Viewpoint Of Employees Research Articles

Creative participation in construction firms: bridging creativity and innovation

An intricate evolution of mainstream theories follows the growing need to explain employees’ commitment and engagement. Our understanding of these work-related phenomena and behaviour has improved but creativity and innovation as desired indicators are still often treated as coexisting constructs with very little attention given to a state of willingness of an individual to even consider contributing ideas. In this research we investigate the influence of knowledge and understanding, perceived radicality, personality dimensions, and favouring of ideas on employee willingness to creatively participate in order to trace its existence in propagation of ideas. A total of 76 construction and non-construction professionals participated in between-subject quasi-experiments. We also proposed IPO-based radicality of ideas construct from the viewpoint of employees involved in the processes of transformation. The research findings show that experts with deep understanding of the work are more likely to contribute highly radical ideas to decision-makers than less knowledgeable employees. Furthermore, personal factors that impact employee willingness to creatively participate have been valued higher than organisational factors. Personality dimensions by The BigFive Inventory have shown no effect on willingness to contribute ideas, while favouring of ideas showed a significant effect. In general, the findings show similarities with some studies of consumer willingness to participate in co-creation processes and thus indicate that firms may be studied as dynamic internal markets of ideas.

A study on the evaluation of Japanese expatriates from the view point of local employees : the case of Japanese overseas subsidiaries in China

A study on the evaluation of Japanese expatriates from the view point of local employees : the case of Japanese overseas subsidiaries in China

Barriers to Islamic Banking Growth- Bank Employees’ Perspective from Pakistan

The concept of Islamic banking (IB) in Pakistan traces its roots back to late 70s. Since its inception it has had its fair share of growth. The IB industry, despite its growth during the last few years, has not fully nurtured and its share in banking industry is moderate 6.4%. This study explores the view point of bank employees of Gujranwala Division Pakistan regarding this statistics. By using a sample of 126 respondents, comprising Islamic bank employees (IBE) and conventional bank employees (CBE) to investigate the factors responsible for low market share of Islamic banking in banking industry. Our findings indicate that according to over all sample small network of branches, inadequate info about Islamic banking services, ignorance to teachings of Islam, trust deficiency towards Interest free banking and location of banks as the main reason for mere rise of Islamic banking. The factors change if we divide our sample in subsamples of IBE and CBE. Although considerable work in this area has been done in world and Pakistan is no exception to this however, the focus of majority of research is on the customers view point. This paper explores the roots of modest share of IB from bank employees’ angle.

Customer service understanding: gender differences of frontline employees

PurposeDespite widespread acknowledgement of the importance of employees to the success of service firms, research into how well frontline service staff understand service remains scarce. This study aims to investigate what constitutes good customer service from the viewpoint of frontline service employees and to explore gender differences in particular.Design/methodology/approachThe data were collected from 876 frontline employees across a wide range of service industries. An automated text analysis using Leximancer explored general and gender‐specific patterns in employees' customer service understanding.FindingsIrrespective of gender, frontline service staff share the perception that the pillars of good customer service are listening skills, making the customer happy, and offering service. Males have a more functional, outcome‐oriented interpretation of customer service; females focus more on the actual service interaction and emotional outcomes.Practical implicationsBy acknowledging gender‐based dissimilarities in the customer service understanding of frontline service employees, the efficiency of recruitment and training processes will be enhanced.Originality/valueThis study contributes to limited work on service models of frontline staff and shows that gender can explain some differences. This study also adds another dimension to the understanding of gender effects in services, beyond its influence on customers' quality perceptions and behaviours. The results are important for services marketing research and for managers in charge of recruiting and training frontline service staff.

E-government services in Oman: an employee's perspective

Many developing countries are in the initial stages of implementing electronic government to improve public sector services and deliver them in an effective and efficient manner. Although e-government efforts in most Gulf countries started during the early 2000s and huge investments have been made by respective governments, implementation and diffusion has been extremely laggard compared to that in Western nations. The objectives of this study are to provide a comprehensive review of e-government practices, assess the levels of e-government implementation and evaluate critical success factors of e-government implementation in the Sultanate of Oman. Using a quantitative survey-based study in three key public service agencies, this paper identifies from the viewpoint of government employees, the most salient factors that are currently influencing the development and implementation of e-government in Oman.

Demonstrating the importance of interactional socialization in organization

AbstractThe purpose of this study is to analyse the level of knowledge sharing among employees in different relationship styles. This is helpful to understand whether the interaction among employees in each relationship has a positive effect on the level of knowledge sharing. This study analyses the effect of social activities on the level of knowledge sharing from the viewpoint of employees. The result shows a positive outcome, indicating that managers need to pay more attention to the interactions among organizational members. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Effect of relationship style on innovation performance

The purpose of this study is to analyze how different relationship styles of employees in the hi-tech industry influence innovation performance. This is helpful to understand whether the intimacy among employees in each relationship style has a positive effect on innovation performance. This study takes employees in the hi-tech industry as subjects and finds that the relationship style of an organization can effectively predict the innovation performance. Hence, an organization needs to establish and maintain the relationship among members, encourage high intimacy among them and increase their work efficiency to improve the innovation performance of the organization. This study presents the following management implications: (1) this study analyzes the effect of social activities on innovation performance from the viewpoint of employees. The result shows a positive outcome, indicating that managers of the hi-tech industry need to pay more attention to the intimacy among organizational members; (2) for the hi-tech industry, improving innovation performance within an organization can start with individual employees. The relationship of an employee with the organization, supervisor and colleague and, thus, the innovative performance of the organization can be improved via job rotation, implementation of the mentoring system, and role-playing activities. Key words: Relationship style, innovation performance, high-technical industry.

雇用者の仕事と家庭生活から見た日本の「ファミリー・フレンドリー」企業の課題

雇用者の仕事と家庭生活から見た日本の「ファミリー・フレンドリー」企業の課題

Exploring the Influences of Internal Branding on Employees' Brand Promise Delivery: Implications for Strengthening Customer–Brand Relationships

ABSTRACT Internal branding is increasingly seen as a doctrine to ensure employees’ delivery of the brand promise by shaping employees’ brand attitudes and behaviours. However, few studies, if any, have been conducted to understand the internal branding process from the viewpoint of employees who are the end receivers. Therefore, this study aims at exploring employees’ perceptions toward the internal branding process. It identifies the relevant mechanisms and describes how internal branding affected service employees. The challenges of its success are uncovered and discussed. Finally, managerial implications and future research directions are provided.

The positive effect of leadership profile of managers on work environment and business performance

While quality of leadership is considered one of the key success factors of business performance, a pleasant work environment also plays a critical role in enabling employees to perform at their best. This detailed study of a group of Thai managers provides a close look at the leadership profiles of middle-level managers, and assesses their impact on business performance and on the work environment from the viewpoint of employees. The results confirm that strong leadership has a definite correlation with performance results and impact on the work environment. The result also showed a contrarian relationship between the work environment and business performance. In other words, happier teams usually delivered lower performances. Regardless of leadership abilities, the result showed that male managers created a better work environment than female managers but that teams led by female managers delivered a stronger business performance than teams led by male managers.

Works councils and environmental investment: Theory and evidence from German panel data

Firms may underinvest in local environmental protection even from the viewpoint of owners and employees, but works councils may mitigate this. We show increases in environmental investments when councils are present may be employee led, firm led or jointly led. We test these alternatives using German panel data, finding strong, robust relationships between environmental investments and council activities. This effect is largest when councils are active in environmental matters. We generally do not find effects on investments that reduce environmental impacts remote from the workplace or other investments. We conclude that higher environmental investments in establishments with councils are largely employee led or jointly led.

Issues in the Transition to Teams

The process of “retrofit” change from traditional work structures to a team structure is described from the viewpoint of employees engaged in the process. Results of extensive interviews and factor analysis of a questionnaire administered to a large group of incipient team members revealed four general factors of concern in this transition to teams. Relationships between these factors and performance improvement over time were found.

What do Australian school leavers want of the industry?

Relatively little research has thus far been conducted on the perceptions and intentions of those individuals who are likely to enter the tourism/hospitality industry work-force. This study has investigated the relationships among a set of management communication values, a set of tourism/hospitality industry employment interest levels, personal control perceptions and a range of socio-demographic measures within a sample of Australian high school students from a major tourism destination. Many students ranked tourism/ hospitality industry employment highly and regarded the management communication values associated with understanding the viewpoint of employees and with being able to talk easily with management most important. The management communication value associated with ease of communication was found to be the most powerful predictor of a tourism/hospitality industry employment interest. The implications of the results for management within the tourism/hospitality industry context are explored.

Employee-Employer Perception towards Healthcare Scheme for Employees of Business Enterprises in Bangladesh: An Empirical Study

There is an increasing need for the management of the large and medium scale businesses to provide health care schemes for their employees as people in all areas as well as commercial area are becoming more health conscious. This study firstly aims at understanding the present status of health care facilities available at the workplace from the viewpoint of both employees and employers. The study then asked the respondents whether a health care scheme is feasible in their organizations and how could they benefit from the health care scheme. Some actions have been suggested in terms of the overall findings that were revealed in the study. Finally the prospect of such health care scheme has been evaluated to understand how far would employers go in keeping their workers happy for ensuring health care for this vulnerable sector. Doi: IIUC Studies Vol.2 2004