Employees In Decision Research Articles

Do impression management tactics and/or supervisor–subordinate guanxi matter?

This study compares the relative role of impression management tactics and the other form of supervisor–subordinate guanxi (s–s g) in predicting supervisor-rated employee performance. Empirical data were collected from 175 supervisor-subordinate dyads working full-time in Taiwanese organisations. Specifically, this study uses the Dominance-based Rough Set Approach (DRSA) to formulate employee social skills by generating “if–then” decision rules. Then, flow network graphs are applied to represent employee decision rules. The results indicate that the personal-life inclusion of supervisor–subordinate guanxi matters more than various impression management tactics in achieving high performance ratings. Additionally, employees avoiding engaging in the supplication tactic may face in low performance ratings. The findings have implications for many of the decision rules that influence performance ratings from supervisors.

Relationships Between Career Motivation, Affective Commitment and Job Satisfaction

Career motivation theory (London, 1983), applies motivation theory to understanding career plans, behaviors and decisions of employees, such as searching for and accepting a job, deciding to stay with an organization, revising career plans, seeking new job experiences, and setting and trying to accomplish career goals. Career motivation is defined in terms of tree major components: career resilience, career insight and career identity. Each component has multiple elements. Understanding how each element is related to employees’ affective commitment to the organization and their job satisfaction may help fostering employee motivation and improve the effectiveness of human resources. To date, there have been several conceptual studies theorizing the content and construct of career motivation. However, there has been limited empirical work to examine the relationship between the elements of career motivation and key employee behavior such as employment and turnover intentions, job satisfaction, organizational commitment and work performance. Accordingly, this study examines the relationships between the components of career motivation, employees’ affective commitment and their job satisfaction, while controlling their demographic characteristics such as age, gender, income and organizational tenure. For this aim, we conducted a field research on 250 employees working in various industries. Research results showed that career motivation has a positive correlation with organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Individual characteristics except respondents’ gender did not exert any significant association with career motivation. Theoretical and managerial implications of the findings are discussed.

Applying the Electronic Commerce Technology Acceptance (ECTA) Framework to Overcome Challenges Facing Governmental Institutions' E-mailing Systems Technology Adoption in Jordan

Insight into the reasons why people adopt or reject technology is one of the most challenging issues in information technology research. This paper draws on the Electronic Commerce Technology Acceptance (ECTA) framework [1], which is in turn based on Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) [2–3], and examines Jordan government's employees' attitudes towards adopting and use Electronic Mailing systems within their job. A quantitative survey is used to establish and illustrates employee's behavioural intention and decision to e-mailing systems. The main influencing issues that are discussed in this paper affect these employees imply perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, employees' attitudes towards new technologies, and behavioural intention to use. These various issues suggested in the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) [3–4]. Whereas the extended Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) has been made to include the external social factors proposed in this paper such as trust, cultural beliefs, and sociology of technology. Eventually, the significant insight emanated from the findings identifies ways of assisting and spurring employees to make use of technology effectively.

How and When Does Customer Orientation Influence Frontline Employee Job Outcomes? A Meta-Analytic Evaluation

Previous research has conceptualized and modeled customer orientation (CO) in one of two ways: as a psychological phenomenon antecedent to critical job states (i.e., stress and engagement) or as frontline employee behaviors that are caused by these same job states. Building on meta-analytic data, this study finds greater support for the causal relationships implied by a psychological construal of the construct and reveals that CO influences frontline employees' job outcomes through its effects on stress and engagement. Moderation analyses also indicate that CO's influence on model variables is stronger when frontline employees' customer workloads increase and is weaker as the need for customer persuasion increases. These findings contradict widely held assumptions rooted in a behavioral view of CO—namely, that CO is a consequence of job states, a proximate determinant of job outcomes, and most beneficial when ample opportunity for customer engagement exists. Overall, the results support a broadened perspective that recognizes that CO improves job outcomes because it enhances frontline employees' psychological welfare in addition to being good for business. These findings suggest that managers should consider CO an important criterion in frontline employee decisions, recognize CO as beneficial when limited opportunity for customer engagement exists, and avoid efforts to curtail CO's costs at the frontline employee level.

Motivating IS security compliance: Insights from Habit and Protection Motivation Theory

Employees’ failure to comply with IS security procedures is a key concern for organizations today. A number of socio-cognitive theories have been used to explain this. However, prior studies have not examined the influence of past and automatic behavior on employee decisions to comply. This is an important omission because past behavior has been assumed to strongly affect decision-making.To address this gap, we integrated habit (a routinized form of past behavior) with Protection Motivation Theory (PMT), to explain compliance. An empirical test showed that habitual IS security compliance strongly reinforced the cognitive processes theorized by PMT, as well as employee intention for future compliance. We also found that nearly all components of PMT significantly impacted employee intention to comply with IS security policies. Together, these results highlighted the importance of addressing employees’ past and automatic behavior in order to improve compliance.

Employee commitment in the post-acquisition integration process: The effect of integration speed and leadership

Summary We draw on a behavioural decision making framework and the M&A and leadership literatures to examine the effect of post-acquisition integration speed and leadership on the commitment decisions of employees to stay with acquired target firms during the integration process. We propose that fast integration motivates employees to stay, and that effective leadership can enhance this effect. Drawing on conjoint analysis and data on 2912 commitment decisions nested within 91 employees, we find that fast integration has a positive effect on employees’ motivation to stay with the firm, and that the more the leadership style of their supervisor is characterized as relational, contextual, inspirational, supportive, and stewardship-based, the stronger this effect of fast integration. We discuss implications of our work for the M&A literature.

Examining the Pipeline Into Educational Administration

Purpose: Studies show that there are far greater numbers of individuals certified to be educational administrators than of positions requiring such certification. Yet concerns regarding shortages abound, in part because of widespread perceptions of a lack of interest by teachers and administrative certificate holders in administrative work. This study takes a close look at the pipeline into educational administration to determine whether decisions on the supply side, demand side, or both are responsible for the movement (or lack thereof) of individuals into administration. Research Design: This study employs survey and administrative data from 2002 to 2006 to track a sample of administrative certificate earners in Illinois through the pipeline into administrative positions. Using application and job offer information, the authors identify who applied for administrative jobs, received job offers, and accepted administrative positions and assess using logistic regression models factors associated with the decisions of prospective employees and employers in this labor market. Findings: Although a majority of respondents attempted to obtain administrative positions within 2 years of completing administrative certification, a substantially smaller percentage actually became administrators. This study reveals that approximately 30% of eligible respondents are lost at each stage—application, job offer, and job acceptance. Conclusions: Multiple factors contribute to the loss of prospective administrators from the pipeline into educational administration. The findings suggest that more job-specific training opportunities and greater support and encouragement throughout the transition process would stem some of the loss of prospective administrators.

Employee Decision-Making and Expensing of Employee Stock Options

Employee Decision-Making and Expensing of Employee Stock Options

Management of Safety and Quality and the Relationship with Employee Decisions in Country Grain Elevators

Human factors play an important role in the management of safety and quality in an agricultural work environment. Although employee actions and decisions have been identified as a key component of successful occupational safety programs and quality management programs, little attention has been given to the employees' role in these types of programs. This research explored two safety relationships that have theoretical connections but little previous research: the relationship between safety climate and quality climate, and the relationship of the safety and quality climates between the organizational level and the group level within a workplace. Survey data were collected at three commercial grain handling facilities from 177 employees. Employees also participated in safety and quality decision-making simulations. Significant positive predictions were noted for safety and quality climate. Decision-making predictions are also discussed. This research suggests that organizational safety is an important predictor of group safety. In addition, recognizing the larger role that supervisors play in group workplace behavior, more should be done to increase employee perceptions of group-level involvement in quality climate to promote more quality-oriented decision-making by employees.

Factors that Influence University Employees to Commute by Bicycle

The environmental, economic, and health benefits of bicycling provide motivation for policy makers to promote bicycling as a means of transportation. Research has linked sociodemographic factors, individual attitudes, and characteristics of the social and physical environments to the decision to bicycle. A study was conducted to identify and estimate the effects of individual and sociodemographic factors on the decisions of university employees to bicycle to work in the context of a bicycle-friendly community with historically high bicycling rates. Results of binary logistic regression with data from an annual campus travel survey at the University of California, Davis, indicated that for university employees, individual attitudes and preferences were key determinants of bicycling, whereas sociodemographic factors such as age, income, and gender did not have direct effects on bicycling. Because many studies have found gender to influence bicycling significantly behavior, gender-specific models were developed, and several significant interaction effects were identified in the final model. Having a graduate degree and rating parking costs as important had positive effects on bicycling for women, whereas only rating travel costs as important had positive effects for men. For both genders, bicycling comfort and liking to bicycle increased the likelihood of commuting by bicycle, whereas general need for a car, need for a vehicle for work activities, liking driving, and rating travel convenience as important decreased the likelihood of bicycling.

Is Selection the Answer for Encouraging more Employee Autonomy?

When companies embrace new business models to become more innovative or customer focused they often need to inspire their employees to think differently about how they approach their jobs. And in some cases this can be extraordinarily diffi cult. Companies with long, established histories of providing strict oversight of even the smallest employee decisions, for example, will have a hard time implementing new initiatives that are intended to empower employees and allow them to make autonomous decisions. Indeed, employees are often slow to embrace new levels of autonomy even if doing so is in their own best interest. And although employee resistance to change is natural, if management does not deal with it effectively then new initiatives will fail. Consequently, executives committed to making change happen may want to implement new incentives and performance management programs to help overcome employee resistance. Unfortunately, certain types of employee behavior and decision-making processes are harder to infl uence with traditional management tools. For these situations, managers are faced with a dilemma: do they bring in new people who think and approach decisions in a way that is better aligned with new business strategies or do they apply management controls aimed at motivating resistant employees to change the way they approach decision making? Fortunately, new research by Dennis Campbell of Harvard University provides some insight to managers facing this dilemma. Campbell explored the role of selection in helping management ensure that employees embrace new strategic initiatives— especially those that require employees to approach decisions in new ways. Specifi cally, he studied whether different recruitment and selection tactics impact the likelihood that employees will engage in practices that are aligned with the organization’s new strategic objectives.

Who leaves, where to, and why worry? employee mobility, entrepreneurship and effects on source firm performance

AbstractWe theorize that the value provided by the firm's complementary assets has important implications for the exit decisions of employees and their subsequent effects on the firm's performance. Using linked employee‐employer data from the U.S. Census Bureau on legal services, we find that employees with higher earnings are less likely to leave relative to employees with lower earnings, but if they do, are more likely to create a new venture than join another firm. Employee entrepreneurship has a larger adverse impact on source firm performance than moves to established firms, even controlling for observable employee quality. Our findings suggest that in knowledge intensive settings, managers should focus on tailoring compensation packages to help minimize the adverse impact of employee entrepreneurship, particularly among high performing individuals. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Learning Effects of Monitoring

ABSTRACT This study investigates the relationship between monitoring, decision making, and learning among lower-level employees. We exploit a field-research setting in which business units vary in the “tightness” with which they monitor employee decisions. We find that tighter monitoring gives rise to implicit incentives in the form of sharp increases in employee termination linked to “excessive” use of decision-rights. Consistent with these implicit incentives, we find that employees in tightly monitored business units are less likely than their loosely monitored counterparts to: (1) use decision-rights; and (2) adjust for hard information, in the form of historical performance data, in their decisions. These decision-making patterns are associated with large and systematic differences in learning rates across business units. Learning is concentrated in business units with “loose monitoring” and entirely absent in those with “tight monitoring.” The results are consistent with an experimentation hypothesis in which tight monitoring of decisions leads to more control but less learning. Data Availability: The data used in this study cannot be made publicly available due to confidentiality agreements with the participating organization.

Expatriate compensation packages: what do employees prefer?

PurposeHeterogeneous employee preferences may encumber employers' attempts to standardize expatriate compensation packages. The purpose of this paper is to outline an empirical approach that informs employers about their employees' preferences concerning an international assignment.Design/methodology/approachUtility theory and conjoint measurement techniques are applied. Employees, it is argued, derive utility from the multiple characteristics of the assignment in terms of working conditions, career prospects, and living conditions. Employees perceive that utility relative to their country‐specific status quo. Such preferences may be measured with conjoint analysis.FindingsTo illustrate the methodology, German and Spanish employees in one company were given the scenario of an assignment in the USA. Measured preferences, though partly heterogeneous, were systematically related to the home country's institutional and cultural environment (societal effect).Research limitations/implicationsMore countries should be included in future studies. Studies of this kind may be related to the concepts of institutional and cultural distance.Practical implicationsBased on these findings, worldwide policies and procedures on expatriate compensation packages may be formulated to strike a better balance between standardization and the needs of a heterogeneous global workforce.Originality/valueThe paper presents a first systematic model of the preferences that guide the employee decision to accept or decline an international assignment, and it illustrates how these preferences can be measured.

Aggressive reactions to abusive supervision: The role of interactional justice and narcissism

In this study, we explore personality and situational conditions in which negative leadership - specifically, abusive supervision - is associated with aggressive behavior in subordinates. That is, we examine the role that interactional justice and narcissism play in an employee's decision to respond aggressively to an abusive supervisor. We demonstrate that interactional justice mediates the relationship between perceptions of abusive supervision and subsequent employee aggression. In addition, we demonstrate that narcissism interacts with interactional justice perceptions to predict workplace aggression. We find that individuals with high levels of narcissism are the employees who are most likely to respond aggressively when they interpret their leader's behavior as abusive.

A supervisor like me: Race, representation, and the satisfaction and turnover decisions of public sector employees

AbstractStudies of race representation in public organizations illustrate the importance of bureaucrat race in determining client‐level outcomes. Building “upward” from this research, this study examines how supervisor race impacts outcomes for street‐level bureaucrats using data from a nationally representative sample of public schools. Employing multiple estimation methods, we find that, consistent with the predictions of representation theory, teachers report higher job satisfaction and turn over less often when supervised by an own‐race principal. We also find that race congruence impacts the tangible and intangible organizational benefits teachers receive, and, moreover, that race congruence impacts white and African American employees differently. Most troubling, we find evidence that black teachers earn substantially less in supplemental pay when they work for a white principal, even when compared to white teachers in the same school. © 2011 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

An Experimental Investigation of the Interaction Among Combinations of Formal Mechanisms and Social Norms

Employees often make decisions that involve a trade-off between improving the performance of the own business unit or department and improving overall firm performance. Previous research has shown that such decisions are shaped by formal mechanisms such as incentive and information systems as well as by the descriptive social norms of the firm. This study explicitly recognizes that employees are subject to multiple formal mechanisms and investigates a specific aspect of a combination of formal mechanisms, namely the extent to which each formal mechanism motivates employees to act in the firm’s best interest. Relying on theory from social psychology, we hypothesize that (1) combinations in which not all formal mechanisms motivate employees to act in the firm’s best interest (i.e. misaligned combinations) lead to a lower degree of employee decisions that are in line with the firm’s best interest than when all formal mechanisms motivate employees to act in the firm’s best interest (i.e. aligned combinations) and (2) descriptive social norms will drive employee decisions in case of misaligned combinations but not in case of aligned combinations. The results of our experiment are consistent with these hypotheses. Our results contribute to the stream of research that investigates interactions between formal mechanisms and social norms by explicitly taking into account that firms implement multiple formal mechanisms and by investigating the role of a typical characteristic of a combination of formal mechanisms.

Beyond Simple Utility: Incentive Design and Trade–Offs for Corporate Employee–Entrepreneurs

To strengthen the theoretical foundations of incentive system design for corporate entrepreneurship, we develop a moderated model of new venture participation, integrating financial, risk, and effort factors to more comprehensively understand the limits of economic utility maximization theory. We make explicit the trade–offs and opportunity costs for corporate employee–entrepreneurs. We use a conjoint field experiment to collect data on 1952 decisions made by 61 corporate employees to test how risk and effort moderate an employee's decision to participate in a new corporate venture. We find that these factors do interact to affect the choice to engage in corporate entrepreneurship projects.

Service employee behaviour: the role of compliance and risk taking

This paper looks at the decision-making process that determines the amount of effort frontline service employees will expend in delivering a service in a business-to-business context. Using theories in behavioural economics and interactional and social psychology, the paper develops and presents a model of employee decision-making. Managerial implications, which have the potential to enhance the marketing of business-to-business services and directions for future research in this area, are indicated.

The effects of employer matching and income risk in 401(k) plans

Using a simple life-cycle model, this paper studies the effects of employer matching and income risk on employees' 401(k) participation and contributions. We find that both employer matching and income risk have a large impact on employee decisions. The effects differ for different income and age groups.