Performance Appraisal and Innovative Behavior in the Digital Era

In digital competitive environments, organizations\u2019 ability to innovate is more than ever the key to competitive advantage. One way to cope with this increased pressure for innovation is to capitalize on employees\u2019 ability to generate new ideas and use these as building blocks for new and better products, services, and work processes. Individual innovation thus emerges as a key competence required from workers, in turn crucially affecting the way managers make employees contribute to organizational goals and assess their performance. This study draws on the process-based approach to HRM (Bowen and Ostroff, 2004) suggesting that HRM practices may have a signaling effect, to address the following research question: which specific characteristics of performance appraisal are more likely to be perceived as promoting individual innovation at work? To address this issue, we carried out a survey on 865 employees working in large, multinational firms operating in digitalized sectors or industries with the potential to become digitalized. We collected data on the main characteristics of the performance appraisal systems adopted by the firm where respondents work, as perceived by employees themselves. We gathered also data on the respondents\u2019 overall perception that performance appraisal boosts innovative work behavior. Then, we employed logit analysis to test the relationship between data on performance appraisal systems and data on the effectiveness of performance appraisal as a booster of innovative work behavior. Our results reveal that, as compared to informal feedback, formal performance appraisal is more likely to reduce the perception that performance appraisal promotes individual innovation and creativity at work. In addition, we found that in the employees\u2019 perception performance appraisal focused on the achievement of pre-set, quantitative outcomes is more likely to affect positively innovative work behavior than appraisal focused on pre-defined skills that employees exhibited performing their work. However, performance assessment focused on the new competences developed by the employees has a perceived positive impact even stronger than result-oriented appraisal. Taken together, these results contribute to advance our understanding of how organizations should evaluate employees in the digitalization era

Creating a Stir: The role of Word of Mouth in Reputation Management in the Context of Festivals

This qualitative case study examines the role of word of mouth (WOM) in reputation management in the context of networked festival productions. Particularly, it explores the ways in which WOM marketing (WOMM) is employed in festival marketing and brand-building. The paper links reputation and WOM to the concept of cultural branding with the aim of providing a framework for analysing how a festival's reputation shapes the creation of a culturally meaningful message. The empirical analysis is based on a multiple-case study involving three Finnish festivals hosted in the city of Pori: the Porispere Festival, the International Pori Jazz Festival and the International Lain�uojattomat Theatre Festival. The cases represent festivals of different sizes and varying organisational structure, content and life cycle. The findings indicate that the meaning and use of WOMM vary depending on key constitutive differences that affect the nature of the festivals? reputation and brand-building processes. Although the importance of external and internal stakeholders in these processes is evident, it seems that when the power of networks is recognised as crucial for festivals, WOM has a leveraging role in reputation management and brand-building. In these processes, the value of the festival leader's persona becomes crucial

La gestione delle risorse umane nelle imprese turistiche

Il turismo rappresenta un’importante leva di creazione e di sviluppo di ricchezza a livello globale. La crescita di questo settore è eccezionale: si è passati dai 25,3 milioni di viaggiatori del 1950 ai quasi 850 milioni di arrivi internazionali nel mondo del 2006 e, secondo, le stime del World Turism Organization, nel 2020 i viaggiatori saranno oltre 1,6 miliardi con un tasso di crescita media composta del 6,1% all’anno. Nei prossimi decenni si assisterà al consolidamento dei cambiamenti sociali ed economici, oggi già in atto, e il turismo costituirà una delle principali determinanti e uno dei più importanti acceleratori della globalizzazione (Rapporto Sistema Turismo Italia 2008).In questo contesto, l’Italia, una delle principali destinazioni turistiche a livello mondiale, ha visto ridotta negli ultimi anni la sua competitività; pur di fronte a flussi ed entrate crescenti in termini assoluti, il nostro Paese ha infatti perso posizioni rispetto ai principali concorrenti.Questa perdita di competitività è dovuta a diverse cause tra le quali assume una rilevanza fondamentale la limitata capacità delle organizzazioni turistiche, soprattutto di piccola e media dimensione di attrarre, formare e trattenere professionisti capaci e qualificati attraverso specifiche strategie per le risorse umane. Di recente è stato rilevato che, di fronte all’aumento costante della qualità e della varietà dei servizi richiesti dai clienti, alla grossa quantità di manodopera necessaria, alla limitata attrattività del settore sul mercato del lavoro e agli elevati tassi di turnover, occorre investire, da un lato, nella formazione istituzionale e aziendale e, dall’altro, in strumenti di gestione delle risorse umane che consentano alle imprese turistiche di creare valore attraverso le persone (OCSE 2008), non soltanto riducendo i costi dei servizi, ma soprattutto aumentandone la personalizzazione, la differenziazione e l’innovazione.Questo libro offre un insieme di strumenti concettuali e metodologici utili a sviluppare nelle organizzazioni turistiche, a prescindere dalla dimensione, una corretta cultura della gestione delle risorse umane e a supportare l’adozione di un sistema di pratiche mirate a valorizzare le persone in un’ottica non esclusivamente di breve termine

Exploration and exploitation: do actual behaviors match individuals’ perceptions?

Research on contextual ambidexterity assumes that an organization’s capacity to pursue simultaneously exploration and exploitation leverages on organizational solutions encouraging a balance between these two learning orientations. However, still limited attention has been devoted to the investigation of contextual ambidexterity at the individual level of analysis. Starting from this gap, this paper addresses the following research questions: How do individuals perceive the learning orientation requested to them by their job? Do individuals’ behaviors match their perceived orientation? How does the matching/mismatching between perceptions and behaviors can be explained? To address these issues a multiple case study across 16 managers and assistants of R&D and Sales units of four medium enterprises located in Northeast Italy was carried out. Our findings show that the perceptions and the actual behaviors, as component of the personal ambidexterity, are distinct and independent. Perceived and actual orientations emerge in various different combinations creating a mismatch at individual level as well as some inconsistencies between different hierarchical levels and business units. The determinants of these inconsistencies can be explained by considering the individuals’ working experiences, their expertise and motivation and also the decisions and changes in the firm processes in which individuals have been involved. (ISSN: 1932-7498

Innovation, complementarities and performance in micro/small enterprises

This paper gives an empirical contribution to the debate on new organisational forms, complementarities and their relation to a firm’s competitiveness by means of a study on the organisational evolution of Micro/Small Enterprises (MSEs), which represent more than 90% of European firms but are not yet well analysed from the organisational point of view. This paper, based on a survey on a sample of 147 Italian MSEs, investigates firstly the diffusion of a set of organisational and technological innovations. Secondly, the question is asked whether entrepreneurs invest in only one type of innovation or if there is a simultaneous adoption of coherent set of innovations. Finally, the relationship between the adoption of a system of innovations and the dynamic of firm’s performance measured by sales and product innovation is investigated

Exploration and exploitation: Do actual behaviors match individuals’ perceptions?

Research on contextual ambidexterity assumes that an organizationÕs capacity to pursue simultaneously exploration and exploitation leverages on organizational solutions encouraging a balance between these two learning orientations. However, limited attention has as yet been devoted to the investigation of contextual ambidexterity at the individual level of analysis. Starting from this gap, this paper addresses the following research questions: How do individuals perceive the learning orientation required of them by their job? Do individualsÕ behaviors match their perceived orientation? How can the matching/mismatching between perceptions and behaviors be explained? To address these issues a multiple case study of 16 managers and assistants in the R&D and Sales units of four medium enterprises located in Northeast Italy was carried out. Our findings show that perceptions and actual behaviors, as dimensions of the personal ambidexterity, are independent of each other and can determine a misalignment with the organizational ambidexterity. Accordingly, we propose a conceptual and operational framework, in which the interplay among individual factors such as prior work experiences and personal characteristics, through the mechanism of role stressors, mold both dimensions of personal ambidexterity