Measures Of Organizational Effectiveness Research Articles

Customer Service Focus and Mission Articulation as Measures of Organizational Effectiveness in Higher Education Institutions: Driving Student Success

Customer Service Focus and Mission Articulation are fundamental measures of organizational effectiveness reflecting the extent to which institutional values are manifested in structures, systems, human resources, and outcomes. Many higher education institutions are interested in better satisfying the needs of students and their families, alumni and benefactors, governments, and employers, to fulfill the aspirations of society at large. To analyze Mission Articulation and Customer Service Focus in higher education, 52 faculty members and administrators from institutions in more than 16 countries were surveyed using the Human Synergistics International Organizational Effectiveness Inventory® (OEI®) Survey. Results revealed that scores from total respondents fell below the Constructive Benchmarks for both parameters, and below the Historical Average (50th percentile) for Customer Service Focus. Subgroup analysis revealed that scores from private and public not-for-profit institutions fell below both the Historical Averages (50th percentiles) and the Constructive Benchmarks for each of the two parameters. By contrast, for-profits approached the Constructive Benchmarks and public for-profits scored significantly higher than not-for-profit subgroups. For Customer Service Focus, scores from faculty, male and female subgroups fell below the Historical Average, while administrators approached the Constructive Benchmark scoring significantly higher than the faculty subgroup. We recommend strengthening the relationship between students and their higher education institutions by improving Mission Articulation and sharpening the focus on student educational needs and outcomes.

External Adaptability of Higher Education Institutions: The Use of Diagnostic Interventions to Improve Agility

External Adaptability is an outcomes measure of organizational effectiveness reflecting proficiency levels in responding to external change. Many higher education institutions are interested in reshaping their goals to better meet the needs of a growing global market. To analyze External Adaptability, 52 higher education faculty and administrators from institutions in more than 16 countries were surveyed using the Human Synergistics International Organizational Effectiveness Inventory® (OEI®) Survey. Results revealed that External Adaptability scores fell below both the Historical Average (50 th percentile) and the Constructive Benchmark. Subgroup analysis revealed that scores were below the Historical Average for faculty, administrators, males, females, and private- and public not-for-profits. By contrast, scores approached the Historical Average (50 th percentile) in private for-profits, and exceeded the Constructive Benchmark in public for-profits. Trends for slightly higher scores were noted for administrators and males as compared to faculty and females respectively. To improve agility in higher education institutions, further diagnostic analysis of organizational decision making is warranted. The Performance Triangle diagnostic model is discussed and the use of the Agilityinsights Diagnostic™ Survey from Sphere Advisors AG is recommended. Attaining high External Adaptability is critical for the future of higher education.

Does Discretionary Internet-based Behavior of Instructors Contribute to Student Satisfaction?

Although there is empirical research that supports the relationship between employee citizenship behaviors and positive measures of organizational effectiveness, little is known about how this link performs over the Internet in educational settings. This study examines the effects of discretionary Internet-based behavior of 270 instructors using e-resources on satisfaction with the teaching service of 15,367 students at a Spanish university. The argument developed is that these voluntary Internet-based behaviors, operationalized as ‘cybercivism’ (i.e., care and help for university’s information system and its student-users), comprise contextual activities that ameliorate some of the recognized deficits in virtual contexts, support the teaching-learning process across the Internet and, hence, increase student satisfaction. Previously, the paper argues on the uniqueness of cybercivism as compared with conventional citizenship behavior by contrasting the experiential differences between face-to-face and virtual interactions. Confirmatory factor analysis results supported the distinctiveness of cybercivism. Unlike conventional citizenship behavior, individual cybercivism was also found to be positively associated with student satisfaction with teaching service as rated in each university center. Since this positive impact mainly occurred in a virtual environment, the results suggest that discretionary Internet-based behavior may contribute to student satisfaction ‘on the other side of the Web.’

Navigating a Rough Terrain of Public Management: Examining the Relationship between Organizational Size and Effectiveness

This study examines the relationship between size and effectiveness of 97 US federal government organizations in combination with relevant mediating variables. The dependent variable, actual goal attainment, is considered as a measure of organizational effectiveness. The number of full-time employees and budget size, the independent variables, are considered as measures of organizational size. Mediating variables considered are goal ambiguity measures, the number of programs, the proportion of professionals in the organization, and institutional location (independent agencies versus agencies inside executive departments). The path analysis corroborates an inverted U-shaped relationship between the number of employees and organizational effectiveness. Furthermore, the relationship between budget size and organizational effectiveness is found to be negative and log-linear, and the relationship is partially mediated by target-specification ambiguity and timeline ambiguity.

Measuring organizational effectiveness to develop strategies to promote retention in public child welfare

Abstract Public child welfare agencies are under pressure to improve organizational, practice and client outcomes. Related to all of these outcomes is the retention of staff. Employee intent to remain employed may be used as a proxy for actual retention. In this study public child welfare staff in one Midwestern state were surveyed using the Survey of Organizational Excellence (Lauderdale, 1999) and the Intent to Remain Employed (Ellett, Ellett, & Rugutt, 2003) scales to assess the extent to which constructs such as perceptions of organizational culture, communication and other areas of organizational effectiveness were associated with intent to remain employed. A number of statistically significant relationships were identified which were presented to the public agency for use in the development of strategies for organizational improvement. Data were also analyzed regionally and based on urban/suburban/rural status to enable development of targeted approaches. This case study presents an example of how ongoing measurement of organizational effectiveness can be used as a strategy for organizational improvement over time in the child welfare system.

Collective Turnover at the Group, Unit, and Organizational Levels: Evidence, Issues, and Implications

Studies of the causes and consequences of turnover at the group, unit, or organizational level of analysis have proliferated in recent years. Indicative of its importance, turnover rate research spans numerous academic disciplines and their respective journals. This broad interest is fueled by the considerable implications of turnover rates predicting broader measures of organizational effectiveness (productivity, customer outcomes, firm performance) as well as by the related perspective that collective turnover is an important outcome in its own right. The goal of this review is to critically examine and extract meaningful insights from research on the causes and consequences of group, unit, and organizational turnover. The review is organized around five major “considerations,” including (1) measurement and levels of analysis issues, (2) consequences, (3) curvilinear and interaction effects, (4) methodological and conceptual issues, and (5) antecedents. The review concludes with broad directions for future research.

How Information Management Capability Influences Firm Performance

How do information technology capabilities contribute to firm performance? This study develops a conceptual model linking IT-enabled information management capability with three important organizational capabilities (customer management capability, process management capability, and performance management capability). We argue that these three capabilities mediate the relationship between information management capability and firm performance. We use a rare archival data set from a conglomerate business group that had adopted a model of performance excellence for organizational transformation based on the Baldrige criteria. This data set contains actual scores from high quality assessments of firms and intraorganizational units of the conglomerate, and hence provides unobtrusive measures of the key constructs to validate our conceptual model. We find that information management capability plays an important role in developing other firm capabilities for customer management, process management, and performance management. In turn, these capabilities favorably influence customer, financial, human resources, and organizational effectiveness measures of firm performance. Among key managerial implications, senior leaders must focus on creating necessary conditions for developing IT infrastructure and information management capability because they play a foundational role in building other capabilities for improved firm performance. The Baldrige model also needs some changes to more explicitly acknowledge the role and importance of information management capability so that senior leaders know where to begin in their journey toward business excellence.

Organizational culture and effectiveness: A study of values, attitudes, and organizational outcomes

That organizational culture influences firm effectiveness is an assumption implicitly held by many managers and management researchers, although few empirical studies have provided detailed insight into the relationship. This manuscript addresses this dearth of research by examining employee attitudes as a potential mediator of the relationship between organizational culture, as operationalized by the competing values framework [Quinn, R.E., Beyond Rational Management. San Francisco: Josey-Bass; 1988.], and diverse measures of organizational effectiveness. Results of this study, which was conducted in 99 healthcare facilities across the US, provide evidence that suggests that employee attitudes mediate the culture–effectiveness relationship.

The Burden of Dealing with Poor Performers

Using Albert Hirschman's (1970) theory of exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect as measures of organizational effectiveness, this study examines the response of supervisors to dealing with poor performers. In recent years, the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board has focused its Merit Principles Surveys (MPS) on issues directly linked to its role—prohibited practices, retention, grievance and discipline, and so on—and the role supervisors play in their cause and remedy. In the 2000 MPS, there are a number of items that address supervisory efforts in dealing with “poor performers.” These run the gamut from identifying performance discrepancies through providing feedback and developmental opportunities to seeking removal. There are also items that assess the supervisors' perceptions of difficulties in engaging in these activities. Using regression analyses, the author examines these factors with respect to their impact on individual supervisors' perceptions of their own organizational engagement. The performance appraisal process and management support prove especially important in maintaining positive supervisory attitudes.

Theorizing about the impact of strategic human resource management

In this article we theorize about the impact of strategic human resource management (SHRM). Specifically, we outline a framework (derived from our review, integration, and extension of the theoretical foundations of SHRM) that we posit will provide scholars with the theoretical tools necessary to (i) develop construct measures of organizational effectiveness and (ii) generate prescriptive SHRM models that can accurately explicate and evaluate the primary linkages of SHRM (i.e., the linkages among organizational strategies, SHRM, and organizational effectiveness).

Measuring the Effectiveness of Disaster Management Organizations

This study proposes introducing the ‘client-stakeholder’ as a partner in measuring public sector disaster management effectiveness. Combining multiple constituency and goal attainment theories, an analysis was made of Israel's Home Front Command. Combining responses of key managers in this disaster agency along with those of a representative national sample of Israel's urban population, effectiveness was measured by matching stated organizational goals against the perception of their provision by client-stakeholders. Goal perceptions were found to substantially differ from and focus on only a small number of officially stated goals. The results suggest that a disaster organization's stated goals, upon which most measures of organizational effectiveness are based, are not necessarily those perceived or even used by its client-stakeholders to gauge effectiveness. In addition, factors contributing to these perceptions are not necessarily related to the organization or the services it provides. This stands in sharp contrast to traditional measures of organizational effectiveness based on internal performance measures and highlights the need to reevaluate the role of the client-stakeholder in measuring disaster management organizational effectiveness.

Measures of organizational effectiveness: private and public sector performance

This study provides a platform for the comparison of measures of internal structures and processes associated with organizational effectiveness in the private and public sectors. The study is based on a sample of 11,352 cases from 28 private and 41 public sector organizations. Nine measures associated with organizational effectiveness are identified and then empirically derived for each sector. These measures are then compared across the two sectors. Following the application of rigorous statistical procedures, the authors conclude that the effectiveness measures applied in both the private and public sectors are significantly different. The ramifications of these results are discussed.

Measures of strategic alliance performance: an analysis of construct validity

This study evaluates the construct validity of measures of the performance of strategic alliances in 34 equity strategic alliances (SAs) and 45 contractual SAs. We discuss the content validity of existing measures in the light of current concepts of SA performance. Empirical results show that the fulfilment of strategic goals, and other organizational effectiveness measures of SA performance – such as overall performance satisfaction and net spillover effects – capture different underlying factors. The latter two measures display convergent validity. The results also support the discriminant validity of these two measures with respect to contractual changes and survival, but not with respect to longevity. Building on our findings, we propose an expanded definition of SA performance that considers both outcome and process performance.

Examining the Relationship Among Miles and Snow's Strategic Types and Measures of Organizational Effectiveness in NCAA Division I Athletic Departments

Miles and Snow's typology of strategic types — prospectors, defenders, analyzers, and reactors — was used to identify different organizational strategies within intercollegiate athletics in the United States. Specifically, in order to examine the relationship between strategy and organizational outcomes, namely, (a) athletic achievement, (b) student-athlete graduation rates, and (c) compliance with Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, Division I athletic directors ( N = 172) were surveyed by mail. The majority of the departments (55.8%) used an analyzer strategy. Analyses indicated that prospector departments had the best athletic achievement, prospector and defender departments had higher graduation rates than analyzers, and defender departments were most compliant with Title IX. Results demonstrate the importance of examining the multidimensional nature of organizational effectiveness in relation to organizational strategy.

The application of a diagnostic model and surveys in organizational development

Examines the relationship between employees’ responses to the Organizational Diagnosis Questionnaire and ratings of organizational effectiveness in two organizations. Preziosi’s (1980) Organizational Diagnosis Questionnaire (ODQ), and Steele’s (1987) Organizational Effectiveness Questionnaire (OEQ), were distributed to employees in two Australian companies, and a total of 349 useable responses were obtained. Factor analysis of the ODQ yielded six meaningful factors which were interpreted in terms of the original sub‐scales of the ODQ as proposed by Preziosi. Factor analysis of the OEQ gave rise to two positively correlated effectiveness factors. Cronbach alpha reliability estimates were obtained for each of the original ODQ sub‐scales and for the six sub‐scales derived from the factor analysis of the questionnaire responses. Reliabilities for the two sets of sub‐scales were comparable, but with the factor‐based scales giving slightly higher reliabilities. Comparison of mean scores derived from the two organizations showed that significant differences existed for the organizational effectiveness measures, and for several of the measures derived from the ODQ. Regression analysis showed that the difference in the effectiveness rating of the two organizations can be partially explained in terms of the differences in responses to the ODQ.

A measure of organizational effectiveness in nursing management in relation to transactional and transformational leadership: a study in a Swedish county hospital.

This paper presents an empirical study of the influences of transactional (TA) and transformational (TF) leadership on organizational effectiveness (OE), measured as the degree of goal attainment and the quality of nursing care (NQ). The study subjects were all head-nurses and assistant head-nurses at a medium-sized hospital in Sweden (n = 23). The methods used were questionnaires and interviews. The multi-leadership questionnaire earlier developed by Bass was modified and named the Leadership Nursing-Effectiveness Questionnaire (LNEQ), comprising 84 items using Likert-type scales. The study showed low mean scores on OE (2.19) and TA (1.05) but high mean scores on NQ (3.17) and TF (3.84). The results suggest that the degree of TA and TF leadership had a low and insignificant connection with OE in this hospital organization. The study did not support the statement that organizational units exposed to a higher degree of TA and TF leadership at the same time show a high degree of OE, as has been shown in studies in other cultural contexts and organizations.

A Classification of Facets of Athlete Satisfaction

Although several authors have emphasized the need to treat the athlete as the prime beneficiary of intercollegiate athletics, there has been little effort to assess athlete reactions to their experiences. This paper stresses the uniqueness of athletic teams, develops a rationale for measuring athlete satisfaction, and emphasizes that athlete satisfaction can be used as a measure of organizational effectiveness. A classification of the various facets of satisfaction in athletics is presented. A facet is classified by the following criteria: whether it (a) is task- or social-related, (b) is an outcome or a process, and (c) affects the individual or the team. The extent to which the identified facets of satisfaction are exhaustive, exclusive, and internally homogeneous is discussed.

20 Years Later — What Have We Learned on the Measurement of Organizational Effectiveness Since Steers Model?

In his seminal work, published in the ASQ (1975), Steers identified the main problems concerned with the measurement of organizational effectiveness (OE). He suggested a general model for the understanding of OE, and pointed out specific aspects as possible constituencies of OE. The present paper survey recent developments in relation to the nature and notion of OE and suggests a set of criteria mat could be used for the measurement of OE. The ideas are based on a content analysis of 46 papers which were published during the last five years in established academic journals. These papers referred to various definitions and methods of measurement for OE. In conclusion, then, OE should be measured by a multiple set of components, with reference to the multidimentionality of the OE (eg. dependence on culture environment, sectorial belonging, purposes of the work), and the availability of measurement tools.

Women-Only Colleges

The continuing controversy over whether segregated women-only colleges are socially acceptable and educationally efficacious has skirted the issue of appropriate measures of organizational effectiveness. Instead, the debate has focused on whether these colleges are out of date in today's climate, which calls for gender equality in the distribution of institutional resources. Successful legal challenges against men-only colleges have further undermined social legitimacy of women-only colleges [20]. The women's liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s stimulated widespread social attitudes and established legal conditions that make the position of single-sex colleges untenable, because some argue that separate education is inherently unequal, unnatural, and hindering of students' development in college [11]. In the current social climate it has been increasingly difficult for women's colleges to attract able students and to raise funds needed to function effectively, let alone to make programmatic improvements. As late as 1960, although some had already ceased to exist, there were still about three hundred women's colleges in the United States. Since then the number of women's colleges has decreased dramatically, and their combined total student enrollment has dropped precipitously. At latest report only eighty-four remain in operation; seventy-one are four-year, and thirteen are junior colleges [31]. In 1967, 9.3 percent (absolute number: 147,400) of all full-time women students were enrolled in women-only colleges, but by 1987 enrollment had dropped to only 2 percent (absolute number: 52,000) [9]. At present, none are being founded and, among those still functioning, more are making plans to merge with other institutions, transform themselves into coeducational institutions, or close. In light of this trend it is important to note that the decline of women's colleges has been stimulated neither by demonstrable empirical evidence concerning student development nor by any cogent theory about institutional effectiveness. As the number of women-only schools has declined, researchers have begun to present arguments and data suggesting positive effects on female student development [1, 3, 12, 13, 15, 16, 19, 22, 26, 27, 28]. Thus, this study seeks to address important yet neglected measures of organizational effectiveness for women-only colleges. We consider claims of educational efficacy (that is, how well the colleges develop their students) on three dimensions: academic development, social skill development, and career preparation [7]. Most previous evaluations of effectiveness among women's colleges have focused exclusively on measuring the impact of these institutions on postcollege career achievements of their former students [13, 15, 21, 22, 26, 27, 28]. By contrast, this study examines additional elements of student development - that is, academic ability, social self-confidence, and career preparation - during their college years. We take social self-confidence as both a cause and an effect of social skill development. Review of the Literature The focus of this research is to examine the capacity of two types of institutions (women-only and coed) to develop women's potential along academic, social, and career dimensions. We organized this review of previous research into three separate sections - one for each of the three dimensions. Academic Ability as an Indicator of Academic Development When institutional climate places a high value on achievement, students' talents are more fully developed [6]. Encouragement from teachers and peers is reported to be important for development of interest in academic achievement [14]. Tidball [22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28] and graduates of women's colleges interviewed on TV [8] contend that in women's colleges women are valued and women students feel free to excel in their work without fearing a loss of femininity. Smith [19] found that students at women's colleges evaluate their academic program as stronger than their coeducational counterparts do. …

The Subconscious in Organizational Control: The Case of Mitsubishi Heavy Industry

I. Culture and the Study or Organization ALTHOUGH LONG TRADITIONS of theory and research in the social sciences address the orientations of employees to their jobs and places of employment, there has been in recent years a convergence of interest, from highly diverse quarters, in the problem of control within, and commitment to, the work organization. From industrial psychologists to organizational sociologists to Marxist labor process theorists, a focus on the efforts by companies to foster dependence, loyalty and identification in a workforce has superseded older scholarly concerns with industrial attitudes, performance, and conflict. Part of the reason for the renewed attention to the question of commitment and cohesion is a widening theoretical interest in the role it plays in modern organizational control and its connection to culture. Since many centuries ago fundamental work values of Western countries stemmed from the Protestant Work Ethic, with its advocacy of individual achievement, personal responsibility and independence (Weber, 1920). Adam Smith reinforced these values by his moral philosophy in which he claimed that individuals should pursue their self-interest in order to have better consequences for society (Campbell, 1981). However, in recent years, increased attention has been paid to the concept of culture and its interorganizational implications, its relation to interpersonal network in organizations and to its contribution to organizational effectiveness. In a large and growing number of studies scholars have attempted to define, refine, and apply a cultural prospect to the illustration and analysis of organizational phenomenon. The concept of culture has in recent years been used with increasing frequency in the area of organizational studies, obliging experts to define it. In the field of sociology, culture is used as a collective noun for the symbolic and learned aspects of human society. Kluckhohn (1962) states that culture consists of patterns transmitted by symbols and the essential core of culture consists of traditional ideas and especially their attached values. Geertz (1973) also encounters culture with signs and symbols as instruments for collective communication. Hence, culture refers to a shared system of values, norms, and symbols which have become crystallized in the institutions they have built together. The continuing interest in the concept of culture suggests a change in emphasis in the study of organizations. The focus on culture is associated with a stress on the subjective realm, and a turn to interpretative and qualitative approaches in sociology, and organizational sociology in particular (Hofstede, 1986). The rise of organizational symbolism should involve the introduction into organization theory of formerly remote disciplines, including anthropology and history (Turner, 1990 quoted in Rowlinson & Hassard, 1993). In the field of organizational behavior the concept of culture has been welcomed in the hope that it might make organizational behavior relatively less reliant on the empirical analytical sciences and more dependent on the hermeneutic sciences. When attributed to organizational contexts, culture and its related perceptions present a relatively new approach and precise lexicons combining with a type of original hypothetical variables to the study of organization. According to Dobson (1990) culture in organization is observed as the result of shared organizational values that are stipulated in an unspoken, implicit contract between employer and employee. Berlin & Reimel (1992) who presented the organizational culture as a system of values which are meaningful to and shared by all members of the organization. Therefore in that concern, culture is principally perceived as the communal principles governing subjective and effective aspects of membership in an organization, and the means whereby they are shaped and expressed. Within the broad perception of culture, special emphasis has been attributed to the shared meanings, norms, and values that govern workrelated behavior, in particular the functionalist and structural causes and consequences of cultural forms and their relationship to various measures of organizational effectiveness (Kunda, 1992). …