Beliefs Underlying Employee Readiness to Support a Building Relocation: A Theory of Planned Behavior Perspective

The purpose of this research was to examine the utility of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) as a framework for understanding employee readiness for change. One of the major advantages of the TPB approach is its ability to identify the underlying beliefs that distinguish between those who intend and do not intend to perform the behavior under investigation. In the present study, the extent to which a sample of local government employees intended to carry out activities during a 6-month period that were supportive of their organization's relocation to new premises was examined. An elicitation study (N = 18) determined salient beliefs relating to the relocation. For the main study, 149 participants completed a questionnaire that assessed their behavioral, normative, and control beliefs in regards to the change event. A series of MANOVAs revealed statistically significant differences between employees with moderate compared to high intentions to engage in changesupportive behaviors on a range of beliefs. Implications of these findings for designing change management strategies that help foster readiness for change are discussed

Measuring Ward-Based Multidisciplinary Healthcare Team Functioning: A Validation Study of the Team Functioning Assessment Tool (TFAT)

The team functioning assessment tool (TFAT) has been shown to be a reliable behavioral marker tool for assessing nontechnical skills that are critical to the success of ward-based healthcare teams. This paper aims to refine and shorten the length of the TFAT to improve usability, and establish its reliability and construct validity. Psychometric testing based on 110 multidisciplinary healthcare teams demonstrated that the TFAT is a reliable and valid tool for measuring team members' nontechnical skills in regards to Clinical Planning, Executive Tasks, and Team Functioning. Providing support for concurrent validity, high TFAT ratings were predicted by low levels of organizational constraints and high levels of group potency. There was also partial support for the negative relationships between time pressure, leadership ambiguity, and TFAT ratings. The paper provides a discussion on the applicability of the tool for assessing multidisciplinary healthcare team functioning in the context of improving team effectiveness and patient safety for ward-based hospital teams

The role of event characteristics and situational appraisals in the prediction of employee adjustment to change and change implementation success

Nerina L. Jimmieson Organizational change is typically activated by a relevant environmental shift that, once recognized by the organization, leads to an intentionally generated response (Porras and Silvers, 1991). In this respect, organizational change is intended to alter key organizational variables that then have an impact on the members of the organization and their work-related behaviors. Similarly, Van de Ven and Poole (1995) described change as an empirical observation of difference in form or state over time in an organizational entity. The entity may be a product or service, an individual’s job, a work group, or the overall strategy for an organization. Thus organizational change can be viewed as a critical event, which has the potential to evoke stress reactions and other negative consequences in employees. In this respect, employees are confronted with a unique set of workplace stressors resulting from a changing work environment. As organizational change by its very nature is not linear, the most frequent psychological state resulting from organizational change is that of uncertainty (see Ashford, 1988; Begley, 1998; Callan, 1993; Carnall, 1986; Gemmil and Smith, 1985; Jick, 1985; Nelson et al., 1995; Olson and Tetrick, 1988; Sagie and Koslowsky, 1994; Schweiger and Ivancevich, 1985; Sverke et al., 1997). Employees are likely to experience uncertainty about many different facets of their job during times of organizational change. For instance, Shaw et al., (1993) argue that role stress is likely to result from uncertainty associated with organizational change. Role conflict may be particularly prevalent…

A Conceptual Framework for Real-Time Emotional-State Monitoring of Students in VLEs to Identify Students at Risk

Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) feature rich textual data which lend itself naturally to the identification and monitoring of aspects of students’ interactions. While reducing attrition and improving performance remain the primary objectives of learning analytics, we contend that student contributed text can be used to learn about emotions and other extra-rational features. This would help provide a response to the recent cries for help from the sector, seeking a system looking to address the worrying mental health crisis trends. This paper addresses these issues by discussing the necessary mechanisms within a conceptual framework which would sit in a VLE and capture emotional state changes in the students’ interaction style or tone. For such a framework, the aim would be to help educators to carry out timely interventions when a potential cause of distress is identified. Experimental results on available datasets from education and psychology serve as a feasibility study for these tasks, and offer a perspective on the potential of the approach.</jats:p

Vision Screening Assessment (VISA) tool: diagnostic accuracy validation of a novel screening tool in detecting visual impairment among stroke survivors

PURPOSE:Screening for visual problems in stroke survivors is not standardised. Visual problems that remain undetected or poorly identified can create unmet needs for stroke survivors. We report the validation of a new Vision Impairment Screening Assessment (VISA) tool intended for use by the stroke team to improve identification of visual impairment in stroke survivors. METHODS:We conducted a prospective case cohort comparative study in four centres to validate the VISA tool against a specialist reference vision assessment. VISA is available in print or as an app (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency regulatory approved); these were used equally for two groups. Both VISA and the comprehensive reference vision assessment measured case history, visual acuity, eye alignment, eye movements, visual field and visual inattention. The primary outcome measure was the presence or absence of visual impairment. RESULTS:Two hundred and twenty-one stroke survivors were screened. Specialist reference vision assessment was by experienced orthoptists. Full completion of screening and reference vision assessment was achieved for 201 stroke survivors. VISA print was completed for 101 stroke survivors; VISA app was completed for 100. Sensitivity and specificity of VISA print was 97.67% and 66.67%, respectively. Overall agreement was substantial; K=0.648. Sensitivity and specificity of VISA app was 88.31% and 86.96%, respectively. Overall agreement was substantial; K=0.690. Lowest agreement was found for screening of eye movement and near visual acuity. CONCLUSIONS:This validation study indicates acceptability of VISA for screening of potential visual impairment in stroke survivors. Sensitivity and specificity were high indicating the accuracy of this screening tool. VISA is available in print or as an app allowing versatile uptake across multiple stroke settings

Thriving when exhausted: The role of perceived transformational leadership

The role of leadership is especially important for employees’ personal growth at work. In the present two-wave study (time lag 3 months), we investigated the relationship between teachers’ perceptions of the transformational leadership style of their school principal and their thriving. Specifically, we examined the role of individuals’ energy resources (i.e., emotional exhaustion) in the relationships between perceived transformational leadership and thriving, as well as two aspects of work performance (task mastery and proactivity). Findings from 200 teachers revealed no direct relationship between perceived transformational leadership and teachers’ thriving. However, as expected, teachers’ emotional exhaustion moderated the relationship between perceived transformational leadership and thriving; teachers’ perceptions of the transformational leadership style was associated with a decrease in thriving when they reported moderate levels of emotional exhaustion. When teachers were very low in emotional exhaustion, perceived transformational leadership was associated with an increase in thriving. Moderated mediation analyses revealed significant indirect effects for proactivity for lower and higher levels of emotional exhaustion. We discuss the implications of the findings for theories of personal growth

Simulation Modelling Approach to Human Resources Management: Burnout Effect Case Study

Human resources management has become one of the most important leverages in organizations for gaining competitive advantage. However, human resources management is in many occasions prone to nonlinear feedbacks with delayed effect. Burnout effect is one of the problems that are especially often faced by the experts in learning society. Burnout effect occurs because modern society is a fast-moving, achievement-oriented, very competitive and lead to many stressful situations, which individuals cannot handle always. We propose usage of system dynamics methodology in exploration of burnout effect, and its usage in learning of consequences of burnout effect. Several experiments have been conducted and presented which indicate increase and collapse behaviour in case of burnout experience by the individual. Experiments with the model explore the presence of burnout effect in several different situations, with different pace of its manifestations