Diagnosing the Level of Job Performance for a Sample of the Directorates of the Iraqi Ministry of Interior: An Exploratory Study

The research aims to diagnose the level of job performance in the directorates of the Iraqi Ministry of Interior ,The current research adopted the descriptive analytical method ,Starting from a problem and questions that emerged from a main question (were the leaders of the surveyed directorates able to improve job performance, Its data were collected from (101) respondents who represent the research sample in an intentional, quota, way, after being completely enumerated Represented by managers (department managers, division managers), the questionnaire was adopted as a tool for collecting research data, which included (40) paragraphs by which the variables investigated in (the Directorate of Relations and media , the Directorate of Planning and Follow-up, the Directorate of Systems and Informatics, the Directorate of Identities and Leaves), were measured, Personal interviews and field observations were used, and the research adopted a program (SMART PLS V.3.3, Spss V.26) with the adoption of descriptive statistics methods (normal distribution test, confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis, structural modeling, arithmetic mean, percentages, standard deviation, and relative importance, The coefficient of relative variance, the Pearson correlation coefficient, the coefficient of simple and multiple regression), The research concluded with the most prominent result represented in the direction of the leaders of the surveyed directorates towards contextual performance, which indicates that their employees carry out tasks that go beyond their official roles and their quest to volunteer in additional activities and help others, as well as the leaders’ interest in the job performance of their employees, so I proceeded to improve it, as well as directly improving the performance of the task.

The Multiple Facilitator: Scientists, Sages and Rascals

Background. Games are designed to help participants think about, understand, sharpen their problem statement as well as the specific objectives to be achieved to escape the problem situation. When participants prepare for the game (briefing), interact in the simulated environment (gameplay), and self- or jointly reflect about the gameplay they faced in terms of intended and unintended learning experiences (debrief), they benefit or suffer from facilitating that can or cannot fully cater to their needs. To support the participants to explore and resolve the problem situation in order to achieve learning goals, we propose that facilitators can make use of role shifts during gameplay. Method. To capture the role shifts in the gameplay phase we studied game runs of the MicroTech game. The MicroTech game is a free-form game in which participants play the role of top management team or division managers in a multiunit organization. Results. We analyzed the role shifts we experienced as facilitators by elaborating on game events and how we could manage those events differently in future game runs if necessary. We show a need for facilitators to be able to embody multiple roles in the case of policy gaming that are in fit with the different phases, while there is a simultaneous need to shift within phases in order to keep participants moving and stimulating them to work towards the learning goals. Conclusion. Gaming/simulation facilitators should explore what multiplicity is required of them to make the game a success. Although this may seem normal practice to well-prepared and professionally trained facilitators, this may be particularly important for novice facilitators.

Competition and Pay Inequality Within and Between Firms

How does market competition affect pay inequality between and within firms? Using division managers as a pool of similar workers and the Canada–U.S. Free Trade Agreement, we find that greater competition increases overall pay inequality between, but not within, firms. This null effect within firms is not driven by a lack of statistical power. Instead, we find that it arises primarily within subsamples of firms with higher predicted levels of social comparison. Increased competition leads to greater pay-performance sensitivity among the higher-paid managers within firms, while it leads to greater overpayment among the other managers. These patterns are consistent with firm principals offering higher-powered incentives to their best managers and overpaying the rest. Altogether, this study suggests that, while competition leads to greater pay inequality overall, principals aim to maintain equality within firms and do so through the differential provision of incentives among employees. This paper was accepted by Bruno Cassiman, business strategy.

The Origins and Real Effects of the Gender Gap: Evidence from CEOs’ Formative Years

Using individual census records, we provide novel evidence on CEOs’ socioeconomic backgrounds and study their role in investment decisions. Male CEOs allocate more investment capital to male than female division managers. This gender gap is driven by CEOs who grew up in male-dominated families where the father was the only income earner and had more education than the mother. The gender gap also increases for CEOs who attended all-male high schools and grew up in neighborhoods with greater gender inequality. The effect of gender on capital budgeting introduces frictions and erodes investment efficiency.

Team-based employee remuneration

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to relate the balanced scorecard (BSC) to strategy and teams. Design/methodology/approach This paper proposes deriving performance targets and weights using a multiparty collaborative decision model that can be integrated into team-based bonus formulas. Findings Cross-functional division managers face a more complex problem in setting goals for individual managers. The proposed approach is intended to develop such goals and link them for team-based incentives. An example illustrates the application of the proposed BSC model and the team-based pay formula. Practical implications The model can be used to determine group bonus. Originality/value The paper has two objectives: to relate the BSC to the team setting with a participative flavor rather than with imposed targets and weights, and to develop a better way of relating behaviors and outcomes to the team’s and/or the organization’s goals. Integrating the strategies of various units adds a new dimension that differs from rationalizing the superior’s and the subordinate’s goals. The proposed model considers input from all value chain functional managers involved in implementing an organizational strategy. A methodology is provided to operationalize (Hope and Fraser, 2003) beyond the budgeting model principles.

Communication and behavior in organizations: An experiment

We design a laboratory experiment to study behavior in a multidivisional organization. The organization faces a trade‐off between coordinating its decisions across the divisions and meeting division‐specific needs that are known only to the division managers, who can communicate their private information through cheap talk. While the results show close to optimal communication, we also find systematic deviations from optimal behavior in how the communicated information is used. Specifically, subjects' decisions show worse than predicted adaptation to the needs of the divisions in decentralized organizations and worse than predicted coordination in centralized organizations. We show that the observed deviations disappear when uncertainty about the divisions' local needs is removed and discuss the possible underlying mechanisms.

Investments and Risk Transfers

ABSTRACT We demonstrate a novel link between relationship-specific investments and risk in a setting where division managers operate under moral hazard and collaborate on joint projects. Specific investments increase efficiency at the margin. This expands the scale of operations and thereby adds to the compensation risk borne by the managers. Accounting for this investment/risk link overturns key findings from prior incomplete contracting studies. We find that if the investing manager has full bargaining power vis-à-vis the other manager, he will underinvest relative to the benchmark of contractible investments; with equal bargaining power, however, he may overinvest. The reason is that the investing manager internalizes only his own share of the investment-induced risk premium (we label this a “risk transfer”), whereas the principal internalizes both managers' incremental risk premia. We show that high pay-performance sensitivity (PPS) reduces the managers' incentives to invest in relationship-specific assets. The optimal PPS, thus, trades off investment and effort incentives.

The effects of culture and contextual information on resource allocation decisions

Purpose This paper aims to examine resource allocation behaviors of US and Taiwanese managers to help multinational firms understand the potential for divergence in resource allocations under different contextual conditions by managers from different national cultures. Design/methodology/approach The experimental design was developed as a 2 (national culture) × 2 (degree of project completion) × 2 (nature of market information) factorial design. The first two were between-subject factors. Because we would investigate subjects’ responses to both favorable and unfavorable conditions, the nature of market information was designed as a within-subject factor. Also, to avoid an order effect, half of the subjects first received favorable information and then unfavorable information, and the other half received the market information in the opposite order. Questionnaires were distributed randomly to subjects. Findings The results show that Taiwanese managers are less willing than US managers to continue a project in the presence of favorable information, but that both groups are equally willing to continue the project when receiving unfavorable information. Furthermore, Taiwanese managers allocate more funds than US managers do when the project is near completion. The authors use uncertainty avoidance and individualism to explain the different judgment and decision behaviors of these two cultural groups. Research Limitations/implications In this study, the authors examine only two contextual factors in resource allocation contexts. There are other important contextual factors associated with national culture that should be scrutinized, such as risks involved in each project, incentive plans related to performance evaluation and information asymmetry between central managers and division managers. It would be interesting for future studies to examine these factors in conjunction with different dimensions of national culture. Originality/value This study provides empirical evidence of the impact of different aspects of national culture (i.e. uncertainty avoidance and collectivism/individualism) on managerial resource allocation in light of different degrees of project completion and different types of market information. The results of our experiment add to both practice and theory of management. The findings of this study help top-level managers better understand the effects of national culture on division managers’ resource allocations. Hence, it may be possible to design incentive schemes and decision aids to mitigate the divergence in judgments and decision-making that can be attributed to cultural differences. This study also contributes to the management literature by extending our knowledge of complex managerial resource allocation decisions by incorporating the role of national culture with contextual factors.