on different dimensions of OCBs. Dispositional affect had the most influence on all three dimensions of OCBs. In addition, helping behavior is affected by normative organizational commitment while civic virtue behavior is influenced by affective commitments (both organizational and occupational) and occupation. Sportsmanship behavior is explained by occupation and affective organizational commitment. Occupation has been shown to make a unique contribution to understanding OCBs. The present study showed that the teachers, for example, exhibited more civic virtue and sportsmanship behaviors than the engineers. Implications of the findings for future research and practice are discussed.

While research suggests that work centrality has a positive effect on work engagement and a negative influence on family satisfaction, these relations may differ as a function of one's work setting (onsite vs. remote working). In the present study, we examined the direct and indirect – through work-family conflict (WFC), family-work conflict (FWC), work-family enrichment (WFE), and family-work enrichment (FWE) – effects of work centrality on work engagement and family satisfaction. We also examined whether these effects of work centrality on work engagement and family satisfaction differed between onsite and remote employees. We used a cross-sectional survey design to test our hypotheses among a total of 432 employees, including 152 always working onsite and 280 working remotely. As expected, our results revealed that work centrality was positively related to work engagement and negatively to family satisfaction. Moreover, the indirect effects (IE) of work centrality on work engagement were significantly mediated by WFE, whereas the IE of work centrality on family satisfaction were significantly mediated by FWC, WFE, and FWE. Finally, the relations between work centrality and the outcomes (work engagement and family satisfaction) were stronger among onsite employees than among remote employees. These results revealed that remote working may act as a double-edged sword by buffering the negative effects of work centrality on family satisfaction but also limiting the positive effects of work centrality on work engagement. Organizations and managers should thus consider addressing employees' work centrality and work type in their efforts to promote employees' professional and personal well-being.

This paper expands the Theory of Planned Behavior to explore the role of leaders’ normative expectations in driving employees’ service performance. Two quantitative studies in the context of retailing indicate that leaders’ normative expectations for high-quality service are related to employee service performance, through employee self-expectations for quality service (Study 1; N=75), and service role identity (Study 2; N=226). Both studies apply Kelman’s Theory of Social Influence by exploring how leaders influence employees’ expectations and corresponding behaviors, through the three processes of social influence: compliance, identification, and internalization. Leaders’ normative expectations for high-quality service enhances employee service performance not only by adjusting self-expectations to comply with an authority figure’s expectations or by identification with the leader as a role model, but rather as a deep-rooted process where the leader’s normative expectations are internalized into employee’s role identity. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

How can an entrepreneurial education program simultaneously create entrepreneurial knowledge, skills and competencies, as well as new ventures and jobs? This is a particular challenge for universities that are keen to align with government policies and demonstrate impact. Our paper examines a novel approach to enterprise and entrepreneurship education that integrates training/learning with new venture creation by operating as an entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE). We outline a comprehensive EE framework and apply this model using an exploratory case study of an EE centred around an innovative academic unit called The Entrepreneurial Garden (TEG) at Burgundy School of Business in Dijon, France. TEG offers entrepreneurial education, research and new venture development as an integrated portfolio. This analysis shows how an academic unit can be developed as an EE building from local resources and expertise, aligning with macroeconomic policies and priorities, and leveraging partnerships to provide access to other entrepreneurial players, resources and networks.

The service encounter is the point where employees and customers interact both positively and negatively. When things go wrong (service failure), initially it is the employee who is required to remedy the situation (recover the service). While positive service recovery outcomes are well investigated, there is little research that investigates whether specific service recovery strategies can be used to reduce customer anger and retaliation. Further, there is little research regarding whether an organisation's acceptance of blame has an effect on customer anger and retaliation. These gaps are addressed using a quasi-experimental study of 120 respondents that examines customers' emotional and behavioural responses to specific service recovery strategies following a service failure. The results show that high-level service recovery strategies directly reduce the occurrence of retaliation, as well as indirectly reduce retaliation through the mediating effects of customer anger. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.

The English National Health Service (NHS) is a public sector organisation with a longstanding objective to deliver high quality healthcare that is free at the point of use. In order to achieve this, the NHS has endured an evocative and controversial theme of reform across many decades. Despite such high levels of reform, the recent Operating Efficiency Framework declared that the NHS is about to enter its toughest ever financial climate. This paper will illustrate the complexities and tensions of implementing service improvement in the NHS in a climate of persistent policy reform, reduced budgets and tough regulation. The paper reports findings of three case studies of hospital trusts in the UK in relation to the implementation of Lean improvement methodologies, highlighting key complexities of a hospital context and the corresponding tension with service improvement activity.

Guanxi refers to the quality of social interaction outside of work, developing through social activities. This article explores the antecedent (core self-evaluation, CSE) and consequence (job satisfaction) of the supervisor–subordinate guanxi for identifying the beneficial effect of guanxi. I also consider the effects of (dis)similarity of CSE which refers to individuals’ appraisals of their own worthiness, effectiveness, and capability. The data include 89 supervisors and their corresponding 437 subordinates from financial banks in Taiwan. The results indicate that CSE of the supervisor and subordinate positively relates to their own perceptions of guanxi and job satisfaction. Guanxi acts mediation between CSE and job satisfaction for supervisors and subordinates. The similarity effect of CSE is mostly prevalent for guanxi and job satisfaction. The findings offer implications for selecting an appropriate employee who are comparatively fit with management.

This paper identifies how management’s intentional use of participatory management practices can heighten knowledge sharing across a multigenerational workforce through the presence of socio-technical flexibility. In this conceptualization, we identify the value of socio-technical flexibility to effective employee knowledge sharing in three steps. First, we define the prominent characteristics of the current multigenerational workforce. Second, we define the behavioral characteristics of socio-technical flexibility. Third, we describe how an intentional use of salient management practices, including reverse mentoring, flexible work roles, and self-managed teams optimizes multigenerational talents to enhance employee socio-technical flexibility, which in turn, leads to multigenerational knowledge sharing. We believe that by embracing the benefits of multigenerational workforce, management can take intentional steps to create a workplace that optimizes effective knowledge sharing behaviors for improved service through salient participatory management practices.

The historical evolution of corporate governance is considered, highlighting the different eras of governance, the dominant theoretical and practical paradigms, the reformulation of paradigms and counter paradigms. Two alternative and sharply contrasting theorizations, one collective and collaborative (the work of Berle and Means), the other individualistic and contractual (agency theory and shareholder value) are focused upon. The explanatory potential of Blair and Stout's team production theory is elaborated, and its conception of the complexity of business enterprise, with a mediating hierarch (the board of directors) securing a balance between the interests of different stakeholders. The potential for reform of corporate purpose, corporate governance and directors’ duties is examined with reference to the UK Modern Company Law Review. The impact of the intensification of the financialization of corporations is analysed, with the increased emphasis upon short-termism. The origins of the global financial crisis in shareholder value orientations and the continuing reverberations of the crisis are explored. Finally, the imperative of the advance of sustainable enterprise is argued, and the critical changes necessitated in corporate purpose and directors’ duties.

This research aims to analyse the links and potential limiting and supporting factors between sustainability actions and sustainability reporting. Comparing companies involved in sustainability actions and those whose reporting practices lack a formal reporting system, this analysis focuses on Italian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the meat and cured meat industry, identifying the perspective (formative) that links sustainability action to communication in these SMEs. The qualitative interpretative approach, based on semistructured interviews, highlights the relevant strengths and weaknesses concerning substantive sustainability actions and the effect of communication on them, providing implications for international and sectoral policies and management choices. Filling a gap in the SME literature concerning their approaches to sustainability reporting and action (and the relationship thereof), this study also introduces, as a widely used practice, ‘greenhushing’, i.e., the deliberate absence of or limited communication on effectively implemented sustainability practices or their salient results.

Play as practice literature has long been dominated by studies on the serious play. Focusing on a play that develops in artificial settings and requires managerial intervention, these studies overlook other playful manifestations, which are employee-driven and situated in the natural work habitat. This paper extends current play as practice reflections by adopting the notion of informal play as an alternative to prevailing views that espouses the employee rather than the managerial perspective. Drawing upon insights from play and practice literature, we incorporate five practice-based constructs into the systematic analysis of informal play in the world of work. We advance an integrative framework that highlights the constitutive relationships between the retained constructs and acknowledges different enactments of informal play for generating productive outcomes or cynically resisting authority. A multi-domain agenda for future inquiry that may contribute to a more nuanced understanding of informal play as practice in organizations concludes the paper.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether different supervisory styles are relevant in facilitating or inhibiting job crafting, and whether job crafting plays a significant role in promoting self-competence and work performance. Data were gathered from 162 employees in a large manufacturing company. We found a positive relationship between promotive control and job crafting, and a negative relationship between restrictive control and job crafting. Some job crafting behaviors positively affect both self-competence and performance, while others have a negative effect. Our results suggest that organizations interested in promoting job crafting should encourage a promotive style of leadership.

Collective entrepreneurship (CE) is the ability of several individuals to jointly innovate and create within organisations. In this exploratory study, we investigate whether the relationship between some specific leadership styles and more effective CE is affected by moderator variables. The unit of analysis were staff members of a Portuguese group of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). A total of 204 questionnaires were returned, representing almost half the employee population we approached. For measurement, we employed 19 items to gather the six latent variables related to our model. For data analysis, we used partial least squares. We found that participative leadership style had the highest joint and indirect effect on more effective CE. Job satisfaction appears to be an important moderator for the occurrence of CE. The impact of employees’ organisational commitment and collaboration on CE is rather weak. Our study contributes to advancing knowledge in the fields of organisational psychology and entrepreneurship. We combine and extend previous research, which allows us to reconcile the sometimes contradictory findings so far concerning leadership and CE in the realm of small- and medium-sized enterprises.

Within the traditional business organizational climate in which an executive coach operates, the identity of ‘the coached’ (coachee) can be quite clearly differentiated from the business identity. This is not the case within the world of family business, where the incumbent family business leader, the successor, the business and the family culture, are interwoven. This unique feature of family business means that, for executive coaching to be effective within the family business environment, a radically different approach to that used in traditional business environments must be adopted – namely, the consideration of what generally are thought of as noneconomic variables. This article represents a first attempt to effectively address the key and unique variables executive coaches need to know to work within the family business environment.

This paper explains how organisational myths and stories are vehicles of communication management (Kaye 1993; 1994). Contemporary scholars (eg Brown 1992; Boje 1991b) have argued that stories and myths are not only important communicative tools for learning within organisations but also powerful media for bringing about changes in people and in the culture of their workplace. People-associated changes include ways in which professional relationships and interpersonal communication are affected. In turn, the effects of mythologising and storytelling on organisational behaviour and communication are likely to have further-reaching consequences in shaping the culture of human systems.

Myth-making in organisations involves the identification of heroic and legendary archetypes. Such archetypes often serve as exemplars or role models for people-in-systems. The telling of stories involving heroic role models can have a marked influence on the shaping of communication between managers and their staff. Often the exploits of heroes become embellished through repeated oral versions. Stories gradually acquire a mythical quality or status. Significantly, the incorporation of stories into an organisation's culture will depend a lot on the credibility of the storyteller. When managers are perceived to have high credibility, they have a powerful means of helping those they supervise to learn, to achieve professional goals, and thus to contribute to the strategic growth of their organisations.

In this paper, myth-making and storytelling are considered to be specialised facets of communicative competence and analysed in terms of the Adult Communication Management Model (Kaye 1993; 1994). Attention is given to the effect of myth-making and storytelling on the covert ‘shadow-side’ culture of human systems. It is argued that the understanding and management of shadow-side communication is an integral component of effective organisational behaviour and survival. It is also proposed that such understanding and the ability to manage shadow-side communication is closely related to managers' awareness of prevailing myths and stories within their organisations. Finally, it is argued that managers who are skilled storytellers have the opportunity to help their staff develop communication abilities in a workplace conducive to learning.