Hard, soft or ambidextrous?:which influence style promotes managers' task performance and the role of political skill

Ambidexterity at the manager level focuses on the crucial, but underexplored, role of managers’ knowledge, skills, and behaviors to address competing demands and promote organizational ambidexterity. As such, to successfully complete their assigned duties, managers need to employ the appropriate interpersonal style and calibrate their behavior to different contextual demands. This study highlights the role of the individual in the ambidexterity process by introducing the concept of influence tactic ambidexterity, to denote the frequent use of both hard and soft influence and investigating its role on task performance. Drawing on the literature on ambidexterity and HRM, we analyze data from a sample of 172 middle managers and their corresponding 68 supervisors working for multinational organizations, and provide evidence that influence tactic ambidexterity relates to higher levels and less variation in managers’ task performance compared to the sole use of either hard or soft tactics. Our findings also show that political skill positively moderates the relationship between influence tactic ambidexterity and a manager’s task performance. Therefore, this study suggests that influence tactic ambidexterity and political skill can be considered valuable HR assets for managers

Ανάλυση των στρατηγικών παραγόντων χρηματοοικονομικής απόδοσης: η περίπτωση του ελληνικού τραπεζικού τομέα

It is a well acknowledged fact that different firms operating in similar micro and macro-economic environments experience widely different degrees of success. As such, the main drivers of financial performance and their interrelations have for decades puzzled the minds of academics and practitioners alike. Yet, despite considerable research in the field, there is still a lack of empirical generalizability with regards to the main non-financial determinants of financial performance, and the collective impact that they have on the bottom line, presenting fertile grounds for further empirical investigation. This study utilizes and advances previous research from diverse fields in an attempt to shed some light onto the critical determinants of financial performance, and their multifaceted and non-linear interrelations. In this context, a model has been developed that encompasses several of the most critical customer and internal process antecedents of financial performance and depicts their hypothesized interrelations. This model has been tested by utilizing both survey and objective data, through the use of structural equation modeling and longitudinal analysis techniques, on a sample of 972 customers from 170 branches in two leading Greek banks. The results of the study suggest that: (a) financial performance is significantly affected by critical customer outcome measures such as cross-selling, customer retention and market share, and the impact of these variables on the bottom line can present a lagged effect of one to four quarters; (b) behavioral intentions are composed of two dimensions (patronage and recommended) both of which have a positive relation on the customer outcome measures; (c) the relation between behavioral intentions and actual customer behavior is concave upward shaped for the case of up-selling and cross-selling, thus signifying increasing returns to scale from developing customers’ positive repurchase intentions; (d) service quality can be viewed as a second order construct and has a direct positive impact on both customer satisfaction and perceived value; and (e) customer satisfaction and perceived service value are interrelated and significantly affect behavioral intentions, in addition to fully mediating the impact of service quality on behavioral intentions. Consequently, the present study provides empirical evidence on the significant and lagged relationship of various aspects of financial and non-financial performance

Absorptive capacity, innovation, and financial performance

This study here examines the role of absorptivecapacity as both a mechanism to identify and translate external knowledge inflows into tangible benefits, as well as a means of achieving superior innovation and time-lagged financialperformance. Using path analysis in a sample of 461 Greek enterprises participating in the third Community Innovation Survey, this study demonstrates that external knowledge inflows are directly related to absorptivecapacity and indirectly related to innovation. Absorptivecapacity contributes, directly and indirectly, to innovation and financialperformance but in different time spans. This study, therefore, contributes to the understanding of absorptivecapacity's antecedents and outcomes by providing empirical evidence of longitudinal form that offers important research and practical implications

An Integrated Methodology for Putting the Balanced Scorecard into Action

We develop a compact and integrated methodological framework for Balanced Scorecard (BSC) synthesis and implementation. The proposed methodology capitalizes on existing knowledge, while incorporating critical issues, grounded in our research and experience, which have not been systematically considered or documented in previous work. By identifying shortcomings and critical success factors from literature and experience, the methodology aims at overcoming certain serious predicaments faced by many implementations. The methodology embodies activities related to Project Management, Change Management, Risk Management, Quality Assurance and Information Technology, areas that contribute considerably to BSC implementation success.Balanced scorecard Performance management Strategy implementation Balanced Scorecard methodology

Politics perceptions as moderator of the political skill – job performance relationship: A two-study, cross-national, constructive replication

We developed a two-study, cross-national, constructive replication to examine the role of organizational politics perceptions as a contextual moderator of the political skill – job performance relationship. Specifically, we hypothesized that high levels of political skill would demonstrate its strongest positive effects on job performance when politics perceptions were perceived as low. Conversely, we hypothesized that political skill would demonstrate no relationship with job performance under conditions of high politics perceptions. Across studies conducted both in the United States and Greece, the hypothesis received strong support. In settings characterized by lower perceived politics, high levels of political skill predicted significant increases in job performance, whereas these effects were attenuated in environments characterized by high perceived politics. Contributions and implications of this research, strengths and limitations, and directions for future study are discussed