The middle manager: Friend or foe of employee involvement

Middle management resistance has been frequently identified as a significant barrier to the success of employee involvement practices. This paper reviews evidence from the literature and from 12 case studies on the role played by middle managers in employee involvement initiatives. There is evidence that middle management resistance often acts as a significant impediment to employee involvement. However, there is also evidence that this resistance is often a symptom of inconsistency between organisational systems and the goals of employee involvement and of inadequate training and support for middle managers. Employee involvement initiatives should pay attention to aligning organisational systems with the goals of employee involvement and treat middle managers as the targets as well as the implementors of employee involvement

Building the foundations of professional expertise: creating a dialectic between work and formal learning

Recent critiques of management and teacher education curricula and teaching pay particular attention to the disconnection between the de-contextualised, formal knowledge and analytical techniques conveyed in university programs and the messy, ill-structured nature of practice. At the same time research into professional expertise suggests that its development requires bringing together different forms of knowledge and the integration of formal and non-formal learning with the development of cognitive flexibility. Such complex learning outcomes are unlikely to be achieved through a 'knowledge transmission' approach to curriculum design. In this article we argue that in many ways current higher education practices create barriers to developing ways of knowing which can underpin the formation of expertise. Using examples from two practice-focused distance learning courses, we explore the role of distance learning in enabling a dialogue between academic and workplace learning and the use of 'practice dialogues' among course participants to enable integration of learning experiences. Finally, we argue that we need to find ways in higher education of enabling students to engage in relevant communities of expertise, rather than drawing them principally into a community of academic discourse which is not well aligned with practice

Money Attitudes, Personality and Chronic Impulse Buying

This paper reports on a study of the relationship between demographic, personality and attitudinal variables and impulsive buying (a consumer's tendency to buy spontaneously, unreflectively, and immediately); using secondary analysis of data from common participants in two large national surveys of British adults: one survey contributing data on impulsive buying, demographics and money attitudes; and the second, a Big Five personality trait measure. In particular, we focus on the attitudes characterized by the extent to which individuals associate money with security, freedom, power and love. Younger females and those with higher household income were more likely to engage in impulsive buying. Correlational and regression analysis showed that those high on Neuroticism and Extraversion and those low on Conscientiousness were more likely to be impulse buyers. All four money attitudes were related to impulsive buying (Money as Security most strongly). A hierarchical regression indicated that demographic variables accounted for 3%, personality a further 9% and money attitudes a further 13% of the variance showing that these three sets of variables accounted for around a quarter of the variance. Implications are considered for educational and therapeutic interventions in reducing maladaptive impulsive buying

Intuition, expertise and emotion in the decision making of investment bank traders

The role of intuition may be especially dominant in organizations embedded in turbulent environments (Khatri & Ng, 2000). Dane and Pratt (2007) argue that intuition will be more likely to function as an effective component of decision making in performance domains that require significant experience and complex domain-relevant schema, a description that fits the world of financial trading. Traders are also frequently engaged in decision making that is characterized by time pressure, high risk, complexity and imperfect information. In a previous study (Fenton-O’Creevy et al., 2011), the second author found that many high performing traders deploy a reflective and critical approach to the use and development of intuition, which they understand as well-founded in prior experience. In this chapter we draw on our prior research to discuss the role of intuition in the work of professional traders. We bring together the results of our research on emotion regulation of investment bank traders (Fenton-O’Creevy et al., 2005, 2011, 2012; Vohra & Fenton-O’Creevy, 2011) with research on expertise and affect-based intuition (Baylor, 2001; Dane & Pratt, 2007; Simon, 1987; Sinclair & Ashkanasy, 2005; Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996) to argue that since more effective emotion regulation is associated with greater experience and more effective use of emotions in decision making (Fenton-O’Creevy et al., 2012) and emotions underpin the use of intuition (Lieberman, 2000; Sinclair & Ashkanasy, 2005), then effective emotion regulation will be essential in the deployment of expert intuition

Measuring competing explanations of human resource management practices through the Cranet survey: cultural versus institutional explanations

This paper assesses the relative and joint impact of cultural and institutional factors on firms' use of “calculative” human resource management practices to determine their separate analytic power. To what extent do institutions and culture structure managerial choice? Previous research has been constrained by not having measures for both cultural and institutional distance. Employing data from 14 European countries taken from the Cranet survey, our findings indicate that institutional, and more specifically, labour relations factors, have more explanatory power than cultural factors

Selecting futures: The role of conviction, narratives, ambivalence, and constructive doubt

Institutional decisions about the future, that matter, are usually made in a context of considerable uncertainty. Although the intention is success the possibility of failure must inevitably be present, whether recognized or not. The principal purposes of this study are twofold. First, we argue that uncertainty contexts require that decisions to create the future are supported by a particular type of future oriented or foresight narrative which we call a conviction narrative. Its essential function is to combine available knowledge about how to achieve desired outcomes with the feeling that the selected action will achieve the aim. Second, we introduce two states, in which conviction may be achieved, divided, and integrated, to argue that research into how conviction is achieved by individuals or institutions making decisions, can be an extremely promising and practical avenue for foresight studies, throwing light on several issues, particularly the oft-noted reluctance to change course and attachment to single stories of the future. The focus on the reality of uncertainty and the two states in which it can be met, can also enhance the research and practice of narrative foresight, through more systematic theorization of the role of emotion and ambivalence in narrative thought and in the processes through which future-focused narratives generate action under uncertainty

Effects of managerial communication as moderated by LMX and trait NA

Purpose: – Using the concept of disconfirming communication to define interpersonal mistreatment, the purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of specific negative managerial communication behaviors on employee emotions, while taking into account both leader-member exchange (LMX) and employee trait negative affect (NA). Design/methodology/approach: – In all, 275 working adults completed surveys about their managers’ confirming and disconfirming communication and their own emotional responses to these communications. Findings: – The positive relationship between disconfirming managerial communication and employee negative felt emotion was reduced when LMX was high and was increased for employees with high trait NA personalities. Research limitations/implications: – While the cross-sectional design exposes the study to potential common method bias, a priori and post hoc procedures minimized this risk, confirming it has a negligible impact on the results. Practical implications: – Study insights and the new instrument, the confirming/disconfirming managerial communication indicator can be used to train managers to be better communicators, thereby improving organizational effectiveness. Social implications: – Drawing attention to the nature and emotional impact of disconfirming managerial communication may reduce its occurrence and lead to improved employee mental health with resultant positive effects for society. Originality/value: – Unlike previous studies of interpersonal mistreatment and managerial communication, the authors focus explicitly on the effect on employee emotion and explore confirming and disconfirming communication, and the moderating roles of LMX and trait NA

A multilevel analysis of the use of individual pay-for-performance systems

Compensation systems such as individualized pay for performance (I-PFP) schemes for employees represent an important approach to aligning employer-employee interests. However, the adoption of I-PFP is much less common in many countries than in the USA. Employing a multi-level analysis of over 4,000 firms in 26 countries, we explore determinants of its adoption. At the country level we distinguish between cultural and institutional (labor regulation institutions) influences. At the firm level, we distinguish firms that view HR as strategically important and firms that are foreign-owned. On the one hand, our findings indicate that both cultural and institutional effects at country level significantly influence the adoption of I-PFP. On the other hand, senior managers’ agency counts. We find the effect of labor regulation on I-PFP to be mediated by its effects on labor union influence and we find the effects of culture on I-PFP to be entirely mediated by labor regulation and (country level) union influence

Personality and wealth

To what extent do personality traits predict wealth in adulthood over and above standard demographic factors? In all 3240 adults in the UK completed a Big Five personality test and reported on their property wealth, savings and investments, and their physical valuable items. We also had data on their age, education, household income and gender. Correlations and regressions showed that the demographics, particularly age and income were, as expected clearest correlates of wealth. Conscientious was positively and agreeableness, neuroticism and extraversion were negatively associated with savings and investments. The data pointed clearly to conscientiousness as the most important personality trait in wealth accumulation. Implications of these results as well as limitations of the study are discussed

Money attitudes, financial capabilities, and impulsiveness as predictors of wealth accumulation

In this study we examined three correlates of personal wealth–financial capability, buying impulsiveness, and attitudes to money in a large UK adult sample (N = 90,184). We were interested in how these psychological variables related to personal wealth controlling for well-established demographic correlates: age, education, gender, and household income. We drew on three personal wealth variables based on savings and investments, property wealth and personal items. Using correlational and regression analysis we tested three specific hypotheses which each received support. Our variables accounted for around half the variance with respect to property value, and two thirds with respect to investments. The hierarchical regression onto the savings and investment factor showed two thirds of the variance was accounted for: the demographic variables accounted for 27% of the variance, money attitudes an additional 14%; financial capability an additional 24% and buying impulsivity no additional variance. Age, income, and planning ahead were the most powerful and consistent predictors of wealth variables, with associating money with security as an important predictor for savings and investments. Implications for helping improve financial literacy and capability are noted. Limitations are acknowledged