The relative importance of various job resources for work engagement: A concurrent and follow-up dominance analysis

Job resources are known to be key drivers of work engagement, but surprisingly, little is known about the relative importance of specific job resources in comparison to one another. We investigated the relative importance of eight job resources both cross-sectionally and over a 3-year time period. We hypothesized that job resources at the task level are “universally” important and contribute relatively more to work engagement than other types of job resources. We employed dominance analyses to a large cross-sectional data set ( N = 11,468 from 87 organizations), focusing specifically on 11 jobs, and to a two-wave data set ( N = 2,334). Three job resources emerged as the most important both for concurrent and future work engagement across the jobs and samples: skill discretion, job feedback, and team empowerment. Practically, this study suggests that interventions to enhance work engagement could focus on increasing skill discretion and job feedback and on building team empowerment. JEL: L200 Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior: General

Leaders' positive and implicit followership theory and team creativity in a university scientific research team

The promotion of team creativity has recently become a focus in leadership research. From the perspectives of the input–process–output model and social cognitive theory, we explored leaders' positive and implicit followership theory (LPIFT) and examined team creativity, with 417 paired postgraduate and supervisor participants from a university scientific research team. Results show that LPIFT had a significant positive impact on team creativity, and that team trust (cognitive and emotional) mediated this relationship. Further, team empowerment climate positively moderated both the relationship between LPIFT and team trust (cognitive and emotional) and the mediating role of team trust (cognitive and emotional). Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Banking Communications: A Perceptual Study of Customer Relations

Hopefully, effective banking communications would improve and strengthen relationships with the stakeholders and work-team empowerment to achieve desired level of performance directing towards organizational success in changing operating and governing environments. Though the banks and their service have been advancing in Nepal, customer satisfaction in terms of banking communications is still a matter of serious concern. This paper explores perception of banking communications among the customers showcasing bank and customer relations. As a customer relation is one of the key indicators of banks profitability, the attention of banks has been gradually inclining towards customers through via more effective communication initiatives. Effective communication in banks helps their staff and customers in having knowledge about various strategic decisions that are implemented or are going to be implemented, understanding banking policies and procedures, acknowledging various issues related to banking and understanding ways forward for prosperity. The existing literature confirms a very strong positive relationship between communication in practice and perceived level of customer satisfaction. Thus, the banks must adapt proper strategies and techniques of effective communication with the valued customers. Bank procedures on communicating with customers depend on the structural sets and culture of the organization. Moreover, conceptual framework of the banking communications and customer relations also confirms the imperative need for addressing this issue more effectively, especially in changing context of Nepal. This research can be helpful to banks to know how customers perceive over all banking system and work accordingly. Also, it can be helpful to Nepal Rastra Bank for formulating banking policies and other concerned authorities can also be benefited through this research.

ERP issues and challenges: a research synthesis

Purpose Despite more than two decades of experience regarding the adoption and implementation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in organizations, ERPs success is questionable. Though ERPs success stories are published in past research studies, the failure rate of ERP systems is relatively high. The purpose of this study was to find issues and challenges and assess the degree of criticality of these issues/challenges faced by organizations during ERP implementation. Design/methodology/approach For doing systematic review/research synthesis systematic literature review (SLR) was carried out considering research studies published within the time period, i.e. 1999-2018. Three major steps such as planning, conducting and reporting were followed to proceed further in this study. This study attempted to accomplish a critical review of 53 studies out of 103 studies identified, which were published in reputable journals to synthesize the existing literature in the ERP domain. The studies selected have almost addressed different challenges/issues faced by small and large organizations during ERP implementation. Findings Research synthesis/SLR led to the identification of 31 issues/challenges, which may be termed as most critical based on their occurrence/frequency in past studies included. The topmost ten issues/challenges amongst 31 identified include top management approach, change management, training and development, effective communication, system integration, business process reengineering, consultants/vendors selection, project management, project team formation, team empowerment/skilled people and data conversing/migration. However, other issues/challenges identified such as security risks/data security, cloud awareness, functionality limitations, service level agreements and subscription expenses are more related to cloud ERPs. Originality/value The current study is unique in its kind, focusing on the issues and challenges faced by organization during implementing ERP projects. Moreover, this study contributes to understanding and further analyzing management capabilities for developing remedial measures while planning the implementation of an enterprise system in their organizations prior to the occurrence of different issues and challenges ahead. The study also led to understanding and explaining socio-technical issues and their severity.

How Empowerment and Innovation Climates Influence Employees' Innovative IS Use

The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of empowerment and innovation climates on employees' innovative use of information systems (IS) and the mechanisms through which the climates affect employees' innovative IS use. Drawing on the thriving theory, this study proposes a hierarchical research model that links team-level climates, individual-level thriving, and employees' innovative IS use in an integral model. In total, 174 copies of questionnaires from 38 teams were collected from ERP users of nine firms in China. The empirical results suggest that team innovation climate and team empowerment climate are positively related to innovative IS use. Thriving plays a fully mediating role between team empowerment climate and innovative IS use and a partially mediating role between the team innovation climate and innovative IS use. The findings of this study could provide guidelines for managers on how to promote IS users' innovative use from the perspectives of team climates.

The Development and Construct Validity of a Team Processes Survey Measure

Marks, Mathieu, and Zaccaro (2001) advanced a theory and framework of team processes that has garnered much attention and guided numerous investigations. They proposed that 10 first-order constructs (e.g., strategy formulation, coordination, conflict management) would map to three second-order constructs (i.e., transition, action, and interpersonal). Despite the popularity of this framework, we are unaware of any validated multiitem measures of the team processes they identified. Accordingly, we develop and demonstrate content and construct validity of 50-, 30-, and 10-item versions of a survey measure of team processes. Using data from over 700 teams, we test Marks et al.’s higher-order model and find results that are largely consistent with both their 10 first-order dimensions and the 10:3 second-order framework. Using samples of global virtual knowledge teams and health care employees, we provide evidence of the discriminant validity of our team process measure versus a measure of team empowerment. We provide recommendations for the use of these measures in future research and practice and encourage their use as part of a portfolio of measures of team processes.

Empowering leadership and team creativity: understanding the direct-indirect path

This study investigated the relationship between empowering leadership and team creativity by integrating the theory of group behavior with componential theory of creativity. For this study, data was collected from two sources (343 Subordinates, 67 Supervisors) by temporally dividing data collection process into two points in time for independent, dependent, and mediating variables from employees of a bank operating in Pakistan. Random coefficient analysis technique was used with Mplus 7.0 to analyze nested data for preliminary analysis and analysis of mediation and indirect effects. Mediation was analyzed using the indirect effect of random models and further confirmed the confidence using bootstrapping procedure. Through this study, the researchers tried to explore the inconsistent relationship between empowering leadership behavior and team creativity. It was found that empowering leadership behavior affects the team level creativity of employees directly and indirectly through the mediation of team learning behavior and team psychological empowerment as team process and team emergent states respectively. The results indicated that empowering leadership enhances the learning potential of teams and team empowerment perception which in turn enhances team level creativity. Further research findings, implications, and future research directions also discussed in this research.

EMPOWERING LEADERSHIP AND TEAM CREATIVITY: UNDERSTANDING THE DIRECT-INDIRECT PATH

This study investigated the relationship between empowering leadership and team creativity by integrating the theory of group behavior with componential theory of creativity. For this study, data was collected from two sources (343 Subordinates, 67 Supervisors) by temporally dividing data collection process into two points in time for independent, dependent, and mediating variables from employees of a bank operating in Pakistan. Random coefficient analysis technique was used with Mplus 7.0 to analyze nested data for preliminary analysis and analysis of mediation and indirect effects. Mediation was analyzed using the indirect effect of random models and further confirmed the confidence using bootstrapping procedure. Through this study, the researchers tried to explore the inconsistent relationship between empowering leadership behavior and team creativity. It was found that empowering leadership behavior affects the team level creativity of employees directly and indirectly through the mediation of team learning behavior and team psychological empowerment as team process and team emergent states respectively. The results indicated that empowering leadership enhances the learning potential of teams and team empowerment perception which in turn enhances team level creativity. Further research findings, implications, and future research directions also discussed in this research.

A Study of Job Satisfaction of Front Line Sales Employees in Insurance Sector of India

The most vital role of Human Resource Management in an organization is the appropriate implementation of human resource development strategies to accelerate its growth and development. Researchers have emphasized on human resource strategies to enhance performance of individuals. It can be achieved through job satisfaction, strategic planning, good interpersonal relations and team empowerment. The recent studies have revealed that human resource is the key assets for any organisation. The same concept is applicable to the insurance sector as well. Insurance sector is a service sector, hence the role of its employees is even more important. The success and goodwill of the company relies on the efficiency of its employees. In today’s scenario, cause of concern for the HR managers in insurance sector is lack of job satisfaction amongst the employees. Hence this study aims to understand the factors that affect the job satisfaction of an employee in the insurance sector. The aim of the research is to identify the reasons for the job dissatisfaction in the employees. Further, it would help Human Resource manager to undertake measures to curb job dissatisfaction.