Exploring the puzzle of civility: Whether and when team civil communication influences team members’ role performance

Does ‘being nice’ to each other always improve employee performance? Although research on workplace incivility has been growing, little is known about the flip side of it – workplace civility. In fact, different theoretical perspectives have suggested that civility could have positive (i.e. the flexibility perspective) or negative (i.e. the heuristics perspective) cognitive implications. In the current research, we examined whether and when workplace civility (operationalized as team civil communication) influences team members’ role performance in two studies. In Study 1, we recorded team civil communication among 108 teams of students who participated in a team-based simulation, and found that team civil communication enhanced team members’ role performance. In Study 2, we observed and coded 186 real-time surgeries conducted by surgical teams from a health-care center. Results showed a more nuanced and complex pattern regarding the influence of team civil communication, insofar as it enhanced team members’ role performance in teams with less complex tasks, but the effect decreased or even flipped to negative when team task complexity increased. These findings suggest that civility can have both positive and negative influences on performance, with the net effect being contingent upon the broader environmental demands faced by the team.

How to Support Clients and Vendors in IT Outsourcing Engagements: The Different Roles of Third-party Advisory Services

The outsourcing of information technology to external providers has been a phenomenon for organizations around the world since decades. The main reasons for this trend are, for example, cost reductions through scaling, the temporary inclusion of specific skills in the own organization as well as the joint development of innovative solutions with an external partner. The client organization “RetBa,” a major private insurance company, was facing serious quality and performance issues in the delivery of the workplace services. Hence, in 2005 they decided for an outsourcing solution aiming at moving the responsibility for managing IT workplace services for over 50,000 seats worldwide to the external service provider “EuTu.” Over the years, the outsourcing project faced several problems due to the lack of performance and delayed delivery of services by the service provider EuTu. To solve these quality issues and avoid further failures, in 2011 RetBa appointed Scaleit Consulting, a third-party advisor. Scaleit Consulting had the responsibility to identify the causes for these issues, revise the workplace strategy, and support RetBa in the communication with the service provider.

I hate my workplace but I am very attached to it: workplace attachment style

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether different patterns of workplace attachment exist and to explore the relations between adult attachment styles and the level of workplace attachment. Design/methodology/approach Participants were 351 Italian employees who completed a questionnaire composed of the Workplace Attachment Scale and the Relationship Questionnaire. Data were analyzed using correspondence analysis. Findings The results showed that high scores on workplace attachment correlated significantly with secure attachment style, while low scores correlated with insecure attachment styles. These results shed light on different workplace attachment styles. Research limitations/implications The limitation in this study mostly concern the use of self-reporting instruments to measure the participants’ attachment style, since they may be susceptible to distortions. However, the distribution of attachment styles in this sample is similar to the worldwide distribution, which supports the authors’ choice. Practical implications To the extent that it is possible to identify a specific workplace attachment style, it should also be possible to change some of the human resource management practices inducing employees to develop a workplace secure attachment style. Originality/value Researchers tended to ignore the extension of the adult attachment behavioral system to examine core environmental relationships. The present study, applying attachment theory to workplace attachment, provides theoretical support that the bonds that an individual forms with workplace can be classified as attachment bonds.