Managers’ perceptions of trust in the workplace in times of strategic change

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcos Komodromos ◽  
Daphne Halkias ◽  
Nicholas Harkiolakis

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore and present current trends and developments in the field of managers’ perceptions of trust and the management of change in Cyprus, Greece and Romania, in a period of strategic organizational change. A total of 126 managerial employees (communication managers, operation managers, quality control managers, safety & environmental managers, and office managers) working in different departments of organizations in Cyprus, Greece, and Romania respond and complete the online questionnaire.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative study using an online questionnaire with interview questions was developed to arrive at the study’s findings. To acknowledge relevant perceptions of trust and the management of change during organizational change in different organizations in Cyprus, Greece and Romania, unique questions helped to support the research results and highlight themes that emerged from interview sessions with the study participants.FindingsThe findings highlight the need for organizational leadership to establish mutual trust and effective communication with managerial employees for successful cooperation during times of strategic change and enhanced overall employee performance. This study is relevant for researchers and academics in the areas of change management and communication, presenting current trends and developments in perceptions of trust and change management in Cyprus, Greece and Romania. It may also help them achieve recognition among their peers and colleagues from other disciplines.Research limitations/implicationsAn important implication of the study derives from the finding on the uniqueness of the knowledge and information work carried out by the respondents and the impact that this can have in their working environment and their productivity. As a result of the above, this study provides indications to recruiters and managers regarding a number of desirable and necessary skills, and motivational factors that future employees may need to have or develop in order to carry out their job efficiently and effectively.Practical implicationsResearching managerial employees’ perceptions of trust and the management of change in organizations can have significant implications for human resources management during a time of strategic change.Social implicationsThis research study may contribute to the management and communication area in European countries in stimulating new approaches to management and social issues and in the corporate management practice.Originality/valueThis study produces new knowledge instead of summarizing what is already known in a new form in the area of management and corporate communication. The researcher reports the results in analysis and interprets the results by discussing possible implications and solutions.

2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (10) ◽  
pp. 1-5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Arnold

Purpose – This paper discusses the important issues relating to the management of corporate change and includes an appropriate case study. It will benefit all business leaders, particularly those involved with the development of change strategies and the implementation of those strategies. Paul Arnold’s experience will improve their understanding of change management by providing the tools that will enable them to effectively understand and assess the progress of change initiatives in their organization. Findings – Every organization is subject to change, and virtually, everyone within the organization will be affected by change. Such is the impact of a rapidly evolving marketplace that organizational change management has become a permanent feature of the business landscape. To be effective, organizational change must be able to genuinely transform the business. Yet in the relentless search for new techniques to revolutionize the way things are done, and in the haste to manage technological discontinuities, many organizations fail to adequately develop, communicate and execute their vision for the change. Originality/value – The recently developed Change Index discussed in this paper provides a concrete and clear measurement system that enables management to effectively understand and assess progress of change initiatives in their organization. The paper benefits all business leaders, particularly those involved with the development of change strategies and the implementation of those strategies.


2019 ◽  
Vol 118 (3) ◽  
pp. 158-169
Author(s):  
Dheera.V. R ◽  
Jayasree Krishnan

Organizations that are aiming to successfully implement change needs the support and acceptance of employees who are their key stakeholder. This study analyses the influence of Employees` attitude towards organization change. The research also aims at evaluating the influence of employees’ attitude towards commitment to organization and job after the introduction of change in the organization. The study was conducted among 300 employees who belonged to executive and managerial category from different star rated hotels in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India which are currently embracing organization changes. The findings indicate that employees of the study demonstrate a positive approach towards the change management in their organization. The observations also project that a positive approach by employees towards changes, is a very good indication for organizations to know that their workforce is committed towards the organizational goals. Hence with the support of change agents, adequate communications and by creating awareness about the need for change will result in sustainable growth in the organizations.


2014 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 310-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Tominc

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the impact of global celebrity chefs and their discourse about food on the genre of cookbooks in Slovenia. Design/methodology/approach – Focusing this discourse study on cookbook topics only, the analysis demonstrates the relationship between the aspirations of local celebrity chefs for the food culture represented globally by global celebrity chefs, such as Oliver, and the necessity for a local construction of specific tastes. While the central genre of TV celebrity chefs remains TV cooking shows, their businesses include a number of side products, such as cookbooks, which can be seen as recontexualisations of TV food discourse. Findings – Hence, despite this study being limited to analysis of cookbooks only, it can be claimed that the findings extend to other genres. The analysis shows that local chefs aspire to follow current trends, such as an emphasis on the local and sustainable production of food as well as enjoyment and pleasure in the form of a postmodern hybrid genre, while, on the other hand, they strive to include topics that will resonate locally, as they aim to represent themselves as the “new middle class”. Originality/value – Such an analysis brings new insights into the relationship between discourse and globalisation as well as discourse and food.


2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 791-813 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zilia Iskoujina ◽  
Joanne Roberts

Purpose – This paper aims to add to the understanding of knowledge sharing in online communities through an investigation of the relationship between individual participant’s motivations and management in open source software (OSS) communities. Drawing on a review of literature concerning knowledge sharing in organisations, the factors that motivate participants to share their knowledge in OSS communities, and the management of such communities, it is hypothesised that the quality of management influences the extent to which the motivations of members actually result in knowledge sharing. Design/methodology/approach – To test the hypothesis, quantitative data were collected through an online questionnaire survey of OSS web developers with the aim of gathering respondents’ opinions concerning knowledge sharing, motivations to share knowledge and satisfaction with the management of OSS projects. Factor analysis, descriptive analysis, correlation analysis and regression analysis were used to explore the survey data. Findings – The analysis of the data reveals that the individual participant’s satisfaction with the management of an OSS project is an important factor influencing the extent of their personal contribution to a community. Originality/value – Little attention has been devoted to understanding the impact of management in OSS communities. Focused on OSS developers specialising in web development, the findings of this paper offer an important original contribution to understanding the connections between individual members’ satisfaction with management and their motivations to contribute to an OSS project. The findings reveal that motivations to share knowledge in online communities are influenced by the quality of management. Consequently, the findings suggest that appropriate management can enhance knowledge sharing in OSS projects and online communities, and organisations more generally.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Don Amila Sajeevan Samarasinghe ◽  
Imelda Saran Piri

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact of visual models on the ability of construction students to assess design buildability.Design/methodology/approachThe study engaged 45 construction students from one selected tertiary education institute in New Zealand. The data collection process involved meeting the students face-to-face and demonstrating the VR model to them, after which the students completed an online questionnaire and assessed design buildability using both 2D drawing and virtual reality (VR) models. To make this assessment, the participants considered a residential earth building modelled to promote sustainable building features. The assessment process required the participants to evaluate the design buildability of the same building design using a 2D drawing and a 3D VR model.FindingsThe study found that VR models have significant advantages for assessing design buildability. Students measured 16.80% higher average buildability with the 3D VR model compared to the 2D drawing. The participants in the evaluation felt that the visual model significantly improved the comprehensibility of complex designs, which helped identify and manage design buildability (overall, 83% of participants strongly supported this).Originality/valueThe paper showed construction digitisation such as VR, augmented reality and building information modelling is highly cooperative as it can easily be made available for online learning. Thus, the findings support construction educators use online-based VR learning to promote efficient teaching of design buildability to students.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pyemo Afego ◽  
Imhotep Alagidede

Purpose The purpose of this study is to explore how citizen protests against perceived acts of racial injustice impact on share prices of companies who weigh in on the protests. In particular, corporate statements that directly address the issues around the protests are identified and possible mechanisms underlying how these may impact shareholder value are discussed. Design/methodology/approach The authors first use a qualitative research approach of content and sentiment analysis to track how companies or their chief executive officers (CEOs) present their stance against racial injustice, as represented by their use of linguistic markers. Then, the authors use an event study methodology to assess the response from stock market participants. Findings The findings suggest that CEOs primarily convey their stance using language that is emotive and empathic. In addition, shareholders earn a significant abnormal return of 2.13%, on average, in the three days following the release of the statements. Research limitations/implications This study considered only US-listed companies. The sample size, also, is relatively small. Institutional and cultural differences across countries may also vary. Thus, future research could explore the extent to which the findings generalize to other contexts. Practical implications Results provide insights to top managers who communicate with various stakeholders on emotionally charged social issues. Findings also offer insights on the timing of trades for investors and arbitrageurs. Social implications Findings contribute to the understanding of corporate behaviour in times of social upheaval. Insights from the study may also be used to inform corporate communication decisions about important social issues. Originality/value This study brings into focus the role that affective appeal and moral emotion can play in evoking motivation for corporate activism, and the impact that this has on investor opinions’ formation process.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aasif Ahmad Mir ◽  
Sevukan Rathinam ◽  
Sumeer Gul

PurposeTwitter is gaining popularity as a microblogging and social networking service to discuss various social issues. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has become a global pandemic and is discussed worldwide. Social media is an instant platform to deliberate various dimensions of COVID-19. The purpose of the study is to explore and analyze the public sentiments related to COVID-19 vaccines across the Twitter messages (positive, neutral, and negative) and the impact tweets make across digital social circles.Design/methodology/approachTo fetch the vaccine-related posts, a manual examination of randomly selected 500 tweets was carried out to identify the popular hashtags relevant to the vaccine conversation. It was found that the hashtags “covid19vaccine” and “coronavirusvaccine” were the two popular hashtags used to discuss the communications related to COVID-19 vaccines. 23,575 global tweets available in public domain were retrieved through “Twitter Application Programming Interface” (API), using “Orange Software”, an open-source machine learning, data visualization and data mining toolkit. The study was confined to the tweets posted in English language only. The default data cleaning and preprocessing techniques available in the “Orange Software” were applied to the dataset, which include “transformation”, “tokenization” and “filtering”. The “Valence Aware Dictionary for sEntiment Reasoning” (VADER) tool was used for classification of tweets to determine the tweet sentiments (positive, neutral and negative) as well as the degree of sentiments (compound score also known as sentiment score). To assess the influence/impact of tweets account wise (verified and unverified) and sentiment wise (positive, neutral, and negative), the retweets and likes, which offer a sort of reward or acknowledgment of tweets, were used.FindingsA gradual decline in the number of tweets over the time is observed. Majority (11,205; 47.52%) of tweets express positive sentiments, followed by neutral (7,948; 33.71%) and negative sentiments (4,422; 18.75%), respectively. The study also signifies a substantial difference between the impact of tweets tweeted by verified and unverified users. The tweets related to verified users have a higher impact both in terms of retweets (65.91%) and likes (84.62%) compared to the tweets tweeted by unverified users. Tweets expressing positive sentiments have the highest impact both in terms of likes (mean = 10.48) and retweets (mean = 3.07) compared to those that express neutral or negative sentiments.Research limitations/implicationsThe main limitation of the study is that the sentiments of the people expressed over one single social platform, that is, Twitter have been studied which cannot generalize the global public perceptions. There can be a variation in the results when the datasets from other social media platforms will be studied.Practical implicationsThe study will help to know the people's sentiments and beliefs toward the COVID-19 vaccines. Sentiments that people hold about the COVID-19 vaccines are studied, which will help health policymakers understand the polarity (positive, negative, and neutral) of the tweets and thus see the public reaction and reflect the types of information people are exposed to about vaccines. The study can aid the health sectors to intensify positive messages and eliminate negative messages for an enhanced vaccination uptake. The research can also help design more operative vaccine-advocating communication by customizing messages using the obtained knowledge from the sentiments and opinions about the vaccines.Originality/valueThe paper focuses on an essential aspect of COVID-19 vaccines and how people express themselves (positively, neutrally and negatively) on Twitter.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentina Nicolini ◽  
Fabio Cassia

PurposeThis study aims to examine the different effects that the fear and humor appeals in anti-smoking advertisements for children have on their affective reactions to the advertisements, on their beliefs about smoking and on their behavioral intentions to smoke.Design/methodology/approachThis paper presents the findings of a qualitative research study conducted in Italy with children aged from 8 to 11 years.FindingsThe results indicated that the humor appeal is a useful method for conveying a social theme in a pleasant way and creating a likable character that becomes an example for children to imitate; however, it is necessary to employ the fear appeal to make children reflect carefully about the negative consequences of smoking.Research limitations/implicationsThis study examined only children's behavioral intentions derived from anti-smoking advertisements, but future research should also examine their real behaviors after a period following repeated viewing of public service announcements about smoking prevention or other social issues.Practical implicationsUnderstanding how different types of appeals can influence children represents an important result for the prevention of youth smoking and the promotion of healthy lifestyle habits during childhood.Social implicationsUnderstanding how different types of appeals can influence children represents an important result for the prevention of youth smoking and the promotion of healthy lifestyle habits during childhood.Originality/valueFew studies have examined the impact of social advertisements on children, and particularly little is known about the effectiveness of fear appeals on this group.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (9) ◽  
pp. 116-122
Author(s):  
Godwin Nosakhare

Today’s organizations are confronted with the deepest downturn since the great depressions after The World War II. These distortions have necessitated the need for organizations to consider the issue of organizational change. The objective of this study is to examine the impact of strategic change and organizational transformation process in Nigerian organizations; using selected companies from the Telecommunications industry in Nigeria as a case of study. The data collection tool employed by the researcher was the questionnaire approach and the sampling technique employed by the researcher was the Taro Yemmane sampling technique while the hypothesis formulated was tested using the Z-test statistics. The results from the test of the hypothesis showed that strategic change in the Nigerian Telecommunications industry leads to successful organizational transformation. Based on this, the researcher concluded that organizational change can usher in a host of unwelcome and unavoidable side effects and result in the need for the organization to improve productivity, increase morale or re-define the culture of the organization. It was against this backdrop that the researcher recommended that employees need to be allowed to actively take part in meetings and workshops at the onset where the envisaged changes are discussed and management needs to solicit constant feedback from staff throughout the process and take their views into account when restructuring.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Niki Glaveli ◽  
Fotios Vouzas ◽  
Myrsine Roumeliotou

PurposeThe current study provides insights on the application of critical soft TQM practices in primary and secondary education and their impact on teachers' job satisfaction (TJS).Design/methodology/approachBased on a review of the literature related to TQM application in primary and secondary education, six soft TQM elements were traced as critical to the success of TQM implementation in the school environment: participation/involvement in continuous improvement, teamwork, empowerment, appraisal systems/recognition and reward for quality, training and development (T&D) and leadership (vision/commitment to quality culture). Moreover, their relationship to JS was theoretically founded and empirically tested. An online questionnaire was used as the research instrument. The participants were 200 primary and secondary public school teachers working in urban, semi urban and rural regions of Greece. After assessing the validity and reliability of the measurement scales, multiple regression analysis was applied to test the hypothesized relationships.FindingsThe research findings revealed that leadership and empowerment are the most highly implemented TQM practices in primary and secondary education. Moreover, participation/involvement, appraisal systems/recognition and rewards and leadership were the TQM elements that had a positive association with TJS.Practical implicationsThe outcomes of the study are of help to school principals and policy-makers in order to design and implement TQM policies that advance the quality of teaching and the effectiveness of processes in the primary and secondary education system, as well as to satisfy and motivate teachers for continuous improvement.Originality/valueThis was, to the best of our knowledge, the first study that has explored the impact of soft TQM elements on TJS.


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