Conceptualizing employee strengths at work and scale development

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (10) ◽  
pp. 1273-1288
Author(s):  
Vikas Rai Bhatnagar
Keyword(s):  
Contextual Factors ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Management Science ◽  
Superior Performance ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Personality Psychology ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Two Phases ◽  
Employee Disengagement

Purpose There is a compelling need for developing constructs in management science for higher relevance rather than adapting constructs developed in other domains and applying them in organizations. An inquiry in the relevance of the construct of strength developed in personality psychology and applied to organizations is compelling, as deploying strengths leads to humanizing organizations. With growing disengagement of employees at work, this study makes a significant contribution by conceptualizing strengths in the context of organizations and carrying out two studies on independent samples for developing a psychometrically validated 14-item scale for measuring it. Design/methodology/approach The study has two phases. The first phase is conceptual in nature where the authors deploy the social systems theory and use recent empirical research evidence in conceptualizing the construct of employee strengths at work (ESAW). In the second phase, the author carry out two studies on independent samples for ascertaining the factor structure by carrying out EFA and then confirming it by doing a confirmatory factor analysis. Findings The construct of ESAW, relevant for management science, has five factors: potential deployment, person-jot fit, managerial sensitivity, prompt assimilation and joy. The psychometrically validated scale for measuring ESAW developed in this study has 14 items. Because the construct incorporates key contextual factors, it is more relevant to organizational science and contributes to humanizing organizations. Originality/value This study evolves the construct of ESAW from a predominantly trait-based approach to a conceptualization that accounts for the contextual factors, essential for enabling strengths of employees to manifest. The study contributes to advancing literature that holds promise for humanizing organizations – a pressing need because of the growing instances of employee disengagement. The author develop a 14-item psychometrically validated scale for measuring ESAW that the practitioners can use in first assessing current levels of employee strengths’ deployment and thereafter intervening for increasing the deployment of their strengths for enabling higher well-being and superior performance.

LinkedIn and recruitment: how profiles differ across occupations

2014 ◽  
Vol 36 (5) ◽  
pp. 583-604 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Zide ◽  
Ben Elman ◽  
Comila Shahani-Denning
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Social Networking Sites ◽  
Personal Information ◽  
Phase 1 ◽  
Small Sample ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Two Phases ◽  
Group Member

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify the elements of a LinkedIn profile that hiring professionals focus on most, and then examine LinkedIn profiles in terms of these identified elements across different industries. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology was comprised of two phases. In the first phase, researchers interviewed hiring professionals to determine their usage of LinkedIn. In the second phase, LinkedIn group member profiles from three industries – HR, sales/marketing and industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology – were compared on the 21 variables identified in Phase 1 (n=288). Findings – χ2 and ANOVA tests showed significant differences with respect to ten of the LinkedIn variables in how people presented themselves across the three groups. There were also several gender differences found. Research limitations/implications – A general limitation was the use of a qualitative research approach. A limitation of Phase 1 was that only a small sample of New York City-based hiring professionals was interviewed. Perhaps a wider, more diverse sample would have yielded different variables. In terms of Phase 2, it is possible that just utilizing the second connections of the researchers limited the generalizability of findings. Practical implications – User unwillingness to fully complete the LinkedIn profile suggests that it may not have replaced the traditional resume yet. Sales/marketing professionals were more likely than HR and I/O psychology professionals to complete multiple aspects of a LinkedIn profile. Women were also less likely than men to provide personal information on their profiles. Originality/value – Most of the empirical research on social networking sites has focussed on Facebook, a non-professional site. This is, from the knowledge, the first study that systematically examined the manner in which people present themselves on LinkedIn – the most popular professional site used by applicants and recruiters worldwide.

Feel well and do well at work

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Cobaleda Cordero ◽  
Maral Babapour ◽  
MariAnne Karlsson
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Contextual Factors ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Environmental Mastery ◽  
Spatial Attributes ◽  
Method Approach

Purpose This paper aims to investigate employee well-being in relation to office landscapes in a post-relocation context. The aims are to identify spatial attributes of the office landscape that influence employee well-being and underlying contextual factors that explain employee well-being post-relocation. Design/methodology/approach A mixed-method approach was adopted. The data collection involved 16 semi-structured interviews with employees, an interview with the leading architect of the office renovation, study of a dossier on the renovation project and observations. Findings Most of the informants experienced the new office landscape positively despite few shortcomings. Spatial attributes were identified that influenced the informants’ well-being positively in terms of affects, satisfaction, social relations and environmental mastery. Conversely, negative influences on well-being were also reported regarding affects, satisfaction and environmental mastery. Conflicting views on some of the spatial attributes and contextual factors related to the planning process and the former office landscape were identified. Originality/value The value of this paper lies in investigating the office landscape at the spatial attributes level, despite office type, and their influence on hedonic and eudaimonic components of employee well-being. The research approach adopted proved its usefulness for in-depth studies of the interrelations between office landscapes and employee well-being.

scholarly journals Urban firefighting: Qualitative exploration of occupational challenges faced by firefighters of Kathmandu valley, Nepal

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 72-79
Author(s):  
Shivani Bhattarai ◽  
Pabitra K.C. ◽  
Aruna Gyawali ◽  
Astha Lamichhane ◽  
Alina Giri ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Health Risks ◽  
Depression Scale ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Kathmandu Valley ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Urban Fire ◽  
Depth Interview ◽  
Two Phases ◽  
Key Informant Interview ◽  
Qualitative Exploration

Introduction: Urban firefighting is a challenge however very less is known about how the firefighters manage on addressing fire disasters when it occurs or what sort of health risks they generally face. The health risks in firefighting are abundant however very less is explored, in regard to the Nepalese context. This study thus aims to explore general characteristics and potential stress causing factors among urban firefighters of Kathmandu valley as Nepal lacks any such study. Methods: A qualitative study design with in-depth interview questions were used to interview 15 currently employed firefighters and the station in charge of Kathmandu valley and thematic analysis was done to derive results. The study was conducted in two phases, the first phase including the use of locally translated and validated DASS-21 (Depression Anxiety and Depression Scale) tool to identify potentially stress suffering firefighters while the second phase included use of in-depth interview (IDI) and key informant interview (KII) format to explore stress causing factors among firefighters. Results: The results showed that most firefighters were stressed due family separations, difficult PPEs, lack of human resource adequacies, income insufficiency, underwhelming response at active site and lack of health addressing programs in the station. The firefighters additionally mentioned stress due to recurring bluff calls and unmanaged traffic in the city. Conclusion: Despite the solvable problems, the station lacked standard operating guidelines, physical fitness and mental well-being programs, deemed essential for the occupation in general. Therefore, concerned authorities must prioritize the needs of urban fire station and firefighters.

SenU-PTM: a novel phrase-based topic model for short-text topic discovery by exploiting word embeddings

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Heng-Yang Lu ◽  
Yi Zhang ◽  
Yuntao Du
Keyword(s):  
Latent Dirichlet Allocation ◽  
Topic Model ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Word Embeddings ◽  
Two Phase ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Short Text ◽  
Topic Discovery ◽  
Two Phases ◽  
Sense Unit

PurposeTopic model has been widely applied to discover important information from a vast amount of unstructured data. Traditional long-text topic models such as Latent Dirichlet Allocation may suffer from the sparsity problem when dealing with short texts, which mostly come from the Web. These models also exist the readability problem when displaying the discovered topics. The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel model called the Sense Unit based Phrase Topic Model (SenU-PTM) for both the sparsity and readability problems.Design/methodology/approachSenU-PTM is a novel phrase-based short-text topic model under a two-phase framework. The first phase introduces a phrase-generation algorithm by exploiting word embeddings, which aims to generate phrases with the original corpus. The second phase introduces a new concept of sense unit, which consists of a set of semantically similar tokens for modeling topics with token vectors generated in the first phase. Finally, SenU-PTM infers topics based on the above two phases.FindingsExperimental results on two real-world and publicly available datasets show the effectiveness of SenU-PTM from the perspectives of topical quality and document characterization. It reveals that modeling topics on sense units can solve the sparsity of short texts and improve the readability of topics at the same time.Originality/valueThe originality of SenU-PTM lies in the new procedure of modeling topics on the proposed sense units with word embeddings for short-text topic discovery.

“The Health Education Juggler”

2014 ◽  
Vol 114 (5) ◽  
pp. 398-412 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gitte Engelund ◽  
Ulla Møller Hansen ◽  
Ingrid Willaing
Keyword(s):  
Patient Education ◽  
Health Education ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Theory Approach ◽  
Comprehensive Model ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Analyse Data ◽  
Two Phases ◽  
Grounded Theory Approach ◽  
Practical Implications

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore educator competencies and roles needed to perform participatory patient education, and develop a comprehensive model describing this. Design/methodology/approach – Data collection in the qualitative study proceeded through two phases. In the first phase, 28 educators were involved in exploring educator competencies needed to perform participatory, group-based patient education. The paper used qualitative methods: dialogue workshops, interviews and observations. In the second phase, 310 educators were involved in saturating and validating the insights from phase one using workshop techniques such as brainstorming, reflection exercises and the story-dialogue method. A grounded theory approach was used to analyse data. Findings – A model called “The Health Education Juggler” was developed comprising four educator roles necessary to perform participatory patient education: the Embracer, the Facilitator, the Translator and the Initiator. The validity of the model was confirmed in phase two by educators and showed fit, grab, relevance, workability and modifiability. Practical implications – The model provides a tool that can be used to support the focus on “juggling” skills in educators: the switching between different educator roles when performing participatory, group-based patient education. The model is useful as an analytical tool for reflection and supervision, as well as for observation and evaluation of participatory, group-based patient education. Originality/value – The study proposes a comprehensive model consisting of four equally important roles for educators performing participatory, group-based patient education.

Colleague recommender system in the Expert Cloud using features matrix

Kybernetes ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (9) ◽  
pp. 1342-1357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saeedeh Hazratzadeh ◽  
Nima Jafari Navimipour
Keyword(s):  
Recommender System ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Solution Approach ◽  
Cloud Systems ◽  
New Class ◽  
Final Score ◽  
Two Phases

Purpose Expert Cloud as a new class of cloud systems enables its users to request and share the skill, knowledge and expertise of people by employing internet infrastructures and cloud concepts. Since offering the most appropriate expertise to the customer is one of the clear objectives in Expert Cloud, colleague recommendation is a necessary part of it. So, the purpose of this paper is to develop a colleague recommender system for the Expert Cloud using features matrices of colleagues. Design/methodology/approach The new method is described in two phases. In the first phase, all possible colleagues of the user are found through the filtering mechanism and next features of the user and possible colleagues are calculated and collected in matrices. Six potential features of colleagues including reputation, expertise, trust, agility, cost and field of study were proposed. In the second phase, the final score is calculated for every possible colleague and then top-k colleagues are extracted among users. The survey was conducted using a simulation in MATLAB Software. Data were collected from Expert Cloud website. The method was tested using evaluating metrics such as precision, accuracy, incorrect recommendation and runtime. Findings The results of this study indicate that considering more features of colleagues has a positive impact on increasing the precision and accuracy of recommending new colleagues. Also, the proposed method has a better result in reducing incorrect recommendation. Originality/value In this paper, the colleague recommendation issue in the Expert Cloud is pointed out and the solution approach is applied into the Expert Cloud website.

Verifying alternative measures of healthcare service quality

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 516-533 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingy Shafei ◽  
Jan Walburg ◽  
Ahmed Taher
Keyword(s):  
Service Quality ◽  
Healthcare Service ◽  
Healthcare Providers ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Reliability Factor ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Patient Loyalty ◽  
Service Areas ◽  
Alternative Measures ◽  
Two Phases

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to determine the best measure among several alternatives (SERVQUAL, weighted SERVQUAL, SERVPERF, weighted SERVPERF) and develop a scale which healthcare providers can use for measurement of healthcare service quality.Design/methodology/approachThe study involved two phases. The first phase was through a series of in-depth interviews with experts and patients followed by a pilot study. Subsequently, the second phase involved a quantitative phase through surveys with 384 patients. Alternative measures were analyzed using coefficient (Cronbach)α, composite reliability, factor analysis and logistic regression analysis.FindingsFindings confirmed “Weighted SERVPERF” using an interactive methodology as the most appropriate for measurement of healthcare service quality.Originality/valueUsing the model and scale developed, healthcare providers will be able to measure healthcare service quality and identify areas of shortfall and act accordingly to improve delivery through allocating resources in service areas that would generate the greatest returns in customer satisfaction. Enhancing satisfaction will ultimately generate patient loyalty and positive recommendation behavior.

scholarly journals Patient attitudes toward physicians

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mahmud Akhter Shareef ◽  
Yogesh K. Dwivedi ◽  
Norm Archer ◽  
Mohammad Mahboob Rahman
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Study ◽  
Healthcare Services ◽  
Medical Services ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Patient Attitudes ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Proposed Model ◽  
Personal Physician ◽  
Two Phases ◽  
Research Structure

PurposeStakeholders affiliated with healthcare services should understand patient attitudes and criteria that are involved in selecting a personal physician. The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors that are significant to patients in selecting or deselecting physicians as providers of healthcare services.Design/methodology/approachThe research structure was set to theorize the physician selection criteria (PSC) model into two phases. The first phase developed a conceptual model as revealed from healthcare consumer perceptions. The second phase was designed to test and validate the model through cause–effect statistical analysis underpinned by theoretical explanations through an empirical study.FindingsThrough an empirical study of benchmarking perceptions of people from 15 different countries, qualitative PSC were gathered and used to formulate an initial PSC model. Based on the proposed model, a validity test was conducted, and finally, the PSC model was developed, resulting in several interesting and self-explanatory outcomes.Research limitations/implicationsThe model was tested in only one (relatively cosmopolitan) city. For proper generalization, it should be tested in countries with differing healthcare service systems.Practical implicationsThe results of this study are interesting, important and have potential values to academics and medical professionals. The study provides strong evidence that a physician’s external approach to patients is the most significant issue for patients seeking medical services. This does not refer to basic medical services, but rather the treatment process, where the physician’s behavior and positive attitude has the strongest effect on the patient’s decision to choose one physician over others.Originality/valueFinal PSC model has identified some significant theoretical explanations for academics and professional justifications for practitioners.

Anti money laundering using a two-phase system

2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 304-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamer Hossam Moustafa ◽  
Mohamed Zaki Abd El-Megied ◽  
Tarek Salah Sobh ◽  
Khaled Mohamed Shafea
Keyword(s):  
Money Laundering ◽  
False Positive ◽  
Phase System ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Two Phase ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Risk Scoring ◽  
Two Phases ◽  
Clear Shift ◽  
Monitoring Phase

Purpose – This paper aims to compete and detect suspicious transactions that can lead to detecting money laundering cases. Design/methodology/approach – This paper presents a plan-based framework for anti-money laundering systems (PBAMLS). Such a framework is novel and consists of two phases, in addition to several supporting modules. The first phase, the monitoring phase, utilizes an automata approach as a formalism to detect probable money laundering. The detection process is based on a money laundering deterministic finite automaton that has been obtained from the corresponding regular expressions which specify different money laundering processes. The second phase is STRIPS-based planning phase that aims at strengthening the belief in the probable problems discovered in the first (monitoring) phase. In addition, PBAMLS contains several supporting modules for data collection and mediation, link analysis and risk scoring. To assess the applicability of PBAMLS, it has been tested using different cases studies. Findings – This framework provides a clear shift of anti-money laundering systems (AML) from depending heuristic and human expertise to making use of a rigorous formalism to accomplish concrete decisions. It minimizes the possibilities of false positive alarms and increases the certainty in decision-making. Practical implications – This framework enhances the detection of money laundering cases. It also minimizes the number of false-positive alarms that waste the investigators’ efforts and time; it decreases the efforts presented by the investigators. Originality/value – This work proposes PBAMLS as a novel plan-based framework for AML systems.

Audience development: a cross-national comparison

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Macarena Cuenca-Amigo ◽  
Amaia Makua
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Methodology ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Cultural Aspects ◽  
National Comparison ◽  
Two Phases ◽  
Audience Development ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Uk

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to review the concept of audience development, analysing differences between a number of countries and identifying common elements that underlie the concept regardless of the context. Design/methodology/approach In addition to the literature review, fieldwork has been conducted in the UK, Denmark, Italy, and Spain applying qualitative methodology. The study has been structured in two phases. The first phase comprised 26 in-depth interviews with European experts in audience development while the second phase consisted of six focus groups with European experts. Findings The paper reveals differences between countries, ranging from the definition of the term audience development to the approach undertaken. Despite this, a number of aspects, independent of the context and considered key to a successful audience development, are identified. These aspects are related to the consideration of the development of audiences as a transversal long-term strategy supported by the top management of the organisation. Originality/value The value provided is twofold. First, thanks to the empirical data used, the paper analyses the socio-cultural aspects that affect the emergence of country-specific approaches to audience development and it individuates general features and ideas that contribute to the better understanding of the concept itself. Second, it is one of the few academic works carried out in Spain on this issue.

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