Organizational Rewards Research Articles

Knowledge management enablers, knowledge sharing and research collaboration: a study of knowledge management at research universities in Malaysia

Universities need to be aware of the impact of knowledge management (KM) in order to become world-class academic institutions. This research fills an unexplored gap in regards to the impact of KM enablers (i.e. trust, knowledge self-efficacy, reciprocal benefits, top management support, organizational rewards, organizational culture, KM system infrastructure and KM system quality, openness in communication, and face-to-face (F2F) interactive communication) on knowledge sharing (KS) that supports research collaboration by faculty members. No prior research has focused on the impact of KM enablers that influence research university members to share knowledge. A self-administered questionnaire was employed on members of five research universities in Malaysia to collect data; subsequently, 421 usable responses were analysed using partial least squares path modelling. KS by members was influenced by trust, organizational rewards, organizational culture, KM system quality, openness in communication, and F2F interactive communication; in addition, research collaboration was strongly influenced by KS. The KM–KS–collaboration model shows a KM influence of individual–organizational–technological–communication constructs that encourages KS by members to support research collaboration.

Why Projects Fail: Knowledge Worker and the Reward Effect

The purpose of this article is to show that a vital and critical element may be missing when discussing project management. This element refers to the reward effect and to the coordination between information flow and organizational processes. The average organizational reward system causes a knowledge worker to reject almost all project management initiatives, which is one of the reasons that a significant proportion of many projects fail. The importance of understanding the reward effect lays in its possible contribution toward the development of management tools which may help an organization better manage its project management initiatives. For coordination between information flow and organizational processes, the three following variables must be controlled within prescribed ranges: the number of dependent editing transitions that the data must undergo during the management process, the delay time for data values reaching the decision maker, and the availability of the information systems.

노동보상이 금융공기업 종사자의 조직유효성에 미치는 영향 -자아효능감의 조절효과 검증-

The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of work rewards on the organizational effectiveness including mediator role of self-efficacy, and also the work rewards was divided into three categories of task rewards, organizational rewards and social rewards, organizational effectiveness into two categories of organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Research findings are follows; First, job diversity and job challenge of task rewards, payment of organizational rewards, superior support of social rewards have a positive influence on organizational commitment. Second, job diversity, job challenge and job autonomy of task rewards, superior support of social rewards have a positive influence on job satisfaction of finance public enterprise employees. Third, tested mediator role of selt-efficacy between work rewards and organizational effectiveness, and found out moderating roles between work rewards and organizational commitment, but its role between organizational rewards and job satisfaction was found only in job stability of organizational rewards. In terms of the results of this study, the theoretical and practical implications of the findings were discussed and directions for future research were presented.

Transformational Leadership: An Initial Investigation in Sales Management

Numerous conceptual and empirical articles in sales management emphasize the influence sales managers can have on various job-related responses of sales personnel, such as job satisfaction, motivation, and performance. When examining this issue, the preponderance of literature has considered a leadership style where sales managers clarify for and communicate to salespeople the selling role and indicate to them how they can receive valued organizational rewards in exchange for successful performance (i.e., “transactional leadership”). Recent research in organizational behavior has found that an alternate leadership approach—”transformational leadership”—can engender improved work-related responses of employees over those produced through transactional leadership. This paper reports results of a study, however, which found that a transactional approach may be preferable to a transformational style for enhancing salespeople's affective and behavioral responses.

The effect of financial incentives on performance: A quantitative review of individual and team‐based financial incentives

We meta‐analysed 146 studies (n = 31,861) to examine the effects of individual and team‐based financial incentives on peoples' performance and to explore potential moderators. The overall effect size of the individual incentives (116 studies) was positive (g = 0.32). Moderator analyses revealed effect sizes to be larger for field studies (g = 0.34) than for laboratory studies (g = 0.29), larger for qualitative (g = 0.39) than quantitative performance measures (g = 0.28), and smaller for less complex tasks (g = 0.19). Results on team‐based incentives (30 studies) indicated a positive effect regarding team‐based rewards on performance (g = 0.45), with equitably distributed rewards resulting in higher performance than equally distributed rewards. This relationship was larger in field studies and smaller for less complex tasks. In addition, our results show that the effect of team‐based rewards depends on team size and gender composition. Implications for organizational rewards and suggestions for future research are discussed.Practitioner points Our study demonstrates the importance of rewarding employees as teams to motivate them to a greater extent. The results show that equitably distributed rewards lead to higher performance than equally distributed rewards. Managers should design their appraisal and feedback process for individual team members and the team as a whole. Our results provide useful information regarding the creation of appropriate reward systems. Differences in reward characteristics, team composition, and distribution rules offer practical implications for factors on organizational (i.e., personnel selection, frequency, and amount of rewards), team (i.e., team characteristics, type of performance measurement), and individual level (i.e., importance of rewards, personality).

An Ecological Perspective: Therapist Practices with Children who Experienced Abuse and Trauma

This qualitative study explores experiences of psychotherapists working in public settings with children who experienced abuse and trauma. The study sought to investigate and understand factors which intruded upon and or supported the capacity for psychotherapists in a community clinic to cognitively process and understand supportive and constraining aspects of the professional context. An important focus was the organisational context of psychotherapists. Nine psychotherapists were interviewed to gain an understanding of their experiences with and perceptions of the needs of children including factors considered important in therapy, the influences of their organisational context, and challenges and rewards of the work. An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of interview data revealed three broad themes identified as relational, organisational, and systemic. An ecological metaphor was used to conceptualise these themes as they related to psychotherapists and the children with whom they worked. The findings demonstrated the importance of the psychotherapist's organisational context on how they experienced their work. This study also considered the need to conceptualise therapy with children who have experienced trauma within the interaction of the child and therapist's relational, organisational, and systems context.

팀 혁신활동을 위한 지식공유 활동 영향요인에 관한 연구

Innovation becomes norm rather than exception in today`s business, and accordingly firms are working on how to make their employees to work smarter using information systems and technologies. Smart work demands virtual collaboration and cooperation among team members in different places and different time. Sharing of knowledge among team members in these innovative activities are critical in every sense for the successful performance. This study explores the antecedents of knowledge sharing among team members in team-based innovation activities. Five factors (pleasure of knowledge sharing, self-efficacy, management support, rewards, and system usage) are identified through extant review of literature and an instrument is adopted and validated from previous studies. The instrument is adminitered against 138 individuals in and across 54 teams in a telecommunication firm. Except self efficacy, all the paths in the proposed research model is confirmed with different levels of relational coefficients towards the levels of knowledge sharing and innovation activities in teams. Surprisingly, findings indicate that intrinsic pleasure of sharing is most critical than management support, organizational rewards or system usage. This study fills the research gap in team management. Findings provide important implications for managing teams in coming virtual and smart environment.

Information Technology Governance: Applying the Theory of Planned Behaviour

The importance of IT governance has received increasing attention in the recent years. Extensive literature addresses top management and organisational issues of IT governance. However, recent findings suggest that people issues in IT governance equally deserve attention. Guided by the Theory of Planned Behaviour, this study examines the influence of IT practitioners and management guidance on the extent of their participation in IT governance initiatives. A quantitative study was conducted among IT practitioners in Malaysia. Data analysis using Partial Least Squares suggests that subjective norms and perceived behavioural controls on IT practitioners result in greater participation in IT governance initiatives. However, attitudes do not have significant relationship with participation in IT governance initiatives, in contrast with prediction of the theory. Further analysis reveals that awareness and perceived importance of IT governance are the two most important factors from the practitioner perspective. As for management guidance, organisational processes and reward system are the most important, closely followed by organisational structure. The findings reaffirm that IT governance requires control in the form of organisational structures, processes, goal settings and reward system to encourage desirable behaviours in IT governance initiatives.

Organizational Citizenship Behavior and Role Breadth: A Meta‐Analytic and Cross‐Cultural Analysis

AbstractWe provide a meta‐analysis of the empirical literature concerning role breadth, defined as the degree to which employees consider organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) to be an inherent part of their job. Results based on a combined sample size of 9,222 showed: (a) Confucian Asians consider OCB as part of their job to a greater extent than do their Anglo counterparts; (b) affiliative kinds of OCB (e.g., helping, conscientiousness, and courtesy) are more likely to be considered part of one's job than are change‐oriented OCB (e.g., voice, taking charge, and initiative); and (c) OCB‐inclusive role breadth correlates strongly with OCB (rc = .43). The implications of these findings for human resources practice, such as competency modeling, employee selection and training, organizational rewards, and employee‐employer/supervisor relations, are discussed. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Organizational Rewards System and Employees’ Satisfaction at Telekom Malaysia Be

This study was conducted to identify the dimensions of organizational rewards system that may contribute to employees’ satisfaction at Telekom Malaysia Berhad in Selangor. A total of 327 self-administered questionnaires were distributed to the respondents. The response rate return is 89 percent. Analysis using the regression and Pearson Correlation indicated that all the predictors had significant contribution to employees’ satisfaction at Telekom Malaysia Berhad. Salary was found to be the most important factor that contributes to employees’ satisfaction while incentives were found to be the least important factor. From the findings, it can be concluded that organizational rewards system has positive influences on the employees’ satisfaction at the organization they worked for. DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2013.v4n3p281

Student Acceptance of Knowledge Management Systems: Evidence from a Canadian Business School

This study investigates the factors affecting the perceived usefulness of and the intention to use knowledge management (KM) systems by students. The research model posits that the intention to use KM systems in higher education depends on perceived usefulness, perceived user-friendliness, organizational rewards, and community of practice. A survey method was used to collect the data for the study. We used a convenience sample consisting of undergraduate students enrolled in various business courses in a Canadian University. The data obtained from a sample of 120 students were initially factor analyzed to identify the relevant factors. Separate factor analysis was conducted for each of three types of measures – the independent measures, the intermediate measures, and the dependent measure. In order to test the proposed hypotheses, we employed the method of multiple regression analysis. The findings suggest that organizational rewards and KM system characteristics positively impact perceived usefulness, and that user-friendliness, usefulness, organizational rewards, and community of practice are significant predictors of intention to use KM system. This analysis reveals that business schools need to focus on usefulness and practical relevance of knowledge captured in knowledge management systems. This is in line with the current debate in management education regarding the appropriateness of methods employed to teach business knowledge. Organizational rewards being a significant predictor of intention to use KM systems corroborate the expectancy theory. Therefore, it is important for business schools to communicate on the usefulness of their KM systems but also to encourage its usage through different incentives.

Incentive Alignment and Risk Perception: An Information Security Application

Technologies and procedures for effectively securing the enterprise in cyberspace exist, but are largely underdeployed. Reasons for this shortcoming include the neglect of the role of stakeholder perceptions in organizational reward systems, and misaligned incentives for effective allocation of resources. We present a methodology for practitioners to employ, with examples for identification of perverse incentives—situations where the interests of a manager or employee are not aligned with those of the organization—and for estimation of the damage caused by incentive misalignment. We present our revision to the risk perception model developed by Fischhoff and Slovic. We also present the results of our findings from our interviews of 42 information security executives across the U.S. about the role of risk perception and incentives in information security decisions. We discuss how to identify and to correct misalignments, to develop efficient incentive structures, and to include perceptual principles and security governance in making information security a property of the organizational environment. This research contributes to the practice and theory of information security, and has several implications for practitioners and researchers in the alignment of incentives and symmetrization of information across organizations.

Job embeddedness in China: how HR practices impact turnover intentions

This study explores the process by which human resource (HR) practices embed employees in organisations and reduce turnover intentions. In particular, we investigate the mediating effects of the organisational job embeddedness dimensions (links, fit and sacrifice) in the relationship between HR practices and employee turnover intentions. Hypotheses are tested using data from 308 professional staff in China. As predicted, performance appraisal and organisational rewards increased fit and decreased turnover intentions. Employee development activities increased employees' perceptions of sacrifice but greater awareness of sacrifice was associated with greater turnover intentions. The results suggest that organisations hoping to use HR practices to deter turnover may experience the greatest success by using performance management and reward systems to increase perceptions of organisational fit.

Organizational commitment and market orientation of Nigerian non‐oil exporting companies

PurposeThis paper aims to test the relationships between organizational commitment and market orientation within the context of the non‐oil sector of a developing country.Design/methodology/approachCross‐sectional data was collected from 190 managers of non‐oil exporting companies. Multiple regression analysis was adopted to test the impact of organizational commitment on market orientation.FindingsThe analysis of the data shows that organizational commitment affects market orientation positively and that top management belief and the organizational reward systems are important in the implementation of market orientation. However, the use of cross‐sectional data limits the measurement of the impact of organization commitment on market orientation over a long period.Practical implicationsMarket orientation can be improved upon through concerted efforts in building organizational commitment. This can be achieved either individually or by combining organizational commitment with reward system and top management belief.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to the understanding of market orientation antecedents within the non‐oil sector of the Nigerian economy.

Knowledge Transfer Activation Analysis: Knowledge Trade Perspective

This article empirically analyzes a model of knowledge transfer activation based on trade in knowledge market perspective. We aim to provide insights into trade in the knowledge market through an empirical analysis. Using a research model with a theoretical basis on knowledge sharing culture and trade in knowledge market, we conducted an empirical study using data on enterprises' knowledge management systems (KMSs). The results revealed that 62.6% of the variance in knowledge transfer activation was explained by the items of knowledge organization, knowledge strategy, KMS, and knowledge reward through knowledge sharing culture and trade in knowledge market. This suggests that horizontal organization and a strategy that pursues an organization's objectives positively impact knowledge sharing culture, while knowledge technology (KMS) and reward positively affect the trade in knowledge market. We therefore conclude that trade in knowledge market is an important factor to activate knowledge transfer. This article contributes to lay the foundation for future work on empirical study of knowledge transfer based on trade in knowledge market.

Impact of Organizational Control and Reward Systems on Service Quality: An Empirical Study

This study explores the influence of the organizational control and reward systems on the commitment and service quality of staff. A group of front-line service staffs handling sales tasks served as a sample to test the hypothesized model. Results using a structural equation model indicated that service staffs who operate under a behavior-based control system have higher organizational and professional commitment, and thus produce a higher service quality compared with those who work under an outcome-based control system. Moreover, a higher fixed salary percentage leads to higher professional commitment of service staffs. Organizational and professional commitments positively influence service quality. The implications of the findings are considered and suggestions for future research are provided.

Individual connectedness in innovation networks: On the role of individual motivation

Explanations of knowledge sharing in organizations emphasize either personality variables such as motivation or network-related structural variables such as centrality. Little empirical research examines how these two types of variables are in fact related: how do extrinsic and intrinsic motivation explain the position that an employee entertains in a knowledge sharing network within an organization? Much is to be gained from a better understanding of how, empirically, psychological variables and an organization's network interrelate (Burt et al., 1998; Kalish and Robins, 2006; Moch, 1980; Teigland and Wasko, 2009). Still, this line of enquiry is not pursued much (Foss et al., 2009). This paper integrates the structural characteristics known to be implicated in knowledge transfer typically focused on in the social network literature on the one hand, with the motivational perspective commonly identified in the organization literature. This study examines how motivation – extrinsic (expected organizational rewards, reciprocal benefits) and intrinsic (knowledge self-efficacy, enjoyment in helping others) – might explain how employees may be better connected in the full knowledge transfer network or might be engaged more in inter-unit knowledge transfer. Connectedness (closeness centrality) and inter-unit ties are well-known to contribute to knowledge transfer. Analyzing data from a survey at two large European organizations, this study, counterintuitively, shows that neither intrinsic nor extrinsic motivation explain an individual's favorable position in a knowledge transfer network.

Organizational practices and employee engagement: a case of Malaysia electronics manufacturing firms

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine the impact of organizational practices on employee engagement based on 97 sample respondents from a multinational electronics firm that is based in Malaysia.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses a survey; SPSS and multiple regression analysis.FindingsThe three dimensions of organizational practices, namely organizational communication, reward and recognition and employee development, explained 43.2 percent of the variance in employee engagement. This study also evidenced the significant relationship between organizational practices and employee engagement.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the body of knowledge regarding the important influence of organizational practices on employee engagement. The management may use the findings to further enhance organizational practices that lead to more engaged employees.

Competencies, Personality Traits, and Organizational Rewards of Middle Managers: A Motive-Based Approach

People are rewarded for how they behave, but what do middle managers get for their behavior at work? In this article, we draw upon socioanalytic and role theories to linking competencies, personality, and organizational rewards among a sample of middle managers. The goals of this study were (a) to identify a motive-based competency structure and (b) to understand the antecedents and consequences of these motive-based dimensions. We found that a three-factor structure formed by “achievement,” “power,” and “affiliation” fit our data well. Each of the three dimensions showed a distinct pattern of personality correlates. Power was found to have the strongest impact on organizational rewards. Our results further suggested that personality impacts organizational rewards mainly through the motive-based dimensions. Theoretical and practical contributions are discussed.

“Why is <em>Gender</em> a Form of Diversity?”: Rising Advantages for Women in Global Indian Law Firms

Preliminary fieldwork suggests that despite many obstacles still present in the larger profession, women in India’s big, elite law firms are not discriminated against or disadvantaged as compared to their male peers. This “gender does not matter” narrative is not uncommon among successful women in high status work. However, what is unique is that this narrative is substantiated by their personal experience: they receive similar organizational rewards (pay, promotion, client attention) and interactional status among clients, peers and superiors alike. This is an intriguing finding in that it does not correspond to mostly gender-disadvantageous accounts of women in high status professions universally, nor in the legal profession specifically. Furthermore, contemporary comparative research suggests that the Indian legal profession is more resistant to feminization than its global counterparts, and that even exaggerated Bar Council of India Admission figures suggest than only about 10 percent of India’s legal population (estimated at about 1.3 million) are women. This research attempts to preliminarily navigate this new territory of innovation and formal equality within the Indian legal profession by exploring the contours of this advantage across different levels of analysis.