Employee Involvement Climate and Climate Strength: A study of employee attitudes and organizational effectiveness in UK hospitals

Purpose – Addressing the continuing productivity challenge the purpose of this paper is to analyze data from the National Health Service (NHS) on employee involvement (EI) in order to gain critical insights into how employees’ shared perception of employee involvement in organizational decision-making (labelled EI climate) might address two persistent issues: how to enhance positive staff attitudes and improve organizational performance. In doing so we respond to recent calls for more multilevel research and extend previous research on EI climate by attending to both EI climate level and EI climate strength. Design/methodology/approach – Data from 4702 employees nested in 33 UK hospitals was used to test the moderating role of EI climate strength in the (a) crosslevel EI climate level-employee attitudes relationship and in the (b) organizationallevel EI climate-organizational effectiveness relationship. Findings – The results of the multilevel analyses showed that EI climate level was positively associated with individual-level employee attitudes (i.e. job satisfaction, affective commitment). Further the results of the hierarchical regression analysis and the ordinal logistic regression analysis showed that EI climate level was also related to organizational effectiveness (i.e. lower outpatient waiting times; higher performance quality). In addition, both analyses demonstrated the moderating role of EI climate strength, in that the positive impact of EI climate level on employee attitudes and organizational effectiveness was more marked in the presence of a strong compared to a weak EI climate. Practical implications – By creating and maintaining a positive and strong climate for involvement hospital managers can tackle the productivity challenge that UK hospitals and health care institutions more generally are currently facing while improving the attitudes of their employees who are critical in the transformative process and ultimately underpin organizational success. Originality/value – This is the first study which provides evidence that favorable and consistent collective recognition of EI opportunities by staff contributes to enhance both employee attitudes and hospital performance. Results highlight the role of EI climate strength and underscore its importance in future research and practice

Organisational learning - a critical systems thinking discipline

Original Paper European Journal of Information Systems (2001) 10, 135–146; doi:10.1057/palgrave.ejis.3000394 Organisational learning—a critical systems thinking discipline P Panagiotidis1,3 and J S Edwards2,4 1Deloitte and Touche, Athens, Greece 2Aston Business School, Aston University, Aston Triangle, Birmingham, B4 7ET, UK Correspondence: Dr J S Edwards, Aston Business School, Aston University, Aston Triangle, Birmingham, B4 7ET, UK. E-mail: [email protected] 3Petros Panagiotidis is Manager responsible for the Process and Systems Integrity Services of Deloitte and Touche in Athens, Greece. He has a BSc in Business Administration and an MSc in Management Information Systems from Western International University, Phoenix, Arizona, USA; an MSc in Business Systems Analysis and Design from City University, London, UK; and a PhD degree from Aston University, Birmingham, UK. His doctorate was in Business Systems Analysis and Design. His principal interests now are in the ERP/DSS field, where he serves as project leader and project risk managment leader in the implementation of SAP and JD Edwards/Cognos in various major clients in the telecommunications and manufacturing sectors. In addition, he is responsible for the development and application of knowledge management systems and activity-based costing systems. 4John S Edwards is Senior Lecturer in Operational Research and Systems at Aston Business School, Birmingham, UK. He holds MA and PhD degrees (in mathematics and operational research respectively) from Cambridge University. His principal research interests are in knowledge management and decision support, especially methods and processes for system development. He has written more than 30 research papers on these topics, and two books, Building Knowledge-based Systems and Decision Making with Computers, both published by Pitman. Current research work includes the effect of scale of operations on knowledge management, interfacing expert systems with simulation models, process modelling in law and legal services, and a study of the use of artifical intelligence techniques in management accounting. Top of pageAbstract This paper deals with the application of critical systems thinking in the domain of organisational learning and knowledge management. Its viewpoint is that deep organisational learning only takes place when the business systems' stakeholders reflect on their actions and thus inquire about their purpose(s) in relation to the business system and the other stakeholders they perceive to exist. This is done by reflecting both on the sources of motivation and/or deception that are contained in their purpose, and also on the sources of collective motivation and/or deception that are contained in the business system's purpose. The development of an organisational information system that captures, manages and institutionalises meaningful information—a knowledge management system—cannot be separated from organisational learning practices, since it should be the result of these very practices. Although Senge's five disciplines provide a useful starting-point in looking at organisational learning, we argue for a critical systems approach, instead of an uncritical Systems Dynamics one that concentrates only on the organisational learning practices. We proceed to outline a methodology called Business Systems Purpose Analysis (BSPA) that offers a participatory structure for team and organisational learning, upon which the stakeholders can take legitimate action that is based on the force of the better argument. In addition, the organisational learning process in BSPA leads to the development of an intrinsically motivated information organisational system that allows for the institutionalisation of the learning process itself in the form of an organisational knowledge management system. This could be a specific application, or something as wide-ranging as an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation. Examples of the use of BSPA in two ERP implementations are presented

Escape from an optoelectronic tweezer trap: experimental results and simulations

Optoelectronic tweezers (OET) are a microsystem actuation technology capable of moving microparticles at mm s−1 velocities with nN forces. In this work, we analyze the behavior of particles manipulated by negative dielectrophoresis (DEP) forces in an OET trap. A user-friendly computer interface was developed to generate a circular rotating light pattern to control the movement of the particles, allowing their force profiles to be conveniently measured. Three-dimensional simulations were carried out to clarify the experimental results, and the DEP forces acting on the particles were simulated by integrating the Maxwell stress tensor. The simulations matched the experimental results and enabled the determination of a new “hopping” mechanism for particle-escape from the trap. As indicated by the simulations, there exists a vertical DEP force at the edge of the light pattern that pushes up particles to a region with a smaller horizontal DEP force. We propose that this phenomenon will be important to consider for the design of OET micromanipulation experiments for a wide range of applications

Theory of the propagation of coupled waves in arbitrarily-inhomogeneous stratified media

We generalize the invariant imbedding theory of the wave propagation and derive new invariant imbedding equations for the propagation of arbitrary number of coupled waves of any kind in arbitrarily-inhomogeneous stratified media, where the wave equations are effectively one-dimensional. By doing this, we transform the original boundary value problem of coupled second-order differential equations to an initial value problem of coupled first-order differential equations, which makes the numerical solution of the coupled wave equations much easier. Using the invariant imbedding equations, we are able to calculate the matrix reflection and transmission coefficients and the wave amplitudes inside the inhomogeneous media exactly and efficiently. We establish the validity and the usefulness of our results by applying them to the propagation of circularly-polarized electromagnetic waves in one-dimensional photonic crystals made of isotropic chiral media. We find that there are three kinds of bandgaps in these structures and clarify the nature of these bandgaps by exact calculations.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, to appear in Europhys. Let

Communicative practices and contexts of interaction in the refugee status determination process in France

This chapter draws on material from an anthropological study of the asylum process in France, conducted between 2007 and 2009, to explore the following questions: What can ethnographic research contribute to knowledge and understanding of the kinds of communication that take place at successive stages of the refugee status determination process in France? What light can it throw, more specifically, on the relationship between forms of communicative practice and the different contexts or spaces in which interaction between those involved occurs? Finally, what are some of the difficulties associated with adopting an ethnographic approach to investigate asylum processes and how can researchers attempt to address these

Energy and time resolution for a LYSO matrix prototype of the Mu2e experiment

We have measured the performances of a LYSO crystal matrix prototype tested with electron and photon beams in the energy range 60$-$450 MeV. This study has been carried out to determine the achievable energy and time resolutions for the calorimeter of the Mu2e experiment.Comment: 2 pages, 3 figures, 13th Pisa Meeting on Advanced Detector

Chaos, containment and change: responding to persistent offending by young people

This article reviews policy developments in Scotland concerning 'persistent young offenders' and then describes the design of a study intended to assist a local planning group in developing its response. The key findings of a review of casefiles of young people involved in persistent offending are reported. It emerges that youth crime and young people involved in offending are more complex and heterogeneous than is sometimes assumed. This, along with a review of some literature about desistance from offending, reaffirms the need for properly individualised interventions. Studies of 'desisters' suggest the centrality of effective and engaging working relationships in this process. However, these studies also re-assert the significance of the social contexts of workers’ efforts to bring 'change' out of 'chaos'. We conclude therefore that the 'new correctionalism' must be tempered with appreciation of the social exclusion of young people who offend