ANTECEDENTS OF PERCEIVED ORGANIZATIONAL SUPPORT

The main aim of this study is to identify the relationship between three variables (i.e. trust, access to information and access to opportunity to learn and develop) and perceived organizational support. This study also aims to identify the most effective predictor of perceived organizational support. The respondents comprise 312 lecturers from 25 private institutions of higher education in three Malaysian states (Kedah, Penang and Kelantan). Correlation analyses show high positive relationship between antecedents (trust; access to information; and access to opportunity to learn and develop) and perceived organizational support. Regression analysis indicates that all three antecedents under study are significant predictors of perceived organizational support. Trust is identified as the most effective predictor of perceived organizational support. In addition to managerial implications and limitations of the study, direction for future research are also suggested at the end of this study

Integration in New Product Development: Case Study in a Large Brazilian

Proficiency in management activities undertaken in product development processes is regarded as a key competitive advantage for companies, particularly for high-tech industrial firms, which benefit from the important competitiveness factor of launching products with a differentiated technological content. This paper’s objective was to identify, through case study, practices for integration between the roles of R & D with others involved in product development in a large Brazilian company of industrial automation. The results suggest some management practices to improve the integration in new products development, such as the use of employees from marketing with knowledge and experience previously gained from R & D activities and uses the heavyweight product manager to solve synchronization problems between product and technology development

Assessment of project portfolio management on public research institutions: a case applied to agricultural research in Brazil.

Portfolio management can be a major tool for selecting projects where scarce public resources will be invested with the best returns for society. This study aimed to propose a model for diagnostic of project portfolio management (PPM) on public research institutions and to apply it over a case study. The methodology used was literature review and a single case study applied to Embrapa Beef Cattle, a Research Center of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (EMBRAPA). Conclusion is that the model can be used for the diagnostic of PPM on public research institutions. The importance given to strategic orientation by the studied research center became evident throughout the work. This need to integrate project portfolio with institutional strategy influences the three dimensions of the model. From the results obtained it becomes evident that putting into practice an effective strategic planning for public research institutions is paramount for project portfolio success. The tool can be enhanced through incorporation of new criteria and dimensions, serving as a starting point for further work focused on public management

Uncertainty Measures in Ordered Information System Based on Approximation Operators

This paper focuses on constructing uncertainty measures by the pure rough set approach in ordered information system. Four types of definitions of lower and upper approximations and corresponding uncertainty measurement concepts including accuracy, roughness, approximation quality, approximation accuracy, dependency degree, and importance degree are investigated. Theoretical analysis indicates that all the four types can be used to evaluate the uncertainty in ordered information system, especially that we find that the essence of the first type and the third type is the same. To interpret and help understand the approach, experiments about real-life data sets have been conducted to test the four types of uncertainty measures. From the results obtained, it can be shown that these uncertainty measures can surely measure the uncertainty in ordered information system

Managerial practices for enhancing workplace learning and developing core competences. Case ABB Oy, Medium Voltage Products.

The purpose of the study is to define practices for managers for enhancing workplace learning and developing core competences at five specified departments at ABB Oy, Medium Voltage Products business unit in Finland. Objectives of the study include finding out how the managers perceive their role in competence development, and how the find the current status of core competence development in the case study organization. A more thorough view on the current state of core competence development was formed by also including the personnel’s opinions on it. The theoretical framework in this study starts with individual learning as it is central to learning and development. As core competences are defined as organization-specific assets collective learning is also discussed in the theory part of the study. Finally, theory on competence development and different development methods is presented as to give an idea of the vast area of different formal and informal development methods. The study was a qualitative case study that also used quantitative methods in analyzing data. Theme interviews and a half-structured online questionnaire were used to collect the empirical data. Research findings show that managers perceive their role in core competence development crucial. They seem to require clear directions from top management and set of methods in order to be able to efficiently develop their employees. Lack of time and the project-nature of the work were identified as the biggest challenges for development activities. The most useful methods specified in the empirical findings were on-the-job learning, going over job-related problems in team meetings, reading, and training programs. According to the empirical findings the current state of core competence development in the case study organization can be said to have the foundations right and that they should focus on making the development efforts more systematic with proper planning and follow-up. Questionnaire answers especially showed the need for more focus on the managers’ side to the learning and development practices.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format

Exploring internal corporate venture teams

Everyone is striving for innovation. Even corporations with dominant market positions recognize that innovation is a key ingredient for their long-term survival in today’s dynamic business landscape in which they navigate. Traditionally, corporations engaged in external corporate venturing, where they invested or bought new venture firms to gain access to innovation (cf. Keil, 2004). This approach, however, has also shown its drawbacks as the corporate parent often did not fully possess the innovation or the developed products did not fully fit with the corporate parent’s expectations. To overcome these challenges, corporations increasingly invest in internal corporate venturing (Burgelman, 1983) as they become aware of the innovation potential residing within themselves. For this purpose, corporations increasingly set up teams within their own organizational boundaries pursuing the goal of exploring new business opportunities. In my dissertation, I refer to the terminology Internal Corporate Venture Teams (ICVT) to describe this team phenomenon. ICVTs are used as strategic means to pursue the creation of new business opportunities for the corporate parent that the existing operating business units are unable to capture (Burgelman, 1983). The reasons why corporations rely on ICVTs are numerous: ICVTs as an organizational unit offer the flexibility of much smaller firms to keep up with the innovation pace of new venture firms (Crockett, McGee, & Payne, 2013; Hill & Hlavacek, 1972); ICVTs allow a corporation to innovate in a safe environment without putting its traditional businesses at risk if the venture fails; and the ICVT’s independence from the normal decision-making criteria of the firm (Crockett et al., 2013) ensures that novel product ideas with no immediate commercial value will not be dismissed right up front but translated into new product innovations (Hill & Hlavacek, 1972) which might become a new core competences of the corporation. Whereas the team literature about top management teams (TMT) (Hambrick & Mason, 1984) or new venture teams (NVT) (Klotz, Hmieleski, Bradley, & Busenitz, 2014) is well defined, a lack of conceptual clarification exists about what an ICVT is. Consequently, we have little knowledge about what has already been studied about this team phenomenon. With my dissertation, I aim to fill this research gap. The overall research goal is to clarify the conceptual boundaries of what constitutes an ICVT and which facets of an ICVT drive the team to success. For this purpose, I conducted a systematic literature review to depict the current state-of-the-art of ICVT research (Study 1) and then performed a meta-analysis to identify the facets of an ICVT that can be considered success factors (Study 2). With the realization of both reviews (Study 1 & 2), I gained extensive experience and knowledge about the task of coding, which is a key activity when conducting reviews. To share insights about what needs to be considered when planning and performing the coding process, I developed together with my research colleagues a coding guideline (Study 3). This coding guideline serves scientists in conducting meta-analyses of a higher quality standard and higher levels of contribution to their research field. Based on the three research projects described above I wanted to achieve the following: (1) address the existing lack of terminological coherence in current literature by integrating the identified conceptual boundaries of ICVTs into a multi-faceted definition, thus promoting a unified use of the term ICVT to allow scholars build upon their knowledge and create a more coherent stream of literature, (2) provide a holistic picture about the key facets that have already been investigated when studying ICVTs and identify blank spots where future research is needed for the continuing development of our understanding about how ICVTs function, (3) raise scholars’ awareness for the importance of using fine-grained performance outcomes instead of aggregated outcomes when studying teams because specific performance outcomes (e.g. team efficiency, team innovativeness, new product financial success) in a meta-analysis can explain the existing controversy in a research field, (4) relatedly to this fine-grained approach, I aimed at providing a more nuanced perspective on how different performance outcomes have different sets of success factors, such insights allow meta-analysts to give more precise managerial recommendations, (5) with my reviews, I also respond to prior researchers’ calls for the need to clarify the black box of performance of highly innovative teams by revealing key performance metrics on the team- and product-level of analysis, (6) building on my experience of conducting reviews, I also wanted to raise scholars’ awareness about the crucial role that the task of coding plays in a meta-analysis since depending on how authors proceeded with their coding can cause variance in meta-analytic results, (7) finally, as misguided coding decisions can distort conclusions upon which an entire research community builds, together with my research colleagues I extend prior cardinal methodological resources by offering a four-step coding guideline that enables meta-analysts to collect their data in a coherent, efficient, valid, credible, and for future research connectable way

The effects of diversity on creativity: A literature review and synthesis

In today's complex business world, the diversities within organizations, within teams, and of individual employees have emerged as a source of competitive advantage that can enhance creativity at multiple levels of analysis. However, the relationship between diversity and creativity at and across the individual, team, and organizational levels remains a topic of debate, despite ongoing scholarly interest. In this article, we address this debate by conducting a comprehensive multilevel review of 119 empirical studies that explores the effects of diversity on creativity. To structure this body of literature, we review studies based on their levels of analysis as well as the degrees of job-relatedness and the observability of diversity attributes they investigate. This approach helps to enable the discussion of the differential effects that numerous diversity attributes can have on creativity at the individual, team, and organizational levels, thus uncovering promising avenues for future research. Our multilevel perspective particularly points toward the heightened need for more cross-level and dynamic research designs and for extending conceptual ideas well known at one level of analysis to phenomena less understood at other levels of analysis. These approaches should improve the understanding of the complex, and therefore still puzzling, role of diversity for creativity

Cross-functional teams in Digital transformation projects What are the benefits and challenges of using cross-functional project teams in digital transformation projects?

Master thesis in Business Administration (BE501