Recommended Approaches

This chapter looks at several approaches to improving teleworking through increased trustworthiness and performance. Any combination of these methods should be beneficial. Some of the methods deal with analyzing LMX and improving its use. One of the ways to do that is to mitigate “distance” in LMX. “Distance” is a disconnect in the work relationship at times that are important. It concerns accomplishments that are crucial to recognition and promotion. Organizations need collective agreements that guide teams and foster shared understanding, collaboration, and innovation. Another valuable approach is an asynchronous one with work characterized by flexibility. Asynchronized working creates a situation where employees work a schedule without fixed hours. This is said to promote constant feedback and deep-thinking by freeing employees to manage necessary contacts with managers and other employees while self-managing their work-life balance in the process. The need for meetings is minimized and, when meetings are necessary, they may be more effective if they allow participant flexibility.

Performance

The current examination of Covid-related issues is important because the pandemic grew so fast that it outpaced current research and literature. To date, according to the literature examined herein, there is a shortage of studies about telework. Also, existing studies have not yet gone far enough to consider the enormous contribution and involvement of supervisors and leaders as they relate to telework. Contemporary literature has primarily compared and contrasted teleworking and non-teleworking employees. As we focus on supervisors and leaders, we must evaluate key requirements of the value of performance in the conversation. This will lead to mitigation strategies and shared understanding that are vital to improving performance. As the authors conduct this evaluation, there will be lots of information about how leaders can help members. They will also understand how to take advantage of the benefits of teleworking. They will also highlight situations where leaders may be reluctant to use telework, understand the reasons for reluctance, and begin the discussion to improve acceptance of telework.

Emotional Intelligence (EI)

This chapter evaluates EI research, introduces the concept of engaged interaction, and explains how leaders can use EI for self-improvement. Goleman describes EI as a manager's ability to recognize the emotions in self and others. The manager then uses this information to make improvements in self-management and relationships with others. EI leads people to gain awareness by recognizing personal emotions and the emotions of others. This creates an emotional state of consciousness where people use the information skillfully and intelligently in deliberate, purposeful decision-making activities. The concept of engaged interaction is achieved when all parties participate in flexible, full-range communication, making sure to listen, hear, and understand. This open and flexible communication must continue until interaction and shared understanding are achieved. Leaders can combine EI, engaged interaction, and strategic flexibility to improve operations and team building.

Assessing Sustainability in Development Interventions

Sustainability is often claimed as an impact in development interventions although there is rarely a shared understanding of what it means, how to design for it, and especially how to assess the likelihood that intended streams of benefits will continue. This chapter asserts that to design and later to evaluate an intervention with sustainable impacts, the intervention must deepen indigenous capabilities to manage the program, to solve problems, and to innovate. The design and implementation also must operate within environmental boundaries, not extracting resources beyond the ability to regenerate or degrading environmental services—that is, design and implementation must incorporate the primacy of the environment. A postprogram evaluation 3–10 years after a program has ended provides evidence on whether the program is likely to have sustainable impacts. A case study of an asset transfer program in Malawi highlights the criteria for evaluating sustainability: deepened capabilities and social capital, reinvestment in program activities, and the development of backward and forward linkages catalyzing growing economic opportunities.

Teleworking

This chapter examines teleworking and the important relationships that must be created and/or nurtured in successful organizations. The chapter also highlights teleworking best practices of communication, flexibility, standards, and team building. Communication requires managing both face-to-face and online situations, while flexibility helps in achieving work-life balance. Standards are required to build effective, collaborative relationships, and team building is enhanced when organizations can adjust to new or distributed operations. The best practices are driven by a set of rules for operating that should be developed collaboratively with all members of the team. Clear rules that are combined with supervisor and employee shared understanding should lead to success. To achieve that success, organizations must focus on the assumptions, approaches, personal vs. professional issues, e-leadership, and modeling discussed herein.

Teleworking Research

A March 2021 survey is used to consider three hypotheses relating to working adults. Hypothesis 1 is that teleworking perceptions of leaders and employees are related in terms of promoting increased trust and improved performance. Hypothesis 2 is that a structured plan with associated resources to sustain long-term telework situations will be positively associated with program effectiveness. Hypothesis 3 is that a structured plan with associated resources to sustain long-term telework situations will be positively associated with improved performance. Presidents/CEOs (67%), upper managers (80%), and mid-level managers (75%) believe there is daily telework accountability, but the level of belief is different for those who are subordinate to them. Just 55% and 29% of supervisors and employees, respectively, share that belief. These differing viewpoints can make it difficult to manage the kind of work environment and work relationship issues that are crucial in addressing a pandemic or other crisis. In the search for shared understanding, one path to success is rules-based trust.

Social R&D in Four Portraits: An Exploratory Study of the Eerging Feld of Social Research and Development in Canada’s Nonprofit Sector

Since 2015, Canadian practitioners and funders have been adapting research and development (R&D) principles and practices to the context of social purpose organizations (SPOs) to increase the trans-sectoral capacity to generate social innovations. As a result, Social R&D is rapidly gaining popularity among a diversified array of organizations. This article distills the findings of a mix-methods exploratory study and offers a typology of four different Social R&D conceptualizations and practices. An analysis of the literature and of the empirical findings indicates a general lack of shared understanding about what Social R&D entails as a concept or a process. Further precision of meaning is needed to judge of Social R&D’s specific value or to responsibly support its implementation through policy.

Toward an Understanding of How Post- Deployment User- Developer Interactions Influence System Utilization

Although initial adoption of an information system has been shown to influence system success, further value can be obtained when end-users move beyond adoption, utilizing more features of the system and integrating it into their work routines. Organizations can increase the post-deployment utilization of their systems by emphasizing continued interaction between developers and end-users. In this study, we develop a research model investigating the influence of shared understanding, faithfulness of appropriation, and consensus on spirit on post-deployment system utilization. Using a sample from a healthcare organization, we show that increased end-user postdeployment interaction with developers supports a shared understanding between the two groups, which ultimately impacts both the routinization and infusion of a system. This study provides a contribution by demonstrating the impact of developer/user interaction in the post-implementation phase of systems development.

The Japanese Civil Service

This essay, based on a public lecture, deals with the last Civil Service (CS) Reform in Japan, which had been attempted since the 1990s and was completed in 2014. Bureaucrats enjoyed a “summer” where they actively were engaged in policy-making. But a series of policy failures and scandals revealed in the 1990s were attributed to their excessive autonomy, and centralized personnel control by the prime minister was introduced. However, discourse analysis of the Diet (Parliament) during the period of Reform indicates that there was neither a shared understanding of the meaning of CS impartiality, nor of the values to be borne by the CS. The driving force of the Reform was mainly people’s fury. It therefore resulted in relegating bureaucrats to being “lackeys” of the prime minister, ignoring their self-respect. This has given rise to various undesirable consequences. Will the CS see another “spring” in Japan?