Corporate governance, stakeholding and the nature of employment relations within the firm

This paper investigates the effect of different forms of corporate governance on the structure and nature of stakeholder relationships within organizations and the consequent impact on employment relations within the firm. In this, HRM assumes a dual role in delivering improvements in production efficiency and in fostering employee commitment to the organization and its objectives. However, different forms of corporate governance prioritise stakeholder interests in ways that may bring these two objectives into conflict. To address these questions, we examine the interrelationship between corporate governance, HRM practices and HRM outcomes in a comparative analysis of companies operating under alternative forms of governance, including private sector, public sector and family-owned firms. The empirical analysis is based on the UK Work and Employment Relations Survey (WERS98)

Exploring the relationship between appraisals of stressful encounters and the associated emotions in a work setting

Exploring work stress using a transactional perspective requires researchers to consider not just the role of appraisal of a stressful encounter but also the relationship of this appraisal with emotions. This research sets out to explore the appraisal-emotion relationship in a work setting. Using data from 174 civic administrators from New Zealand, sequential tree analysis (which presents patterns in a system of hierarchical ordering) was used to create the pattern of appraisals of stress associated with each of three emotions: anger, anxiety and frustration. The results suggest that if we are to advance our understanding of the appraisal-emotion relationship then future research needs to explore what common characteristics bind together and help shape appraisal patterns, whether some appraisals are more complex than others, and whether some appraisals are more potent than others. The results also raise the question of how best such relationships should be investigated in order to understand the nature of a stressful encounter. In the future, work stress researchers may wish to consider the utility of more context-sensitive measures such as appraisals

Corporate governance, stake-holding and the nature of employment relations within the firm

This paper investigates the effect of different forms of corporate governance on the structure and nature of stakeholder relationships within organizations and the consequent impact on employment relations within the firm. In this, HRM assumes a dual role in delivering improvements in production efficiency and in fostering employee commitment to the organization and its objectives. However, different forms of corporate governance prioritise stakeholder interests in ways that may bring these two objectives into conflict. To address these questions, we examine the interrelationship between corporate governance, HRM practices and HRM outcomes in a comparative analysis of companies operating under alternative forms of governance, including private sector, public sector and family-owned firms. The empirical analysis is based on the UK Work and Employment Relations Survey (WERS98).corporate governance, human resource management, stakeholding, employment, relations and Work and Employment Relations Survey

Good governance in sport: a survey of UK national governing bodies of sport

This report presents the findings from a research project focusing on the governance of national governing bodies of sport (NGBs) in the UK. Governance has become an increasingly important issue that NGBs in the UK have had to address over the last decade due to examples of poor management, financial failure, and increased public funding for sport that have resulted in the need for more professional sports administrative structures. These issues have been addressed during the last decade by UK Sport and the Sports Councils as part of a Modernisation Programme aimed at improving NGB governance. The objective of this research project was to analyze standards of governance at UK NGBs and consider the extent to which some of the recommendations from the Modernisation Programme have been implemented. It is hoped that this will be the first of an annual research project focusing on these issues and that future reports will be able to track trends and changes in the way that NGBs are governed in the UK. The research took place between October 2009 and January 2010 and has been carried out by a team of three researchers from the Birkbeck Sport Business Centre, a research centre in the Department of Management at Birkbeck, University of London. The research team carried out an online survey in which all NGBs recognised by each of the four home country sports councils – Sport England, Sport Northern Ireland, sportscotland and the Sports Council for Wales – were invited to take part. The findings of the report are based on responses provided by 60 NGBs. The report presents detailed analysis of three key areas relating to NGB governance: the board and committee; human resource management; and stakeholder management and corporate responsibility

Predictors of Workplace Bullying and Cyber-Bullying in New Zealand

Background: The negative effects of in-person workplace bullying (WB) are well established. Less is known about cyber-bullying (CB), in which negative behaviours are mediated by technology. Drawing on the conservation of resources theory, the current research examined how individual and organisational factors were related to WB and CB at two time points three months apart. Methods: Data were collected by means of an online self-report survey. Eight hundred and twenty-six respondents (58% female, 42% male) provided data at both time points. Results: One hundred and twenty-three (15%) of participants had been bullied and 23 (2.8%) of participants had been cyber-bullied within the last six months. Women reported more WB, but not more CB, than men. Worse physical health, higher strain, more destructive leadership, more team conflict and less effective organisational strategies were associated with more WB. Managerial employees experienced more CB than non-managerial employees. Poor physical health, less organisational support and less effective organisational strategies were associated with more CB. Conclusion: Rates of CB were lower than those of WB, and very few participants reported experiencing CB without also experiencing WB. Both forms of bullying were associated with poorer work environments, indicating that, where bullying is occurring, the focus should be on organisational systems and processes

Principals, deputy principals and work stress : the role of coping and leisure : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Organisational Psychology at Massey University

It is now well established that stress in the workplace can adversely affect productivity, absenteeism, worker turnover and employee health and well-being. Nowhere in New Zealand does this appear to be more apparent than in the educational sector, a sector that has undergone enormous legislative and organisational change during the last eight years. Research has been carried out on teachers but little research has been concerned with principals and deputy principals, the implementors of this change. Even less research has explored how they cope with or manage the stress they experience in the face of increasing work demands. Studies have investigated a range of activities but have, within the context of work and stress, largely ignored the area of leisure and its role as a coping strategy. Within the context of transformation and change, the aims of the present study were to identify the sources of stress for principals and deputy principals, their coping behaviours, and the importance of leisure as a means of coping, and then to systematically examine the relationship between these variables. A questionnaire was developed and sent to 1042 principals and deputy principals of secondary schools throughout New Zealand. Because a number of reviews of work stress and coping have highlighted the issue of measurement as one of particular concern, the measures used in this study were rigorously evaluated before their relationships with different outcome variables were explored. The evaluations produced a robust, replicable and reliable two factor structure for both the coping and leisure measures using the FACTOREP procedure. These results also suggested that the constructs of coping and leisure are best measured in terms of problem and emotion focused coping and active and passive leisure. The implications of these findings for measurement practices were discussed. The results of the regression analyses that followed showed that emotion focused and problem focused coping, as well as having main effects, moderated the relationships between different stressors and stress outcomes. For emotion focused coping the relationship between different stressors and their outcomes became more pronounced for individuals making less use of emotion focused coping than for individuals making frequent use of emotion focused coping. For problem focused coping the effect was such that the relation between stressors and outcomes became generally more pronounced for individuals making frequent use of problem focused coping than for individuals making less use of problem focused coping. Passive recuperative leisure needs were associated directly with stress reactions, such that the more serious the distress the greater the perceived importance of passive leisure. However the importance of passive recuperative leisure was not found to moderate the relationship between stressors and stress reactions. Active challenging leisure needs had no effect on stress reactions cither independently or interactively with work stressors. The implications of these findings were discussed and some directions for future research were indicated

Organising and human resource management

Book synopsis: Managing Football is the first book to directly respond to the rapid managerial, commercial and global development of the sport and offers a thorough analysis of how the football industry can meet the challenges that flow from these developments. Expertly edited by two well known specialists in football business management, it draws together the work of a world-class contributor team to form a comprehensive analysis of the most important issues facing the managers of football businesses across the world. The cutting edge analysis examines all the important business challenges in the football industry and the management of football businesses and covers all of the key football markets including England, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Australia, North America, China, South Africa, South Korea, the Netherlands & Belgium, and Mexico. Managing Football is simply a must-read for anyone studying or working in football business management and is set to be an important landmark in this rapidly moving and globally expansive field

The sport business industry

Book synopsis: Contemporary sport is both a sophisticated and complex international business and a mass participatory practice run largely by volunteers and community organizations. This authoritative and comprehensive introduction to the theory and practice of sports management helps to explain the modern commercial environment that shapes sport at all levels and gives clear and sensible guidance on best practice in sports management, from elite sport to the local level. The book is divided into three sections. The first examines the global context for contemporary sports management. The second explores the key functional areas of management, from organization and strategy to finance and marketing, and explains how successful managerial techniques can be applied in a sporting context. The final section surveys a wide range of important issues in contemporary sports management, from corporate social responsibility to the use of information and communication technologies. Together, these sections provide a complete package of theory, applied practical skills and a state-of-the-art review of modern sport business. With useful features included throughout, such as chapter summaries and definitions of key terms, and with each chapter supported with real-world data and examples, this book is essential reading for all students of sport management and sport business

Testing the differential effects of changes in psychological contract breach and fulfillment

Rousseau (1989 and elsewhere) argued that a defining feature of psychological contract breach was that once a promise had been broken it could not easily be repaired and therefore that the effects of psychological contract breach outweighed those of psychological contract fulfillment. Using two independent longitudinal surveys, this paper investigated whether changes in breach and fulfillment differentially affected work-related attitudes and affective well-being outcomes. Results generally supported differential effects, where increases in reported breach had greater effects on outcomes than increases in fulfillment, for the outcomes of affective wellbeing, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. The present study underlined the importance of breach as a determinant of negative affect and attitudes. However, fulfillment had a lesser impact, in that it maintained (i.e., had no effect) or had only a modest positive effect on wellbeing and attitudes