Linking authentic leadership to positive employee health, behavioral engagement, and job performance

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in the emerging field of positive organizational behavior. The field of Positive Organizational Behavior (POB) has its roots in the concept of positive psychology (Bakker & Schaufeli, 2008) but is more narrowly defined as the study and application of positively oriented human resources strengths and psychological capacities that can be measured, developed, and effectively managed for performance improvement in today\u27s workplace (Luthans, 2002, p.698). More and more researchers have begun to emphasize what is right with people rather than focusing on what is wrong with people. Given this opportunity, this dissertation explicitly focuses upon the power of positive psychological states and behaviors, such as psychological safety, job engagement, positive employee health, and proactive behaviors, which may have strong influence on employees\u27 behavior in the organization. A new emerging leadership style, authentic leadership, was employed as an important antecedent to see how leadership can promote these positive states and behaviors. Based on Ryff\u27s (1995) positive human health concepts, this dissertation developed a positive employee health construct which focuses on organizational context and environments. A four dimensional measure was developed for this construct, including leading a purposeful worklife, quality connection to others, positive self-regard and mastery, and perception of negative events. An initial nomological network was tested for the construct validity. In addition to developing a valid measure for positive employee health, another objective of this dissertation is to examine incremental predictive validity of authentic leadership and the relationship between authentic leadership and several previously unexamined outcomes (i.e., positive employee health, job engagement, proactivity, job performance, and workplace deviance behavior). Many scholars believe that the influence of authentic leadership has an important role in modern organization and society because it helps to restore basic confidence, hope, optimism, resiliency, and meaningfulness. This dissertation adopted a positive organizational behavior approach to furthering our understanding of the process by which authentic leadership influences several important positive outcomes. Findings of this dissertation indicated that newly developed positive employee health construct is useful in predicting job satisfaction and life satisfaction. It is significantly related to but also distinguished from other similar construct, such as psychological well-being and vigor. In addition, this dissertation also found that authentic leadership can be used to predict employees\u27 psychological safety, job engagement, positive employee health, knowledge sharing, and workplace deviance behavior. Indirect relationships between authentic leadership and job performance and proactivity through the mediation effect of job engagement were partially supported. Although authentic leadership can be distinguished from transformational leadership, it only showed incremental predict validity over transformational leadership with job engagement as outcome. Results of this study also suggest that need for leadership and perception of organizational politics may work as direct outcomes of authentic leadership rather than moderators as proposed

Linking Research and Policy: Assessing a Framework for Organic Agricultural Support in Ireland

This paper links social science research and agricultural policy through an analysis of support for organic agriculture and food. Globally, sales of organic food have experienced 20% annual increases for the past two decades, and represent the fastest growing segment of the grocery market. Although consumer interest has increased, farmers are not keeping up with demand. This is partly due to a lack of political support provided to farmers in their transition from conventional to organic production. Support policies vary by country and in some nations, such as the US, vary by state/province. There have been few attempts to document the types of support currently in place. This research draws on an existing Framework tool to investigate regionally specific and relevant policy support available to organic farmers in Ireland. This exploratory study develops a case study of Ireland within the framework of ten key categories of organic agricultural support: leadership, policy, research, technical support, financial support, marketing and promotion, education and information, consumer issues, inter-agency activities, and future developments. Data from the Irish Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the Irish Agriculture and Food Development Authority (Teagasc), and other governmental and semi-governmental agencies provide the basis for an assessment of support in each category. Assessments are based on the number of activities, availability of information to farmers, and attention from governmental personnel for each of the ten categories. This policy framework is a valuable tool for farmers, researchers, state agencies, and citizen groups seeking to document existing types of organic agricultural support and discover policy areas which deserve more attention

SILENCE IN ORGANIZATIONS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY: A LITERATURE REVIEW

In the business world, employees can contribute with information, ideas, concerns, opinions and proposals to their managers in respect of: (1) the way work could be performed, (2) what should / should not be done in the workplace, (3) how a particular decision can be implemented, and (4) how an organizational policy should be formed and executed (Rego, 2013). However, due to a diverse set of factors, employees often choose to remain silent in the workplace. One of these factors is psychological safety, which describes employees’ perceptions of the consequences of taking interpersonal risks in the workplace (Edmondson, 2014). The following paper is essentially a literature review and its aim is to, firstly, make a brief approach to factors reported in the literature that may affect employee voice and silence, followed up by an explanation of the types of silence that can be engaged by employees. Besides that, the authors will also make an approach to physical and psychological safety. Lastly, it will be reported some links, mentioned in the literature, between employee silence and psychological safety

SILENCE IN ORGANIZATIONS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY: A LITERATURE REVIEW

In the business world, employees can contribute with information, ideas, concerns, opinions and proposals to their managers in respect of: (1) the way work could be performed, (2) what should / should not be done in the workplace, (3) how a particular decision can be implemented, and (4) how an organizational policy should be formed and executed (Rego, 2013). However, due to a diverse set of factors, employees often choose to remain silent in the workplace. One of these factors is psychological safety, which describes employees’ perceptions of the consequences of taking interpersonal risks in the workplace (Edmondson, 2014). The following paper is essentially a literature review and its aim is to, firstly, make a brief approach to factors reported in the literature that may affect employee voice and silence, followed up by an explanation of the types of silence that can be engaged by employees. Besides that, the authors will also make an approach to physical and psychological safety. Lastly, it will be reported some links, mentioned in the literature, between employee silence and psychological safety

Work Organisation and Innovation

[Excerpt] Innovations in work organisation have the potential to optimise production processes in companies and improve employees’ overall experience of work. This report explores the links between innovations in work organisation – under the broader label of high performance work practices (HPWPs) – and the potential benefits for both employees and organisations. It draws on empirical evidence from case studies carried out in 13 Member States of the European Union where workplace innovations have resulted in positive outcomes

Factors Influence Information and Knowledge Sharing in Organization

In today\u27s business environment, competitive advantage increasingly requires the open sharing of knowledge by organizational members [22]. Although the practitioners place emphasis on the importance of knowledge sharing, empirical researches on knowledge sharing are still limited, and little research has been done to understand the factors that influence knowledge sharing in organizations. This study investigates cultural and interpersonal factors that influence an individual’s propensity to share information and knowledge that he or she has created. Three different situations of sharing (information product, self-developed knowledge and organization-developed knowledge) were considered. The study found that organization culture influenced individual’s beliefs of organization trust and psychological safety, and those who perceived higher trust and psychological safety seemed more likely to share information and knowledge with others

Achieving best for project success outcomes through optimal employee engagement – a proposal for organisations operating engineering alliances

Employee engagement has continued to develop as an area of both academic and business interest but there remains paucity in literature that links employee engagement to engineering alliances and concomitant achievement of project success. This research examines current theoretical concepts and praxis contributions of institutions that represent industry. This research is contextualised within the engineering sector and does not specifically address other sectors such as, for example, healthcare, and public sectors. The research outlines key components of an employee engagement model within an engineering alliance and does not critically focus attention on conceptual notions of employee engagement not their utility. The research has novelty in that, to our knowledge, it is original in defining employee engagement in an engineering alliance. It addresses the knowledge gap in this area and makes a contribution to academic discourse pertaining to employee engagement as a developing approach to managing projects