Managerial Work in a Practice-Embodying Institution - The role of calling, the virtue of constancy

What can be learned from a small scale study of managerial work in a highly marginal and under-researched working community? This paper uses the ‘goods-virtues-practices-institutions’ framework to examine the managerial work of owner-directors of traditional circuses. Inspired by MacIntyre’s arguments for the necessity of a narrative understanding of the virtues, interviews explored how British and Irish circus directors accounted for their working lives. A purposive sample was used to select subjects who had owned and managed traditional touring circuses for at least 15 years, a period in which the economic and reputational fortunes of traditional circuses have suffered badly. This sample enabled the research to examine the self-understanding of people who had, at least on the face of it, exhibited the virtue of constancy. The research contributes to our understanding of the role of the virtues in organizations by presenting evidence of an intimate relationship between the virtue of constancy and a ‘calling’ work orientation. This enhances our understanding of the virtues that are required if management is exercised as a domain-related practice

Double jeopardy:subordinates' worldviews and poor performance as predictors of abusive supervision

Purpose - To test a moderated mediation model where a positive relationship between subordinates’ perceptions of a dangerous world—the extent to which an individual views the world as a dangerous place—and supervisory abuse is mediated by their submission to authority figures, and that this relationship is heightened for more poorly performing employees. Design/Methodology/Approach - Data were obtained from 173 subordinates and 45 supervisors working in different private sector organizations in Pakistan. Findings - Our model was supported. It appears that subordinates’ dangerous worldviews are positively associated with their perceptions of abusive supervision and that this is because such views are likely to lead to greater submission to authority figures. But this is only for those employees who are performing more poorly. Implications - We highlight the possibility that individual differences (worldviews, attitudes to authority figures, and performance levels) may lead employees to become victims of abusive supervision. As such, our research informs organizations on how they may better support supervisors in managing effectively their subordinate relationships and, in particular, subordinate poor performance. Originality/Value - We add to recent work exploring subordinate-focused antecedents of abusive supervision, finding support for the salience of the previously untested constructs of individual worldviews, authoritarian submission, and individual job performance. In so doing we also extend research on dangerous worldviews into a new organizational setting. Finally, our research takes place within a new Pakistani context, adding to the burgeoning non-US based body of empirical work into the antecedents and consequences of abusive supervision

STRESSING THE CENTRAL ROLE OF INTEGRITY FOR SUCCESSFUL FIRMS

The Authors of the chapter “Stressing the central role of integrity for successful firms”, taking the existing literature regarding integrity and humanistic management into consideration, have the aim to understand if it is possible build a model that can provide answers to the following questions: In what ways should firms act to respect the value of integrity? What kind of tools should be used? What key aspects should be exploited? As Aristotle stated, humans are, by nature, “social animal” and this natural tendency is completely expressed inside organizations, that may be defined as a community of human beings that work together to reach specific goals. This definition means that an organization’s essential element is the “relationships” among human beings that must work “together”. If relationships constitute the basic element, then clearly the “central” element of each organization are the human beings to which the indicated relationships refer. Clearly, integrity may not be pursued by an organization without taking the centrality of humans into consideration. The results of the Authors research highlight that the concept of integrity has become so important that it crosses the boundaries of the organization because it is necessary take into consideration both the internal (organization) and external (context) values to highlight the holistic meaning of integrity. This consideration is exactly the concept of sustainable integrity that the Authors propose and that clearly emerge from the analyzed companies