The Impact of Transformational Leadership on Organizational Commitment and Intention to Stay: Empirical Evidence From China's Performing Arts Industry

As part of the cultural industries, performing arts has been playing an important role in enriching people's spiritual life, leveling culture and education, creating jobs, and even making economic benefits. Hence, a significant methodology is required to tackle the complicated concepts of transformational leadership (TL) and social factors in an arts industry context. This article aims to observe the direct impacts of TL on organizational commitment (OC). Furthermore, it examined the indirect effects of TL on OC and intention to stay (ITS) via person-job fit (PJF), social capital (SC), and psychological capital (PC). According to the results of this research, TL was discovered to have a positive impact on OC and PJF while having no significant effect on ITS. Furthermore, PJF had a significant impact on SC. Moreover, SC significantly influenced PC. In addition, PC was discovered to be in a significant correlation with OC while having no significant association with ITS. Finally, OC was also in a significant relationship with ITS.

Knowledge sharing in project-based supply networks

Purpose

Project-based supply networks are an emerging form of organizing used to meet a buying organization's operational and innovation goals. Knowledge sharing among suppliers in the network plays a key role in successful project delivery but is challenging to achieve in practice. The authors draw on self-determination theory (SDT) to examine the interactive effect of incentive provisions (penalties and bonuses) and network governance (lead or shared) on knowledge sharing motivation by individual boundary-spanners within project-based supply networks.

Design/methodology/approach

A scenario-based behavioral experiment of 217 professionals within the UK using the online platform, Prolific, was conducted. A Hayes Macro PROCESS model was used to analyze the data. The authors pilot-tested the scenario with project management experts, senior managers, and directors.

Findings

The findings highlighted that the effectiveness of incentive provisions on knowledge sharing may be dependent on the mode of network governance. Where suppliers have shared responsibility for managing the network (shared governance), bonuses were more effective than penalties in motivating knowledge sharing through support of boundary-spanners’ autonomy needs. However, where the buying organization has transferred responsibility for managing the network to an external third-party organization (lead governance), the authors found no significant difference between the effectiveness of penalty versus bonus provisions in motivating knowledge sharing.

Originality/value

Prior research in operations and supply chain management (OSCM) has shown the positive effect of incentive provisions on knowledge sharing motivation, but largely overlooked the effectiveness of such incentives when nested within broader governance mechanisms used in projects and their networks. Moreover, while scholars have started to highlight the importance of governance mechanisms in knowledge sharing at the dyadic level, the authors know very little about the impact of network governance.

Professionalism—its effect on interpersonal relationships in high-tech global virtual teams

Drawing on accounts presented—and the metaphors incorporated therein—in interviews with 129 workers, this study considers the effect of professionalism on relationships between Indian and Israeli global team members working in the high-tech industry. This study shows how the discourse of professionalism (together with additional, professionally oriented organizational mechanisms), as manifested in high-tech organizations, dictates not only employee–organization relations but also relationships between peers working in global virtual teams (GVTs). The study further illuminates how this particular construction of professionalism can engender a paradox in interpersonal relationships for professionals working in GVTs; and its subtle negative impact, from an ethical perspective, on interpersonal relationships between them. It also shows, however, that perceptions of friendship do emerge despite these limiting conditions.

Postbürokratie und die agile Unsicherheitsabsorption in Interaktionen

Dieser Beitrag in der Zeitschrift GIO schlägt eine äquivalenzfunktionalistische Perspektive auf postbürokratische Reformen vor, die Teile der Unsicherheitsabsorption von Organisationen in Interaktionssysteme verlagern. Postbürokratie versucht, organisationale und gesellschaftliche Entwicklungen in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts auf den Begriff zu bringen. Auch aktuelle agile Managementkonzepte lassen sich der Postbürokratie zuordnen und zeichnen sich unter anderem durch eine Multiplikation von Interaktionen aus. Mithilfe der Theorie sozialer Systeme untersuchen wir wie neue Unsicherheiten in Organisationen durch postbürokratische Reformen entstehen und von agilen Managementkonzepten bearbeitet werden. An den agilen Konzepten Scrum und Holacracy wird gezeigt, dass diese Verlagerung neuen Formalisierungsbedarf produziert. Im Fokus stehen dabei die Zentrierungen kommunikativer Interdependenzen in Interaktionen in der Sach‑, Zeit- und Sozialdimension. Der Beitrag plädiert für eine äquivalenzfunktionalistische Perspektive auf Postbürokratie, die den Zusammenhang von Formalisierungsverzicht in Organisationen und neuen Formalisierungsbedarfen als funktionalen Leistungszusammenhang begreift.

Democratization of organizational change process through deliberation

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine deliberation in the context of organizational change and introduce an organizational jury as a change facilitator.

Design/methodology/approach

The research is based on an empirical study of four organizational juries that were organized by a non-profit organization in Finland. The main data of the study consist of a survey that the juries’ participants filled in. The data are triangulated with observations of jury meetings and relevant documents including pre-jury information package, jury presentations and juries’ proposals. In the analysis, the paper adopts deliberative democracy criteria to assess the inclusiveness, authenticity and consequentiality of the deliberative process.

Findings

The research findings suggest that the juries increased the inclusiveness of decision making and the quality of deliberation about the changes among the employees. The results indicate that juries facilitated the change process by providing a means for information sharing and building a shared understanding among the stakeholders. The main weakness of the juries was their low consequentiality.

Originality/value

Deliberative jury method provides a participative way to build and preserve socially shared meanings in an organizational change context. However, the studies on the use of deliberative forums in the organizational context are still scarce. Thus, the study provides an important addition to the existing research literature.

Indigenous African Leadership: Key differences from Anglo-centric thinking and writings

This article draws on historical explorers’ accounts, ethnography and organisational approaches to examine practices, discourses and perceptions of leadership in 12 prototypical indigenous communities in West and Central Africa. By so doing, it highlights how leadership meanings from this context differ from Anglo-centric thinking and writings. Key to this contribution is an unravelling of ways in which historical cultural hegemonies impose particular discursive formations, constructed practices and mind-programming in a non-Anglo-Saxon socio-cultural context. Dramaturgical power arrangement, lucid role substitution and the notion of leadership as non-human emerge as dominant themes in the analysis. Also, featuring significantly are representations of leadership in symbols, mythology and as transcendental and metaphysical. These conceptualisations are different from predominant Anglo-Saxon writings that frequently present leadership as linear hierarchies, dyadic (leader-follower) relationship, acts and behaviours of heroic figures and as an essentially human action. An Afro-centric indigenous concept of leadership reflecting the context is proposed which challenges heroism, linearity, individualism and objectivism.

Knowledge-Sharing, Control, Compliance and Symbolic Violence

Recent developments in control hold that professionals are best managed through normative and concertive as opposed to bureaucratic and coercive mechanisms. This post-structuralist approach appeals to the notion of congruent values and norms and acknowledges the role of individuals’ subjectivity in sustaining professional autonomy. Yet, there remains a risk of over-simplifying the manifestations of such control initiatives. By means of an in-depth case study, this article considers the challenge of implementing a knowledge-sharing portal for a community of R&D scientists through management control initiatives that relied on a blend of presumed ‘peer pressure’ and the rhetoric of ‘facilitation’. Arguing that traditional approaches such as normative/concertive control and soft bureaucracy only partially explain this phenomenon, we draw from Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of ‘symbolic violence’ to interpret a managerial initiative to appropriate knowledge and affirm the structure of social relations through the complicity of R&D scientists. We also examine how the scientists channelled resistance by reconstituting compliance in line with their sense of identity as creators of knowledge.

Spaces of possibilities: workers’ self-management in Greece

This article focuses on the process of workers’ self-management brought about by a wave of experimentation with alternative organizational forms taking place in Greece since the beginning of the current financial crisis. The discussion is supported by empirical evidence from qualitative fieldwork conducted in three workers’ collectives. Drawing on the findings of my research, I argue that the members’ values and everyday practices give shape and meaning to their aspirations of creating a space that not only critiques the existing forms of work but also puts into practice other possibilities that give emphasis to reciprocal relationships and prioritize collective working, egalitarianism and autonomy. I also argue that their established consensus-based decision-making models, far from representing a state of agreement, allows—within collectively determined boundaries—the creation of a space where diverse opinions flourish rather than being suppressed.This encourages the development of more inclusive models of participation and the construction of rule-creating rather than rule-following individuals.

Discursive Activity in the Boardroom

The board functions at one of the interfaces between the environment and the organization and must take account of competing external and internal discourses. This article explores the institutionalizing activity manifest in the written organizational texts of board meetings of Local Health Boards in Wales. The focus of attention is how the localized discourse (1000 Lives) of an international, industry level, institution (Patient Safety), contributes to institutionalization and deinstitutionalization as recorded in the minutes of the board meetings. The conclusion is that as the boards develop and record their emerging discourse they construct and reconstruct the social reality of their organization. The organizations are composed of fragmented and competing discourses with no finality to meaning making, and continual conflict among multiple meanings looking for interpretive control, which the board [re]arranges into a seemingly coherent, unified, and meaningful discourse.

The Form and Function of “Bullying” Behaviors in a Strong Occupational Culture

The study examines the persistence of bullying in a high-teamwork environment using self-categorization theory (SCT) and interaction ritual chain theory (IRCT). Findings from a qualitative study suggest that “isolation” is the key behavior police officers label as bullying and that other behaviors thought of as bullying may be tolerated, providing there is no exclusion. IRCT clarified the dynamics, whereas SCT explained the motivation for engaging in rituals containing behaviors that included bullying. The study posits a new framework for bullying in high-pressured teams and accounts for the tolerance to “bullying” behaviors in such work environments. Implications for addressing workplace bullying in these contexts are discussed.

Recontextualization of the Corporate Values of a Danish MNC in a Subsidiary in Bangalore

The authors analyze the recontextualization of the corporate values of a multinational company (MNC) in one of its subsidiaries. The authors draw upon qualitative material from a case study of a company of Danish origin and its endeavors to implement its corporate values in an Indian subsidiary in Bangalore. The authors show how these values take on new meanings when interpreted by local employees. On the one hand, their understandings are shaped by the prevailing meaning system, including leadership ideals, and on the other hand, by their resources and strategies. To further their understanding of the recontextualization, the authors point to a need to go beyond the system of signification shared within a national culture and include social agency, of which they conceive in Bourdieusian terms.