Deontic justice and organizational neuroscience

According to deontic justice theory, individuals often feel principled moral obligations to uphold norms of justice. That is, standards of justice can be valued for their own sake, even apart from serving self-interested goals. While a growing body of evidence in business ethics supports the notion of deontic justice, skepticism remains. This hesitation results, at least in part, from the absence of a coherent framework for explaining how individuals produce and experience deontic justice. To address this need, we argue that a compelling, yet still missing, step is to gain further understanding into the underlying neural and psychological mechanisms of deontic justice. Here, we advance a theoretical model that disentangles three key processes of deontic justice: The use of justice rules to assess events, cognitive empathy, and affective empathy. Together with reviewing neural systems supporting these processes, broader implications of our model for business ethics scholarship are discussed

The emotional labour of quality improvement work in end of life care : a qualitative study of Patient and Family Centred Care in England

Abstract: Background: There is a growing emphasis on understanding patient experience in order to inform efforts to support improvement. This paper reports findings from an implementation study of an evidence-based intervention called Patient and Family Centred Care (PFCC) designed to tap into patient experiences as a basis for improvement. In this study the PFCC intervention was spread to a new service area (end of life care) and delivered at scale in England. The findings presented here focus specifically on one key aspect of the intervention: staff shadowing of patients, and the experiences of staff carrying out shadowing for the purposes of service improvements. Methods: The study methods were ethnographic observations of key events, semi-structured interviews with members of participating teams and the programme implementation support team and managers, and a review of the documents used in the set up and running of the programme. Results: One of the key strengths of the PFCC approach is to encourage staff through shadowing to engage with patient experience of services. Many staff described the process of shadowing as a transformative experience that alerted them to immediate areas where their services could be improved. However, engaging with patient experience of end of life care services also had unintended consequences for some staff in the form of emotional labour. Furthermore, we observed difficulties encountered by staff that are not accounted for in the existing PFCC literature relating to how care service structures may unevenly distribute the amount of ‘emotional labour’ that staff members need to invest in implementing the programme. Conclusions: Connecting with patient experience is a crucial aspect of a number of quality improvement interventions that aim to help staff to engage with the lived experience of their services and reconnect their motivations for working in the health care system. However, there may be unintended consequences for health care service staff, particularly in sensitive areas of service delivery such as end of life care. The ‘emotional labour’ for staff of engaging in quality improvement work informed by patient experience should be considered in planning and supporting patient experience led quality improvement

Return on interactivity: The impact of online agents on newcomer adjustment

As service offerings grow in both range and complexity, how service providers and their customers interact is becoming increasingly important. In response to the challenge of optimizing these interactions, companies have introduced sophisticated online "socialization agents," whose purpose is to help new customers more effectively adjust to and function within the service environment. The objective of these online agents, or virtual employees, is to help customers evaluate new or unfamiliar service offerings, as well as help companies achieve greater levels of service delivery and financial performance. To investigate this, the authors analyze the process by which online agents help both new and current customers adjust to and function within new, unfamiliar, or complex service contexts. They examine the impact of an online agent on account performance in the banking industry. They find that both interaction style and content of the online agent significantly influence the newcomer adjustment process over time, which in turn influences firm-level performance

High-Performance Work Systems and Organizational Performance in Emerging Economies: Evidence from MNEs in Turkey

This study examines the association between the usage of high-performance work systems (HPWS) by subsidiaries of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in Turkey and employee and subsidiary level outcomes. The study is based on a survey of 148 MNE subsidiaries operating in Turkey. The results show that the usage of HPWS has a significant positive impact on employee effectiveness. However, their impact on employee skills and development, and organizational financial performance are far less clear. Our findings highlight the extent to which HWPS need to be adapted to take account of context-specific institutional realities. © 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

Mentoring Impact on Leader Efficacy Development: A Field Experiment

While practitioners and scholars tout the importance of mentorship in leader development, few studies have empirically determined whether mentoring actually positively impacts a leader’s development, and if so, in what ways. In a longitudinal field experiment, we examined how a targeted mentorship program that unfolded over 6 months enhanced the development of protégés’ leader efficacy and performance. Results showed that the targeted mentorship intervention increased protégés’ level of leader efficacy more than a comparison intervention that was based on a more eclectic leadership education program delivered in a group setting. Leader efficacy then predicted rated leader performance. Both protégés’ preferences for feedback and trust in the mentor served as important moderators in contributing to the development of leader efficacy. Findings from this longitudinal field experiment could be used by educational institutions and other organizations to enhance their mentorship programs in content, focus, and evaluation of impact