Work Group Support Research Articles

Determinants of employees’ creativity: modeling the mediating role of organizational motivation to innovate

The study aims to empirically investigate the effects of the work environment and family–work resource spillover on employees’ creativity in agricultural research institutes. Additionally, this research proposes to examine the mediating role of organizational motivation to innovate in the relationships between the work environment and family–work resource spillover on employees’ creativity. Using a sample of 302 researchers from agricultural research institutes in Ethiopia, the hypothesized relationships were tested through the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique. The results reveal significantly positive direct effects of work group support and family–work resource spillover on employees’ creativity. However, the results did not confirm the direct relationships of factors such as sufficient resources, reliable workload pressure, freedom, challenging work, managerial encouragement, and employees’ creativity. The findings of the study contribute to our understanding of work contexts in agricultural research institutes and suggest ways in which administrators can create a conducive working environment to enhance employees’ creativity.

Workplace factors that influence creativity and innovation in micro and small scale enterprises: Enterprise level analysis

This study examines the influence of workplace factors on creativity and innovation in micro and small enterprises (MSEs). The study is based on the componential model of organizational creativity to confirm the determinants of creativity of MSEs in the workplace setting. The study employed a quantitative research approach and a cross-sectional survey design via an adapted questionnaire to gather information from participants. The questionnaire was distributed randomly among 286 respondents from different micro and small enterprises in Woldia city. The results revealed that organizational encouragement, supervisor support, sufficient resources, and absence of organizational impediments are statistically significant and positively related to MSEs’ creativity and innovation; however, challenging work is statistically significant and negatively associated with creativity and innovation. The remaining variables, workgroup support and job autonomy have no statistically significant effect on MSEs’ creativity and innovation. This study is significant in that it enables managers to understand that creativity and innovation success depend on many interrelated variables in the workplace, which must be considered in establishing strategies that encourage and recognize creativity and innovation in micro and small enterprises. This paper contributes to the thin scholarly literature on creativity and innovation in MSEs’ workplace settings by investigating the influence of workplace factors on creativity and innovation.

Key Factors for a Creative Environment in Saudi Arabian Higher Education Institutions

Key Factors for a Creative Environment in Saudi Arabian Higher Education Institutions

Exhausted by social distancing at work: understanding the effects of COVID-19 pandemic in workgroups

PurposeIn the new post-COVID-19 work order, this study aims to examine whether and how individual-level social distancing interacts with workgroup-level socio-affective support to influence employee exhaustion and performance.Design/methodology/approachMulti-level analyses of time-lagged multi-source data from 231 employees nested in 34 workgroups were conducted to test our hypothesized relationships.FindingsAnalyses revealed a significant relationship between social distancing and employee performance via emotional exhaustion. Further, the positive relationship between social distancing and emotional exhaustion was attenuated by workgroup team orientation and support for innovation, and the indirect effect of social distancing on employee performance was weaker in workgroups with a high team orientation and high support for innovation.Originality/valueThis study extends the job demands-resources theory to the new work order and examines the impact of workplace social distancing on employee outcomes in the context of workgroup membership.

Creativity mindset as the organizational capability: the role of creativity-relevant processes, domain-relevant skills and intrinsic task motivation

PurposeThe objective of this study is to examine the structural relationship between creativity-relevant processes, domain-relevant skills, intrinsic task motivation, creativity and the moderating effect of social environment (sufficient resources, workgroup support, realistic work pressure and lack of organizational impediments).Design/methodology/approachA total of 289 valid questionnaires were collected from engineering students in Malaysian universities to test the measurement as well as the structural model using partial least squares (PLS) path modelling.FindingsThis study reveals that while a high level of domain-relevant skills, intrinsic task motivation and creativity-relevant processes influence creativity among the sample of engineering students, social environment acts as an insignificant moderator to the creativity perception. While the statistical results support the structural relationships (direct effects), the social environment shows the insignificant moderating effect (except creativity relevant process to sufficient resource to creativity). Work-group support, sufficient resources and lack of organizational impediments, as the three factors of the social environment, will not have any effect on creativity of upcoming engineers.Originality/valueWhile businesses in the emerging markets mostly neglect the concept of developing creative mindsets among engineering students, in the competitive world of business that is extremely fast-paced, being creative within a business setting will act as a paramount criterion to differentiate. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

Teachers’ Perception of Their Work Environment: Evidence from the Primary and Secondary Schools of Bangladesh

The work environment includes conducive aspects such as (1) organizational encouragement, (2) supervisory encouragement, and (3) workgroup support, as well as toxic conditions like (4) teaching impediments and (5) workload pressure; the objective of the research is which of the factors and what are the elements of those factors teachers perceive as constituting the conducive and toxic environment. The research also outlines the effects of years of experience and the level of teaching on the specified factors. The study used a quantitative-based cross-sectional survey to analyze teachers’ perceptions of their work environment. A questionnaire comprised some background information, and 34 close-ended questions were used to elicit the responses. About 368 (230 males and 138 females) teachers participated in the survey. Structural equation models were constructed, where the five mentioned factors were part of two second-order formative constructs. Independent sample t-test was estimated to outline gender-wise and teaching level-wise (primary and secondary) variation, whereas Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated to check whether the experience was correlated with any of the perceived factors of the work environment. It is found that workgroup encouragement, particularly having good relations with the principal, is the most important factor in the conducive environment of the school. The physical facilities were the least, whereas promoting positive behavior by avoiding conflict and ensuring fairness was the most important aspect of organizational encouragement. Teaching impediments were mostly shaped by how often teachers require dealing with disruptive and violent pupils. Teachers perceived too many after-school meetings, unreasonable deadlines, and office staffs’ inspections enhance their workload pressure. The more a teacher became experienced, the more he or she positively perceived the conducive environment of the school. The findings can serve as a guide for educational policymakers and school administrators to identify which factors in the school environment need urgent attention and modification.

Collaborative Climate and Knowledge Sharing among ESP Teachers: A Mixed Method Study

Research on teacher collaboration emphasizes the key role of collaborative culture for teachers’ functioning; however, there is little empirical evidence to investigate its relationship with knowledge sharing among university ESP teachers. In the present study, the relationship between EFL teachers’ collaborative climate and knowledge sharing was sought. The data were collected through two surveys of 328 Iranian ESP teachers. A Pearson correlation was carried out to investigate the relationship between the two variables of the study. A multiple regression analysis was also run to examine if ESP teachers’ collaborative climate predicts their knowledge sharing. A follow-up interview with 13 ESP teachers was conducted to consolidate the findings and explore the contribution of teachers’ collaborative climate to their knowledge sharing. The Pearson correlation coefficient test demonstrated a significant positive correlation for four measures (organizational culture, the head of department, teachers’ attitude, workgroup support), and the collaborative climate. The results of the multiple regression also indicated that four subscales of collaborative climate were the predictors of ESP teachers’ attitude towards knowledge sharing. Analysis of the interview data, on the other hand, indicated how teachers’ collaborative climate contributes to their knowledge sharing through one of the four main sources, namely helpful atmosphere, encouragement received from the heads of departments, the expectation of reward, and work group support. In line with these findings, several practical recommendations were offered.

Collaborative Climate and Knowledge Sharing among ESP Teachers: A Mixed Method Study

Research on teacher collaboration emphasizes the key role of collaborative culture for teachers’ functioning; however, there is little empirical evidence to investigate its relationship with knowledge sharing among university ESP teachers. In the present study, the relationship between EFL teachers’ collaborative climate and knowledge sharing was sought. The data were collected through two surveys of 328 Iranian ESP teachers. A Pearson correlation was carried out to investigate the relationship between the two variables of the study. A multiple regression analysis was also run to examine if ESP teachers’ collaborative climate predicts their knowledge sharing. A follow-up interview with 13 ESP teachers was conducted to consolidate the findings and explore the contribution of teachers’ collaborative climate to their knowledge sharing. The Pearson correlation coefficient test demonstrated a significant positive correlation for four measures (organizational culture, the head of department, teachers’ attitude, workgroup support), and the collaborative climate. The results of the multiple regression also indicated that four subscales of collaborative climate were the predictors of ESP teachers’ attitude towards knowledge sharing. Analysis of the interview data, on the other hand, indicated how teachers’ collaborative climate contributes to their knowledge sharing through one of the four main sources, namely helpful atmosphere, encouragement received from the heads of departments, the expectation of reward, and work group support. In line with these findings, several practical recommendations were offered.

The Impact of Work Demands and Work Group Support on Emotional Exhaustion among Medical Doctors: A Moderating Analysis

The Impact of Work Demands and Work Group Support on Emotional Exhaustion among Medical Doctors: A Moderating Analysis

The Effect of Employee Involvement on Job Satisfaction

It is known that a high level of job involvement can increase the quality and quantity of work results and eventually lead to job satisfaction. Job involvement concerns to the nature of the tasks carried out, employee's relationship with work group, and the nature of the decision-making process, which is identified as task interdependence, group support, and participation in decision-making. Thus, this study intends to determine the effect of job involvement factors consisting of work group support, participation in decision making, and task interdependence on employees’ job satisfaction. This study obtained data from employees of the Operations and Maintenance of PT. Excelcomindo Pratama Tbk as many as 39 people and the method used in this study is Partial Least Square, namely path analysis.

Work group support as an undervalued resource of small family businesses

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose advances for developing our understandings of valuable resources in small family firms. The focus is on group support behavior within firms. It is proposed that this behavior is unique and valuable within small family firms. Propositions are presented that are built upon previous work in psychology and family business research and is linked to the concept of familiness. Design/methodology/approach Two small family businesses are the two cases used to investigate the propositions. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the owner/manager and several other staff within each firm. Findings The paper presents evidence for the propositions, showing that work group support is unique in family firms as it is based on factors beyond the workplace. These relationships have the potential to be strong, contributing positively to the firm’s competitive advantage. Research limitations/implications Two in-depth case studies of firms are included in this investigation. They are in a similar industry and location. As the findings are similar it lends weight to the evidence for the propositions; however, care should be taken with generalizing to other firms in other industries. Originality/value This research pulls together previous evidence and understandings and applies them to a specific aspect of small family firms that has not previously been examined in depth. The increased understanding can help family firms leverage their unique competitive advantage.

The Role of Leadership in Innovation

OVERVIEW:Organizational and corporate culture clearly play a role in innovation effectiveness, but little work has been done to explore the exact nature of that relationship. To address that gap, the IRI Research-on-Research working group on Innovation Culture analyzed data from the Center for Creative Leadership’s KEYS to Creativity and Innovation survey. Key conclusions include that while challenging work is important in all organizations, the importance of organizational encouragement and work group support differs by organizational factors. The impact of organizational encouragement is most pronounced for organizations with low-control, high-support, or high–risk-aversion cultures. Work group support, while important across all segments studied, has less effect than challenging work or organizational encouragement. This information can be used by managers to drive more effective innovation in the context of an organization’s particular cultural characteristics.

Investigating the Organizational Climate for Creativity/Innovation among Librarians in Academic Libraries in South East Nigeria

AbstractCreativity/innovation of librarians is imperative for the continuing relevance of academic libraries. However, for that to happen, the organizational climate of academic libraries has to be supportive of librarians’ creativity. This study investigated the organizational climate of four academic libraries in Nigeria in relation to creativity. Using a questionnaire as the instrument for collection of data, the study sought to know from a sample size of 103 librarians their perception of the organizational climate of their libraries as it relates to creativity. Six dimensions of organizational climate were investigated: organizational encouragement, supervisory encouragement, work group support, freedom, sufficient resources and challenging work. The findings revealed that work group and organizational encouragement were perceived to be highly positive for creativity. On the other hand, the least supportive dimension for creativity was sufficient resources. These findings reflected the problems/challenges which hinder creativity/innovation in these libraries and the strategies to enhance them as well. The study has implications for management and practice. Limitations of the study were captured and some recommendations for the way forward and for further studies were made.

Fostering Creativity in Creative Environments: An Empirical Study of Saudi Architectural Firms

Architecture, by its very nature is about creativity, not only in design but in all its forms, and therefore it is safe to assert that creativity and innovation are at the root of architectural design practices. This empirical research examines the factors that affect organizational creativity in architectural firms in Saudi Arabia in the context of Amabile’s componential theory. The research sample consisted of 210 professionals from five architectural firms operating in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Structural equation modeling was used to test the research hypotheses. The research findings suggest that management practices, which permit autonomy, risk-taking, rewards for creativity and innovation, have the greatest impact on organizational creativity, briefly defined as the creation of a valuable new product. Furthermore, it can be surmised that other elements of Amabile’s componential theory including lack of organizational impediments, sufficient resources, realistic workload pressure, freedom, challenging work, management encouragement, and work group support have a significant impact on organizational creativity. The study also indicated that organizational encouragement has no significant causal connection with organizational motivation and therefore organizational creativity. The results extend the knowledge and understanding of the factors that affect creativity in exclusively creative environments. In addition, the implications for managerial practices and executive decision-making are explored. Keywords: Organizational Creativity, Management Practices, Organizational Motivation, Amabile’s Componential Theory, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia To cite this document: Ahmed Rashad ElMelegy, Qadir Mohiuddin, Jess Boronico, and Ahmed A. Maasher, Fostering Creativity in Creative Environments: An Empirical Study of Saudi Architectural Firms, Contemporary Management Research, Vol.12, No.1, pp. 89-120, 2016. Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.7903/cmr.14431

System reliability as perceived by maintenance personnel on petroleum production facilities

The aim of this research was to understand the relationship between maintenance staff perceptions of organisational effectiveness and operational reliability in petroleum operations. Engineering measures exist that assess the effectiveness of maintenance and reliability of equipment. These measures are typically retrospective and may not provide insight into what impedes system reliability. Perceptions of organisational effectiveness by the workforce may provide a predictive measure that could improve our understanding of the human factors that influence system reliability.Maintenance personnel (n=133) from nine petroleum production facilities completed a survey as part of a study of human factors and maintenance reliability. 69 respondents (51.9%) provided comments to an open-ended question in the survey, and these data were analysed using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis to extract themes. Four super-ordinate themes were identified from the analysis: 1) Communication and access to information, 2) Efficiency of current work systems, 3) Need for better workgroup support, and 4) Management impacts on the workplace. We found a significant relationship between the frequency of the four super-ordinate themes and the facility reliability level as measured by ‘Mean Time Between Failures’: χ2(6,N=158)=16.2, p=.013. These results demonstrated that operational effectiveness might be differentiated on the basis of survey-derived perceptions of maintenance personnel.

The effect of organizational culture on knowledge sharing among academic staff holding an administrative position in university

Knowledge sharing is the primary source of gaining competitive advantage and achieving long term success. Knowledge sharing is affected by many factors and the foremost of them is the culture of an organization. Organizational culture will help in developing the knowledge sharing practices among the members of an organization and achieve organizational objectives. The aim of the present study; firstly, to find out how the culture affects knowledge sharing in UTM (Universiti Teknologi Malaysia) and which of the cultural factors are more prevalent in developing knowledge sharing practices; secondly, to determine the level of knowledge sharing among the academic staff holding administrative positions in various faculties and departments of the university. Using quantitative approach, data was collected through survey questionnaire from a sample of 132 respondents. The analysis was carried out using descriptive and inferential statistics. Three of the dimensions of OC, workgroup support, information technology, and social interaction are found to be most significant in UTM, while reward system is found to be insignificant. Knowledge sharing is found to be high among academic staff holding administrative posts. The study concludes that organizational culture factors, workgroup support, information technology and social interaction are the most important factors that are helping in enhancing knowledge sharing in UTM. Finally, some recommendations related to the future studies are also included like investigating all levels and incorporating both administrative and academic staff, comparison with other public sector universities and between public and private sector universities.

CREATING INNOVATIVE PRODUCT IN FINANCIAL ENGLISH

Most of authentic textbooks and other teaching material on Financial English for higher education deal with internationally generalized issues without covering national peculiarities. Such a gap in the educational literature market can be filled only with customized material, catered for the specific purposes, to train students in their particular area of specialization and to provide them with abundant autonomous workload. The article describes the experience of Russian-speaking ESP teachers who approach creating an innovative e-training educational program in English of Finance and Accounting as a business project. A complex research to analyze university and students’ needs and teachers’ expectations is carried out. To estimate the input versus prospective output SWOT analysis for the project is conducted. Outlined in the article are the challenges the project faces, and some ways of solving such problems as copyright, IT or workgroup support and others are suggested. Features of an innovative educational product for Financial English are identified.

The impact of collaborative work climate on knowledge sharing intention

The current study investigated the relationship between collaborative work climate and intention to share knowledge in Fars Regional Power Distribution Company (FRPDC), Iran. Using stratified random sampling method, a sample of 214 employees were selected for further analysis. The analysis of the data showed that the relationship between the perception of collaborative work climate and intention to share knowledge is significant and positive. The results also indicated that there are significant relationships between dimensions of collaborative work climate (work group support, immediate supervisor support, business unit culture and employees attitude) and intention to share knowledge. The values of R2 also indicated that workgroup support, business unit culture, immediate supervisor and employees’ attitudes have moderate, moderate to high, low and moderate impact on intention to share knowledge respectively. Key words: Collaborative work climate, knowledge, knowledge sharing, climate.

A cross‐level analysis of organizational creativity climate and perceived innovation

PurposeThe concept that creativity climate facilitates innovation outcome is well‐received, yet it has not been widely tested in non‐Western countries. To fill the gap between concept and practical value, this study adopted the eight‐dimensional model of organizational creativity climate proposed by Amabile and associates with the aim of investigating the cross‐level relationship between creativity climate and employee‐perceived innovation in an Asian work place, i.e. Taiwan.Design/methodology/approachUsing survey data of 398 employees from different companies of Taiwan, the effect of organizational creativity climate on innovation was explored. Furthermore, the mediating effect of employees' work motivation was also examined.FindingsBy employing hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), statistical analysis indicates that 27 percent variance of perceived innovation could potentially be explained by creativity climate. Five out of the eight dimensions, namely, organizational encouragement, supervisory encouragement, work group support, sufficient resource and challenging work, relate significantly to perceived innovation with the mediation of work motivation.Research limitations/implicationsAs most companies are reluctant to reveal their objective innovation data, the authors had to rely on self‐reported data that are inevitably subjective in nature. Moreover, the fact that only 13 organizations were sampled may weaken the generalizability of the findings to more diverse business contexts.Originality/valueThe findings of this study contribute to advancing organizational climate research and innovation management in a non‐Western country. In addition, by surveying this topic in an innovation‐active context, i.e. Taiwan, this study uncovers rich information on organizational creativity issues for interested parties and for future research.

Employees' external representation of their workplace: Key antecedents

Drawing on attitude theory, this study investigates the drivers of employees' expression of favorable opinions about their workplace. Despite its theoretical and managerial importance, the marketing literature largely ignores the topic. This study advances prior research by developing, and empirically testing, a conceptual framework of the relationship between workgroup support and favorable external representation of the workplace, mediated by emotional responses to this support. The present research investigates four new relationships: between workgroup support and emotional exhaustion, workgroup support and organizational commitment, workgroup support and job satisfaction, and emotional exhaustion and external representation of the workplace. Based on a sample of over 700 frontline service employees, this study finds that workgroup support affects favorable external representation of the workplace through various emotional responses (i.e., emotional exhaustion, organizational commitment and job satisfaction). In addition, the results identify employees' organizational commitment as the most important determinant of favorable external representation of the workplace, followed by job satisfaction and reduced emotional exhaustion. These results suggest that companies should develop practices that encourage workgroup support and organizational commitment to achieve favorable external representation of the workplace.