The strategy process. A middle management perspective

Organizations must get middle managers on board in order to successfully put strategy into action. Middle managers are key strategic players in organizations due their close connection to daily operations and their reach to higher echelons. Unless these managers develop a shared understanding of and are committed to the organizational strategic goals, organizations are unlikely to realize their strategies. This dissertation focuses on the psychological foundations of middle managers’ contribution to the strategy process by investigating their strategic cognitions, leadership and fairness perceptions. In this dissertation, we develop a new method that provides a more comprehensive analysis of strategic consensus within and between organizational units (chapter 2), challenge the popular perception of managers’ transformational leadership as a solely positive phenomenon in strategy implementation (chapter 3), and examine the drivers of middle managers’ strategic alignment and commitment (chapter 4). Our results equip researchers with the necessary tools for integrative theory building in managerial and organizational cognition, reveal the dark-side of transformational leadership that is contingent upon the strategic alignment of the manager, and highlight the importance of middle managers’ fairness perceptions about strategy making. We also look into the repeated testing problem and recommend strategies and tools to cope with this problem (chapters 5 and 6). Consequently, this dissertation extends the reach of organizational psychology and organizational behaviour in strategy research by contributing to the strategy process, managerial cognition and behavioural strategy research streams

Antecedents and organizational performance implication of internal audit effectiveness: evidence from Ethiopia

The literature suggests that the dynamics prevailing in an internal audit (IA) milieu possibly influence internal audit effectiveness. Besides organizational attributes that appear to influence IA effectiveness, other factors grounded in country context could influence IA effectiveness in developing countries. A study of IA practice as embedded in its broader context and identification of factors that enhance or inhibit its effectiveness could enable understanding IA‘s potential to support organizational performance and thereby assist national economic development. A few prior studies attempted to examine contextual influences on IA practices. The association of IA effectiveness with company performance, however, appears unexplored as yet. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods, this study examines IA practices in selected Ethiopian Government ministries, State-owned enterprises, and private companies. It aims to identify country- and organization-level influences on IA effectiveness from an institutional theory perspective. It then explores the association between internal audit effectiveness and company performance using Marx‘s theory of the circuit of industrial capital. Results of canonical analysis suggest that IA effectiveness, as measured by IA proficiency, IA independence and objectivity, scope of IA work, quality of IA planning and execution, and quality of IA reporting and follow up, is significantly associated with a set of organization-level context factors. These factors are organizational category, organizational size, organizational policies authorizing IA, organizational risk exposure, auditee cooperation, and internal-external audit linkages. IA proficiency, scope of IA work and IA planning and execution appear to be higher in organizations where organizational policy authorizing IA is clearly defined and organizational risk exposure and internal-external audit linkages are stronger. Furthermore, Kruskal-Wallis tests show that IA proficiency and IA independence and objectivity are highest for State-owned enterprises followed by ministries and private companies. Spearman‘s correlation test results suggest that the association between IA effectiveness and company performance (as measured by return on assets) was not statistically significant. A hypothesized moderating effect of management attention to internal audit recommendations on this association was also not statistically significant. This lack of support for the hypothesis is possibly explained by the relatively small sample used (for this hypothesis). Another potential reason is that the relatively young age of internal audit in Ethiopia could not help capture the possible positive association. Furthermore, the use of a single proxy measure of company performance (i.e., ROA) may not be sufficient to capture the contributions of effective IA to several dimensions of company performance. Survey results were then enriched through interviews with selected internal audit directors and leaders of three professional associations in Ethiopia as well as reviews of documentary evidence. Overall, the results portray the State‘s contribution to the development of IA through coercive isomorphic pressures. These pressures are largely attributable to Government involvement in economic activity and its regulatory roles. Government‘s role in setting the overall scene of accountability mechanisms in government organizations appears to have contributed to IA adoption in Ethiopian organizations. The State also serves as a nexus for IA and international sources of normative pressure for IA development. Nevertheless, organization-level factors, i.e., top management support for IA, extent of risk exposure, company connection with the international business environment, IA’s information technology advancement, and IA leadership demeanor tend to be linked with IA effectiveness to a greater extent than the contributing factors for IA adoption. In conclusion, country- and organizational-level contextual dynamics appear to influence IA effectiveness. In this process, government coercive pressures foster IA adoption while largely normative and mimetic pressures advance IA effectiveness by building upon the coercive inputs. Government coercive pressures also tend to transform into a normative pressure over time. The study contributes to the IA literature and practice in several ways. First, it conceptualizes internal audit effectiveness as a multi-dimensional construct by measuring IA effectiveness in terms of its components rather than the hitherto dominant approach of using an aggregate measure or a proxy variable. Conceptualization of IA effectiveness as a multi-dimensional construct enabled employing analytical approach of canonical analysis. This approach helps examine the nature of the relationships between context factors and specific dimensions of IA effectiveness. Canonical analysis also helps consider the interrelationships among the different dimensions of IA effectiveness. Second, it is one of the few recent attempts to statistically test the relationships of IA effectiveness with its contextual influences. By formulating and testing such hypotheses, the study has attempted to identify major organization-level factors that tend to enhance or inhibit IA effectiveness. It also extends IA studies under institutional theory by considering a broader set of factors influencing IA practice and their possible interplay. Furthermore, it illustrates how the coercive, mimetic and normative isomorphic pressures interrelate and how this influences both IA adoption and IA effectiveness. This is considered an extension to existing literature because prior studies employed institutional theory largely to explain IA development at a national level by considering patterns of IA adoption by companies. Third, it contributes to the limited literature that employed Marx‘s theory of the circuit of industrial capital in accounting in general and IA research in particular. Specifically, the study extends IA theory by developing hypotheses on the relationship between IA effectiveness and organizational performance. Fourth, prior IA research has largely been on the empirical context of developed economies. Thus, some of the findings of this study could be considered additional insights to the literature emanating from the empirical setting of a developing country. Finally, the study is expected to inform government policy makers, boards of directors, managers, Global as well as national IIA institutes, transnational corporations engaged in business in developing countries, and international financial institutions that provide funds in different arrangements to developing countries including Ethiopia. It does this in two ways. Firstly, being a study on a developing economy setting, it helps enhance understanding of the global configuration of the internal audit profession. Thus, it enables figuring out the current state of internal audit in Ethiopia vis-à-vis the profession‘s global status. This could then be extrapolated into the role of internal audit in the control and governance mosaic of developing economies. Secondly, it highlights major factors that enhance or inhibit internal audit effectiveness. Thus it informs stakeholders on key priorities for the development of IA as a profession as well as its advancement as a key function in organizations

Factors that Affect Reattempting the Emergency Medical Technician Cognitive Certification Examination

Certification as an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) is often the entry point for firefighting careers and is a pre-requisite to enter Advanced EMT or paramedic programs. EMT candidates in most of the United States must pass the National Registry of EMTs cognitive examination (NREMT-C) to be eligible for state licensure. Many candidates who fail their first NREMT-C attempt never take even one of the five additional possible attempts within the specified two-year time frame. Using binary logistic regression with de-identified existing NREMT test data from 2007 though 2012, this research attempted to develop a model to show the relative contribution of previous NREMT-C score, demographic factors, pay status, employment status, and school accreditation to predict candidates’ likelihood of retesting. A literature review suggested that these factors influence candidates’ success on their first exam attempt, however no literature has examined if these factors predict a candidate’s decision to take at least one additional examination attempt. Results showed that the theta score from the prior attempt was a strong predictor of reattempting examinations two through six. Female gender was negatively associated with attempting examinations two through five. Younger candidates were more likely to attempt examinations two through four, whereas at attempt five the odds an older candidate would try again were slightly higher. Military candidates were much more likely to persist through examination attempt three, however this trend reversed at attempts four and five when they were less likely to reattempt. Having someone pay for the prior exam enhanced candidates’ odds of taking the second and third examination. All race and ethnic categories (except Hispanic) were weakly associated with the odds of taking a second examination but not in any subsequent attempts. Students who attended schools associated with accredited paramedic programs were slightly more likely to persist through exams two through four as were individuals having more education. While this analysis identifies some factors related to examination persistence, it produced weak models, suggesting that many more individual variables are associated with the decision to persist after failing the NREMT-C EMT examination than those examined

Eye quietness and quiet eye in expert and novice golf performance: an electrooculographic analysis

Quiet eye (QE) is the final ocular fixation on the target of an action (e.g., the ball in golf putting). Camerabased eye-tracking studies have consistently found longer QE durations in experts than novices; however, mechanisms underlying QE are not known. To offer a new perspective we examined the feasibility of measuring the QE using electrooculography (EOG) and developed an index to assess ocular activity across time: eye quietness (EQ). Ten expert and ten novice golfers putted 60 balls to a 2.4 m distant hole. Horizontal EOG (2ms resolution) was recorded from two electrodes placed on the outer sides of the eyes. QE duration was measured using a EOG voltage threshold and comprised the sum of the pre-movement and post-movement initiation components. EQ was computed as the standard deviation of the EOG in 0.5 s bins from –4 to +2 s, relative to backswing initiation: lower values indicate less movement of the eyes, hence greater quietness. Finally, we measured club-ball address and swing durations. T-tests showed that total QE did not differ between groups (p = .31); however, experts had marginally shorter pre-movement QE (p = .08) and longer post-movement QE (p < .001) than novices. A group × time ANOVA revealed that experts had less EQ before backswing initiation and greater EQ after backswing initiation (p = .002). QE durations were inversely correlated with EQ from –1.5 to 1 s (rs = –.48 - –.90, ps = .03 - .001). Experts had longer swing durations than novices (p = .01) and, importantly, swing durations correlated positively with post-movement QE (r = .52, p = .02) and negatively with EQ from 0.5 to 1s (r = –.63, p = .003). This study demonstrates the feasibility of measuring ocular activity using EOG and validates EQ as an index of ocular activity. Its findings challenge the dominant perspective on QE and provide new evidence that expert-novice differences in ocular activity may reflect differences in the kinematics of how experts and novices execute skills

Evaluation of patient transport service in hospitals using process mining methods: Patients\u27 perspective

Designing healthcare facilities and their processes is a complex task which influences the quality and efficiency of healthcare services. The ongoing demand for healthcare services and cost burdens necessitate the application of analytical methods to enhance the overall service efficiency in hospitals. However, the variability in healthcare processes makes it highly complicated to accomplish this aim. This study addresses the complexity in the patient transport service process at a German hospital, and proposes a method based on process mining to obtain a holistic approach to recognise bottlenecks and main reasons for delays and resulting high costs associated with idle resources. To this aim, the event log data from the patient transport software system is collected and processed to discover the sequences and the timeline of the activities for the different cases of the transport process. The comparison between the actual and planned processes from the data set of the year 2020 shows that, for example, around 36% of the cases were 10 or more minutes delayed. To find delay issues in the process flow and their root causes the data traces of certain routes are intensively assessed. Additionally, the compliance with the predefined Key Performance Indicators concerning travel time and delay thresholds for individual cases was investigated. The efficiency of assignment of the transport requests to the transportation staff are also evaluated which gives useful understanding regarding staffing potential improvements. The research shows that process mining is an efficient method to provide comprehensive knowledge through process models that serve as Interactive Process Indicators and to extract significant transport pathways. It also suggests a more efficient patient transport concept and provides the decision makers with useful managerial insights to come up with efficient patient-centred analysis of transportation services through data from supporting information systems

Towards a framework to enable construction small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to manage sustainability

The careful management of sustainability issues is increasingly being demanded by construction clients and others within the construction supply chain. Certification to sustainability standards is widely recognised as a means of demonstrating performance in this regard, and many pre-qualification questionnaires and tender processes now explicitly require their suppliers to provide evidence of sustainability standard certificates and policies. However, implementation of these standards is a costly and time consuming process, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Smaller firms often lack the fundamental know-how of how to address the requirements of standards and are required to engage the services of consultancies in order to implement them, which further increases the costs associated with their implementation. [Continues.

The EFQM excellence model, the knowledge management process and the corresponding results: an explanatory and predictive study

This study aims to analyse the relationships among the EFQM model, the knowledge management (KM) process and the corresponding results. It also seeks to analyse the predictive power of the phases of the KM process with regard to organisational results. The sample under study is composed of 113 Spanish organisations that feature some kind of Excellence Recognition System granted by the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM). This paper uses partial least squares (PLS) path modelling to test and validate the research model and the proposed hypotheses. In addition, thorough analyses are conducted to assess the model’s predictive performance. The results show that organisations that use the management framework proposed by the EFQM model implement the phases of the KM process efficiently. Moreover, the synergies resulting from the simultaneous implementation of the EFQM model and the KM process contribute to improving the corresponding results. Also, the predictive power of the phases of the KM process is confirmed in terms of their ability to anticipate the results that the organisation will be able to achieve with respect to customers, people, society and key business factors. Finally, this study provides empirical evidence of the direct and indirect relationships among the EFQM model, the KM process and the corresponding results. In addition, the paper identifies out-of-sample prediction as an integral element of the evaluation of the model using PLS-SEM and as a way to evaluate its practical relevance, since it allows us to predict results35 página