Scientist Organizational Identity – the Diversity of Perspectives

Objective: The purpose of this article is to show the diversity of possibilities for interpreting identities in the context of the academic profession by showing the different dimensions of participation in the academic community and personality transformations associated with the capture of certain attitudes and behaviors of the scientists.Methodology: The article is based on a critical analysis of the literature dealing with the sense of organizational identity in the scientific context. We expanded the characteristics associated with this issue to the recognitions arising from the complexity of participating in the life of science on many levels. The work provides an overview of the research approaches of potential detectable factors shaping the investigator’s personality in organizational terms. Provided a theoretical background on scientist identity in an organizational context in this paper provides the directions of the research that brings diagnosis in management sciences.Findings: Scientist organizational identity is the concept that provides a few interpretational directions that can be explored in the management context. The empirical views on this subject provide two levels of meaning. On the first level, it raises questions about individual needs related, on the one hand, to the factors of participation in this profession’s life, like prestige, carrier, and power. On the other hand, the second level’s meaning is connected with the scientist’s personality and compatible with his professional choices like scientific orientation on life choices and creative disposition of high professionalism. The multi-mentality of participation, both physical, emotional, and life academism discourse, brings many recognitions of the concept of scientific organizational identity.Value Added: Attention has been paid to the critical discourse on the theory of an organization’s influence on its scientific members’ identity. Also, an indication of the role of these processes in the power and hierarchy context. In the other context, we try to understand the role of individual human dispositions and professional socialization processes in the academic profession.Recommendations: Scientists’ organizational identity is an interesting direction to explore, that brings many reflections about the influence that brings the academic profession area to scientific senses of being. These processes also influence factors like bureaucracy, hierarchy, career politics, evaluation processes, and academic organizational narratives.

Impact Assessment on the Economic and Financial Indicators of the Implementation of Lean Management Model

Objective: Understand how the increased competitiveness encourages industries to seek solutions in order to maintain or increase their market share, promoting the manufacturing of quality products at reduced costs.Methodology: In this study, an in-company analysis regarding the Lean performance evaluation methods present in the literature as well as already implemented in the industry was performed, focusing on the gaps of present models and needs for future.Findings: New philosophies arise such as the Lean Manufacturing, which is based on continuous improvement, aiming at optimizing the production system, eliminating waste and using fewer resources.Value Added: Based on the results, and with the objective of allowing comprehensive assessment of Lean performance independently by the companies, and the determination of improvement actions, a Lean performance evaluation method was developed in order to understand the impact in financial and economic figures of the case study.Recommendations: Take into account the main concepts of the social sciences, such as Organizational Culture, Leadership Style and Strategic Approach, considering the link with the financial economic performance.

Re-vision of Future Trends in Human Resource Management (HRM) after COVID-19

Objective: The article is an attempt to make a diagnosis about the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on HR practices including recruitment and selection, remote working, motivating employees, re-skilling and communicating. This theoretical study is a kind of revision and discussion with the “future trends in HR” predicted a few years ago before pandemic.Methodology: The research method was a review of the most recent research findings from business practice and from scientific literature concerning the impact of the pandemic on various fields of human resource management. Due to the growing flood of media information, the authors wanted to select the most updated HR practices implemented in organizations from the reliable and acknowledgeable sources.Findings: The biggest challenges for HR after COVID-19 will be: restructuring the place of work and the content of work, applying more advanced technology to recruitment, selection and performance; more interests, appreciation and motivation from managers will be needed as well as building trust, a sense of belonging among team members. The list of benefits will be revised towards enhancing mental health and well-being. The reality after the pandemic will require new competencies from managers and employees so re-skilling and re-training are the most expected approaches.Value Added: This article is becoming an important voice on the impact of a pandemic on the HR practices. The emerging and current results of research on HR trends will allow targeting education systems and equipping employees with the most predictable competences which will be useful in the era after the pandemic.Recommendations: The COVID-19 turmoil has changed the prepared strategic plans for development of many organizations. This external factor hardened all continents and built new reality where some tips and recommendation are highly welcome. Thus, we proposed few revisited personnel solutions which HR professionals may implement. We also invite other scholars to research the pandemic impact on many multidimensional levels: economic, political, social, technological, ethical ones.

Recent Dimensions of Regional Migration

Objective: The purpose of this article is to make an analysis of the size and structure of migratory flows at regional and sub-regional level.Methodology: Descriptive statistical analysis was mainly used to visualize and synthesize information about the evolution of the structure and size of migratory flows in major regions of the world.Findings: The importance of contemporary migration is related not only to the number of migrants, but also to the fact that the migratory phenomenon has become global and takes on more and more diverse forms. People travel for various periods of time, but shorter. They adopt a pattern of circulatory migration, continue to maintain strong connections with where they left from or practice unregulated migration. Migration has become a defining feature of the modern global economy, and the main factors underlying its expansion are the processes of globalization, technical progress, the new economic order, etc. In 2019, the number of l migrants at world level reached 271.6 million, well above the values forecast by international bodies in recent years. In the last three decades, more developed regions have received 69 million international migrants, while less developed regions have received only 50 million. The highest migratory flows were recorded in high-income countries (98 million persons), and middle and low-income countries added only about 20 million persons to migrants’ stock (17 million and 3 million, respectively).Value Added: The paper presents an analysis of the size and structure of migratory flows at the regional level, providing a more detailed picture of migration, and presenting a different but complementary perspective of migrants and movements from different parts of the world. A comparative analysis of migrant flows at regional level and on large migration corridors is performed, but also of the structure by age groups and gender of regional migrants.Recommendations: The analysis of data on regional migration shows significant differences in migration patterns between regions. Greater recognition of regional migration patterns, variations and complexities can help shape strategic and sustainable responses of the migration policies. It is also necessary to pay attention to the regional dimensions and variations of international migration that may have critical implications for debates and regulations, especially (but not only) globally.

New Public Management as a Tool for Changes in Public Administration

Objective: The implementation of mechanisms stimulating marketization of the public sector is an elementary assumption of a modern public management system. The main goals of these processes are to increase efficiency, reduce bureaucracy, create a platform for cooperation between public and private entities, and extend decentralization. The set of rules practiced in modern local governments increasingly resembles a private enterprise managed by efficient managers. The traditional approach, which was only the administration process itself, is being replaced by a focus on economy, efficiency, quality, and effectiveness.Methodology: The material was created based on the qualitative method in the form of secondary analysis of literature data. At the same time, it provides the theoretical background for conducted empirical research on changing the management system in public administration. The effect of further research explorations will be another material presented in the form of a research reportValue Added: The New Public Management (NPM) concept is based on changing the orientation of management of public organizations consisting in ceasing to apply the approach focusing only on procedures and rules of conduct related to expenditure, and implementing rules based on the analysis of the results related to expenditure incurred, adopting strategic orientation and introducing market mechanism for the process of providing public services (Zalewski, 2006, p. 74). The purpose of the article is to describe the New Public Management model, the implementation of which helps public institutions to respond to challenges posed by external and internal stakeholders.Findings: The article presents the thesis that changes in public administration require the transformation of a management system characterized by entrepreneurship, the use of different business-oriented strategies for implementing effective actions.Recommendations: The idea of New Public Management is to replace the bureaucratic administrative management model and to introduce a managerial model, i.e. the application in the public sector of the principles and solutions of management systems known and used in the business sector (Alford & Huges, 2008, pp. 130–148). This is caused by the increase in citizens’ expectations regarding the increase in the quality of service provision, while at the same time unwilling to raise taxes. To achieve this goal, NPM has introduced certain assumptions to help in effective management (Templatka, n.d.).

Long-term Development of National Human Capital. Evidence from China and Poland

Objective: The aim of this paper is to present the long-term development of the chosen human capital indices that uncovers and compares the outcome of the national efforts performed by the two culturally distant countries (China and Poland) over the decade. Additionally, paper indicates the areas of further HC progress in both nations.Methodology: The study was based on measuring human capital with the help of deliberately chosen set of macroeconomic indices (28 items) referring to the nations’ capability to create innovations. Analysis was performed for the 2007–2017 years.Findings: Positive phenomena in the case of human capital development outperform the negative ones in both countries, however, the extent is more remarkable in the case of China. China managed to: improve greatly the pupil-teacher ratio (both in primary and secondary schools), increase secondary and tertiary education enrolment rate along with the rise of the no. of students from abroad. In Poland, the greatest increase was observed in the case of the number of researchers what consequently contributed to the improvement of number of scientific and technical articles and citable documents (h-index).Value Added: To the best Author’s knowledge this is the first paper that compares national human capital development in Poland and China with a set of indices focused on capability to create innovations and adopts longitudinal approach.Recommendations: Policy-makers in the case of Poland should concentrate on: fostering university/industry research collaboration, improving rank in worldwide QS classification and performing more efforts to attract and retain talents. Moreover, the negative trends should be reversed with regard to: PISA scores and general quality of education system. In turn, Chinese authorities should facilitate better PISA scores and increase the presence of scientific and technical articles.

YouTube Vloggers as Brand Influencers on Consumer Purchase Behaviour

Objective: The increasing influence of YouTube vloggers on consumer purchase behaviour and the specificity of the vloggers _ viewers/subscribers relationship are under-researched. Addressing this gap in knowledge, this paper explores the role of vloggers as brand influencers on consumer (their viewers) purchase behaviour. It aims to investigate the interaction between vloggers and viewers/subscribers in terms of brand awareness and consumers’ purchase behaviour.Methodology: A mixed-method approach (often connected with netnography) incorporated non-participant observation of vloggers’ activities and vloggers-viewers interactions within selected popular vlogs, supported by an online survey with both vloggers and viewers.Findings: We have observed specific brand endorsements and experiences, depending on the vloggers’ context, leading to both positive and negative feedback. This interaction and the consistently positive perception of reasons behind the vloggers’ choice of the endorsed brands underpin the credibility of the vloggers – viewers/subscribers relationship.Value added: Our results show not only the significance of vloggers as brand influencers, providing their audiences information perceived as trustworthy and convincing in terms of purchase recommendations but also explore the factors affecting this process.Recommendations: This research directed our attention into the viewer-viewer interaction on the vlogs platforms. It is a very dynamic and challenging (difficult to control) part of vlog marketing activities (including various eWOM aspects) which can be very influential in the analysed context and stays a task for the future research.

Academic Autonomy in the Contemporary University

Objective: The purpose of this article is to show changes in the understanding of academic autonomy and the manifestations of its erosion, by appropriating this value to legitimise the increase in managerial autonomy, discrediting the value of community autonomy and increasingly restricting individual academic autonomy.Methodology: The article is based on a critical analysis of the literature dealing with the reality of the functioning of autonomy in higher education institutions and materials related to the implementation of contemporary higher education reforms - mainly in Poland.Findings: Changes in the perception of autonomy, threats to institutional and individual autonomy resulting from the uncritical subordination of transformations of higher education to the new public management concept as well as institutional isomorphism are presented.Value Added: Attention has also been paid to ignoring the critical discourse on the consequences of too-one-sided transformation of higher education institutions, losing key values, whose carrier is community and individual autonomy – both academic teachers, for whom it is a necessary condition for the development of didactic and scientific creativity, as well as students who only in a situation of feeling are able to take responsibility for their own development.Recommendations: Individual autonomy and participatory management, which determine creative activity and academic entrepreneurship, should be a particular concern for university managers. It is necessary to undertake research on the autonomy of students as members of the academic community.

Organizational Identification at a Multinational Company

Objective: The present case study investigates to what extent employees working at the Dutch site of an American multinational biotechnology organization identify with this company. According to prior research, organizational identification leads to higher commitment to the organization. Gaining more insight into which factors drive or impede organizational identification can help organizations increase their employees’ identification and thus, commitment. Two hypotheses were tested. First, organizational identification was expected to be higher among international employees than Dutch employees. Second, a correlation was expected between organizational identification and organizational commitment.Methodology: A questionnaire was conducted among 296 employees of the company site. The scale of Edwards and Peccei (2007) was used to measure the construct of organizational identification. Mowday et al.’s (1979) Organizational Commitment Questionnaire was used to measure the construct of organizational commitment. All data was statistically analyzed with the software SPSS; an independent samples t-test was performed to test the first hypothesis and a Pearson correlation coefficient was computed to test the second hypothesis.Findings: Both hypotheses were confirmed. A significant difference was found between international employees (M = 5.25, SD = 1.05, n = 81) and Dutch employees (M = 4.96, SD = 1.12, n = 215) regarding organizational identification (t(293) = -2.03, p =.04, d = 0.27). Moreover, a significant positive correlation exists between organizational identification and organizational commitment (r(295) = .81, p < .001).Value Added: Most prior research regarding organizational identification has focused on top-down processes, stressing the roles managers play in developing organizational identification among employees. Scholars have devoted little attention to what factors drive or impede organizational identification in cross-cultural workplaces. Taking on a bottom-up perspective, this study concentrates on the impact of employees’ social identities, mainly considering expatriate membership, on the extent of their organizational identification.Recommendations: In order to increase organizational identification, multinational organizations could: 1) facilitate identity synergy by acknowledging the full portfolio of identities employees seek to enact within organizations, and 2) increase peer identification among employees by initiating group activities that facilitate peer-to-peer interactions, create a sense of community and strongly bond individuals to the organization.

Beyond the Subjective Experience of Visual Information in the Modern Media

Objective: According to researchers, visuality appeals to the cognitive aspects of image consumption, hence, the nature of information technologies becomes more important than the content itself. Based on this relevance, the article’s aim is twofold: when seeking to better understand the phenomenon of visual information to analyse the visual communication experience of public relation professionals who apply visual solutions to achieve a specific effect in their work.Methodology: A quasi-structured in-depth interview of the experts and the method of interpretive phenomenological analysis were used to gather and process the data of the research.Findings: The paper presents insights into the interaction between receiver’s visual information experience and one’s world view. The research revealed that the visual information influences a person’s perception and interpretation of a message when it serves as supplement for information alongside text in press, advertisement, etc.Value Added: Based on the research, the visual information experience was defined as an instantaneous action of giving meaning to personal experience and imagination by finding the intersection of narratives between the image and oneself.Recommendations: A narrow boundary exists between the stimulation and constriction of the observer’s imagination when analysing the visual message. With the help of image communication, a new reality can be created. To reach effective communication, it is recommended to avoid abstract images that allow the observer’s imagination to give it whole other meanings than intended by the sender of the message.