Steering Start-Ups' Organizational Behavior Through Development of Project Management Practices

Start-ups are only in the initial life cycle phases, which exposes them to many specific challenges and increases threats of business cessation. Because of their youth, the do not yet have formal organizational structures and operating rules. This also applies to the area of project management. In this chapter, the authors deal with the success of start-ups' projects and the characteristics of their project management culture. Although the success of projects and project management culture is relatively often discussed in the literature, it is generally done in the context of large companies, not start-ups. The research has shown that projects represent a large part of the start-ups' businesses, and that there is a significant high awareness of the importance of project preparation and the definition of objectives, as well as a caution in defining the roles and organization. In these companies we can notice quite a coherence with the principles of learning organizations, especially the importance of learning from experiences and transferring knowledge among the participants in the project.

Career Needs and Career Values

This chapter explores the mediating role of organizational culture on managerial internal career needs and career values in small third sector social enterprises. Organizational culture refers to a set of basic assumptions in an organization such as symbols, artefacts, attitudes, and behavior as the way in which things are done in the organization. These assumptions are maintained in the continuous process of interaction in the organization. Every organization develops and maintains a unique culture, which provides guidelines and boundaries for the career management of members of the organization. Understanding the career needs and career values of managers helps organizations to develop strategies to retain quality managers which will enable them to deliver and fulfil performance accountability requirements associated with delivering public services.

Critical Systems Perspective of Strategic Decision Making

Growing complexity and diversity of strategic decisions indicate the need for applying the appropriate holistic tools in strategic decision making. Thus, the chapter deals with the process of strategic decision making from the viewpoint of critical systems thinking, with emphasis on the role of values and context in strategic decision making. The main purpose is to show how systems thinking generally and critical systems thinking particularly can help decision makers involve different perceptions and values in the process of strategic decision making, as well as take into account context in which the strategic decisions are made. Considering the key internal and external factors affecting strategic decision making, the authors have selected three systems methodologies stemming from different paradigms: soft systems methodology as interpretive, team syntegrity as emancipatory, and organizational cybernetics as functionalist systems methodology. The way in which they can be combined, aimed at improving effectiveness of strategic decision making, has been presented.

Neo-Tribes or Subcultures?

Two contrasting views exist regarding subcultures: the classical view and the post-subcultural perspective of subcultures as “neo-tribes.” However, there is scarcity of empirical studies of organizational studies with the latter perspective. This study aims to examine whether there is sufficient evidence for subcultures to be considered as “neo-tribes.” To answer this question, empirical studies are examined alongside data from a recent quantitative study of staff in a higher educational institution. It is found that organizational subcultures have a floating membership, heterogeneity between members within subcultures, the absence of distinct boundaries, and changing values over time. It is concluded that, for practitioners, change in organizations will require managers to accept the continuous change, reassessment, and adaptation of subcultures, as well as a lack of cultural predictability and stability. For researchers, this study heightens the need to reassess studies opting for a suitable approach in identifying and examining organizational subcultures.

Organisational Context for Effective Knowledge Sharing

In the knowledge era, organizations have to learn faster and better than competition, with the continuous cultivation of a culture of knowledge sharing. Attention should be paid to motivating employees to develop a positive attitude towards knowledge sharing, actively exchanging information and knowledge, continuously participating in learning processes, or putting knowledge sharing activities into everyday routine and habit. The research objectives are identification of the nature of the influence of intrinsic motivation on the knowledge sharing practice in organizations in the Republic of Serbia, determining the presence of a statistically significant difference in the intraorganizational knowledge sharing between multinational and domestic enterprises, and determining a statistically significant difference in the level of intrinsic motivation among employees in multinational companies and employees in domestic enterprises. The obtained results confirm the impact of intrinsic motivation on knowledge sharing.

Factors Affecting Employees' Job Satisfaction and Psychological Health

The aim of this study was to examine the level of psychological health and job satisfaction and to find out which predictors have an impact on nurses' psychological health and job satisfaction. Six hundred forty nurses from surgery and internal medicine departments from Slovenian hospitals participated in the research. Data analysis was carried out by using SPSS 25.0. With transformational leadership style, leaders' characteristics, leaders' emotional intelligence, leaders' communication skills, positive effectivity, and job satisfaction, one can explain 57% of nurses' psychological health. The results indicated that 85% of nurses had good psychological health. And also that more frequent exposure to stress and lack of stress management were associated with poor psychological health. The employees' psychological health does not affect only the individual, but also on the quality of care and on the effectiveness of hospitals. It is important to monitor employees' job satisfaction and take care for employees' health by providing a healthy work environment.

Embedded in a Culture

In the international literature, national cultures are still an evergreen topic. Even though - contrarily to previous decades' civilizational focus - the attention has shifted to leveraging benefits of multicultural environments and experiences. According to Huntington, nations belonging to different civilizations will never be able to work together smoothly, owing to the principal differences in their values, beliefs and behavior stemming from them. There are theorists, however, who think the differences can never be too big if there is willingness and positive experience with the other culture. Different dimensions characterize national cultures. While some state to identify radical differences between two countries, others do not identify such. This chapter, after offering an insight into the basic approaches of national cultures, endeavors to analyze two discrete cultures (Russian, Hungarian) and presents the similarities and differences of them, along with tools and methods that are able to support the collaboration of people and organizations belonging to them.

The Hierarchy of Managers' Personal Values and Universal Management Attributes

The main purpose of this chapter is to examine and compare the importance of managers' personal values and universal management attributes in organizations from Slovenia, Austria, and Poland. In this study, the analysis of results focuses on (1) personal values of managers, where 57 variables were verified, which were measured on a nine-point Likert scale and (2) evaluation of selected, universal management attributes that determine managerial behavior in organizations, whose measurement was performed on eight-point semantic scales. In order to compare the significance of managers' personal values and universal management attributes between respondents' groups from Poland, Slovenia, and Austria, the method of one-way analysis of variance and t-test for independent groups were applied.

The Conceptual Model of Managing Older Employees to Achieve Their Work Engagement

The purpose of the chapter is to present, on the basis of theoretical starting points, the importance of management of older people for the entire society as well as the problem of older employees and their management as an important branch of human resource management, which presents a major challenge for companies. The main aim of the chapter is to design the conceptual model of managing older employees to achieve their work engagement, which will serve as the basis for understanding the successful ageing of older employees and creating an appropriate working environment favourable for all generations. By promoting active ageing and introducing the management of older employees, companies can achieve an important increase in the work engagement of older employees, a change of generally accepted stereotypes, myths, and prejudices about older people and the reduction of discrimination of older people in the labour market. The appropriate working conditions that should be available in all companies contribute to the improvement of management of older employees and their work engagement.

The Relationship Between Culture and Human Development

The human development is used to evaluate the richness of human life, focusing on the people, on their opportunities and choices, rather than simply on the richness of economies. As for national culture, it is understood as a set of characteristics that distinguish members and that may influence all aspects of social and individual life. This study hypothesizes that national culture, measured using Hofstede's six cultural dimensions, has an impact on corruption and on innovation, and that less corrupt and more innovative nations create better welfare conditions and human development for their habitants. To test the proposed framework, data were obtained from Hofstede's, Transparency International, Global Innovation, and United Nations Development Programme websites for the year 2012. Using PLS-SEM, the results show that cultural factors play a smaller role on determining innovation than corruption, and that decreasing corruption is more important to improve human development than increasing innovation.