A Theoretical Model of Nomadic Culture: Assumptions, Values, Artifacts, and the Impact on Employee Job Satisfaction

The model of an anytime-anywhere workforce is changing the landscape of business today. Increasingly employees are being emancipated from their traditional offices by the widespread infiltration of technologies that facilitate this model. The question is, how can we characterize the culture developing in support of these new ways of working and how can they be cultivated? Understanding this “ nomadic culture ” is critical to both researchers and practitioners. Due to the newness of these technologies and the speed of their integration into today’s work practices, prior research lends little direction in understanding this developing culture. This research contributes by proposing and validating a multidimensional model of nomadic culture. The model describes nomadic culture in terms of three levels: underlying assumptions, espoused values, and artifacts. Each level is then described more specifically by eight measurable nomadic culture sub-constructs. Using the Structural Equation Modeling technique, proposed relationships among the sub-constructs are tested along with the effect of organizational support for nomadic behaviors on employee job satisfaction. Significant support for the model was found in data collected from 203 working IT professionals from a wide variety of organizations. Suggestions for future research as well as implications for practice are provided

Strategic Human Resources management is irrelevant when it comes to highly skilled professionals in the new economy

The goal of this paper is to explain the commitment behaviour of highly skilled professionals in Canadian business-to-business (B2B) technology services companies that do not have a formal and explicit managerial commitment strategy and to emphasize the need to take the organizational context into consideration when developing a theory that seeks to account for differences in employee’s organisational commitment. Our contribution is to reappraise the relevance of the traditional organizational commitment definition in this organizational context, a new organizational form. We demonstrate that in the companies which are different from the traditional bureaucratic organizational forms and which employ highly qualified professionals, the employment relationship is based on a psychological contract that is not accounted for in the strategic HRM theory. \ud Indeed, the basic principles of strategic HRM dictate that an organization’s most valuable asset is its employees; it is therefore incumbent on management to do whatever is necessary to retain its workforce, readily described as a key resource and to use human resources management (HRM) practices as tools to elicit commitment. In a study of highly skilled workers in Canadian business-to-business (B2B) technology services companies belonging to the so-called “new economy

Home (Office) is where your Heart is

Working conditions of knowledge workers have been subject to rapid change recently. Digital nomadism is no longer a phenomenon that relates only to entrepreneurs, freelancers, and gig workers. Corporate employees, too, have begun to uncouple their work from stationary (home) offices and 9-to-5 schedules. However, pursuing a permanent job in a corporate environment is still subject to fundamentally different values than postulated by the original notion of digital nomadism. Therefore, this paper explores the work identity of what is referred to as ‘corporate nomads’. By drawing on identity theory and the results of semi-structured interviews, the paper proposes a conceptualization of the corporate nomad archetype and presents nine salient identity issues of corporate nomads (e.g., holding multiple contradictory identities, the flexibility paradox, or collaboration constraints). By introducing the ‘corporate nomad’ archetype to the Information Systems literature, this article helps to rethink established conceptions of “home office” and socio-spatial configurations of knowledge work

The Correlation of Library Personnel Motivation Work Attitude and Work Motivation to Job Performance in Nigeria

The purpose of this study was to reconnoiter the effects of library personnel work attitude and motivation as correlates of job performance in a survey of public libraries in Kwara state, Nigeria. This study employed a descriptive survey method of correlational type. This study applied an enumeration survey technique or total census to all library personnel in a nominated public library in Kwara State of Nigeria. This study employs three objectives to guide the study. Findings showed that library personnel had a good attitude about their jobs, and library personnel work motivation showed that employees in the library are provided with good working materials, and their workplace's management provides library personnel with opportunities for training and development. Also, the study on the job performance of library personnel found that library personnel set reasonable priorities for task completion, and personnel is always on time for deadlines and completion of tasks. Conclusively, years of experience at a job correlate significantly with job performance, whereas work attitudes and motivation do not correlate significantly. Based on the results, this study suggests a good relationship between library management and personnel to ensure a positive working attitude. Also, the library personnel should be able to establish a good working relationship to reduce the possibility of turnover

The evolution of leader-follower reciprocity: The theory of service-for-prestige

Copyright © 2014 Price and Van Vugt. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.We describe the service-for-prestige theory of leadership, which proposes that voluntary leader–follower relations evolved in humans via a process of reciprocal exchange that generated adaptive benefits for both leaders and followers. We propose that although leader–follower relations first emerged in the human lineage to solve problems related to information sharing and social coordination, they ultimately evolved into exchange relationships whereby followers could compensate leaders for services which would otherwise have been prohibitively costly for leaders to provide. In this exchange, leaders incur costs to provide followers with public goods, and in return, followers incur costs to provide leaders with prestige (and associated fitness benefits). Because whole groups of followers tend to gain from leader-provided public goods, and because prestige is costly for followers to produce, the provisioning of prestige to leaders requires solutions to the “free rider” problem of disrespectful followers (who benefit from leader services without sharing the costs of producing prestige). Thus service-for-prestige makes the unique prediction that disrespectful followers of beneficial leaders will be targeted by other followers for punitive sentiment and/or social exclusion. Leader–follower relations should be more reciprocal and mutually beneficial when leaders and followers have more equal social bargaining power. However, as leaders gain more relative power, and their high status becomes less dependent on their willingness to pay the costs of benefitting followers, service-for-prestige predicts that leader–follower relations will become based more on leaders’ ability to dominate and exploit rather than benefit followers. We review evidential support for a set of predictions made by service-for-prestige, and discuss how service-for-prestige relates to social neuroscience research on leadership

Exploring Electronic Monitoring of Employees and Resistance: A Foucauldian Perspective

The call of paper of the track “Social Issues in Organizations” invites researchers to explore different aspects of social issues that are impacted by information technology affecting organizations. In this paper, we investigate how social issues - such as electronic monitoring of employees and resistance - are affected by the emergence of mobile technologies. It seems more and more important to explore this issue, at a time when mobility and flexible working practices are becoming increasingly widespread. In this paper we argue that a Foucauldian approach can enrich our understanding of social issues linked with mobile IS deployment, such as electronic monitoring of employees and resistance. To defend our idea, we present the results of four case studies (based on 85 semi-structured interviews and 10 days of observation)

Cross-cultural competency model for digital nomads: a study of digital nomads living in Czech Republic

The goal of this master thesis is to develop a competency model for Digital Nomads and evaluate its components in Czech culture. The research is based on primary and secondary data. Secondary data was collected from relevant literature. The primary data was collected via interview and questionnaire. The quantitative method was used to evaluate the components of the cross-cultural competency model by Johnson, Lenartowicz and Apud (2006). The qualitative research aims to compare the reality of the Digital Nomad experience with the current cross-cultural competency model and to further explore competencies. The research has 4 parts: data collection via interviews and a questionnaire with a sample group of 7 digital nomads from different countries, analysis of data collected during the interviews and questionnaire, evaluation of cross-cultural competencies, identification of crosscultural competencies and the development a of cross-cultural competence model. The dimensions, categories and particular elements of cross-cultural competency model are following: knowledge about informational technology, business and local infrastructure, culture, law and language, skills such as self-management or ability to socialize and aptitudes, personal traits and external factorsO objetivo desta tese de mestrado é desenvolver um modelo de competências para digital nomads e avaliar os seus componentes na cultura Checa. A pesquisa é baseada em informação primária e secundária. Informação secundária é recolhida da literatura. A informação primária é recolhida via entrevista e questionários. O método quantitativo tenta avaliar os componentes de competências multiculturais do modelo de Johnson, Lenartowicz e Apud (2006). A pesquisa quantitativa procura comparar a realidade com o modelo de competências multicultural e explorar competências. A pesquisa tem 4 partes: recolha de dados via entrevistas e questionários com um grupo amostral de 7 nomadas digitais de diferentes países, análise de dados recolhidos durante as entrevistas e questionários, avaliação multicultural das competências, identificação multicultural das competências e eventualmente o desenvolvimento multicultural do modelo das competências. As dimensões, categorias e elementos específicos de competências multiculturais são as seguintes: conhecimento sobre tecnologia informacional, negócios e infraestruturas locais, culturas, leis e linguagens,habilidades como auto-gerência ou habilidade de socializar e aptitudes, traços pessoais e factores externos

Should I stay or should I go? A study of IT professionals during a national crisis

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to discuss two important behaviors related to job mobility in the IT profession, namely, changing jobs to move to another organization (turnover) and changing the profession entirely (turnaway), during a national crisis. Based on the theoretical foundation of the push–pull–mooring perspective, a research model is developed that includes professional self-efficacy (PSE), job insecurity (JI) and job satisfaction (JS) as important antecedents. Design/methodology/approach: Using a positivist approach and a survey method, the authors analyzed data from IT professionals from different economic segments in Brazil. Data collection occurred in two distinctive moments of the largest crisis in modern Brazilian history – a pre-awareness moment (first half of year 2015) and a crisis-conscious moment (first half of year 2016). Findings: The findings reveal that PSE negatively influences JI and positively influences JS, JI positively influences turnaway intention, and JS negatively influences both turnover intention and turnaway intention. The effect of the national crisis was observed in that it further accentuated the intention of IT professionals to leave the profession. Another effect was related to age, as older professionals are less willing to turn over but more willing to turn away. Research limitations/implications: Besides developing a parsimonious model to study both the intention to leave the organization and the intention to leave the profession, the study sheds light on how IT professionals react to economic crises and how the reaction varies by age. Practical implications: The study puts to question the common belief that IT professionals are secure in the job market due to high demand for their skills and investments made by organizations to keep them on the job. Employers must pay attention to JI and turnover/turnaway intentions. Originality/value: This study is among the few to study JI and aspects of the theory of human migration in IT. It is also possibly the first to discuss the effects of a national crisis on the mobility patterns of IT professionals

Understanidng Mobile Work Continuance of Chineses Knowledge Workers

As more and more organizations adopt a “mobile by default” approach to information systems and work design, studying mobile work as a post-adoption phenomenon is both important and timely. Using data collected from 238 Chinese mobile workers, this study develops and validates a model of mobile work continuance. Our findings suggest that the expectation-confirmation framework provides strong theoretical support for explaining mobile work continuance, and that performance, technical support, management support, data security concerns and work life balance concerns affect knowledge workers’ mobile work continuance intention collectively