Benedetta Bellò

Learning the Ropes: The Protective Role of Mentoring in Correctional Police Officers’ Socialization Process

Formal mentoring is an individualized and contextualized socialization tactic to enhance newcomers’ learning—acknowledged as essential in the early career stage—that can be of particular value when entering a fairly unpredictable and stressful workplace. This research aims to understand the moderating role of formal mentoring in the relationship between organizational socialization and 2 adjustment indicators, a positive 1 (commitment) and a negative 1 (turnover intention). A questionnaire was administered to 117 correctional police officer newcomers, as prisons are especially critical work contexts for newcomers. The results show a direct effect from both socialization and mentoring on commitment and turnover, and an interaction between socialization and mentoring on turnover, although not on commitment. When the socialization process progresses steadily, both socialization and mentoring contribute to good adjustment, but when traditional tactics go wrong, a different learning source (formal mentoring) exerts a protective function, limiting newcomers’ intention to quit. These findings give support to the usefulness of mentoring in a law enforcement context and provide some insight into defining formal mentoring programs.

Managerial and Organizational Impact of ERP Systems in Public Sector Organizations. A Case Study

Drawing on a questionnaire survey conducted in an Italian Regional Government organization, the paper presents an in-depth analysis of the organizational issues linked to the introduction of an Enterprise Resource Planning system. The results of the second part of the research based on the results of the first qualitative part where a Focus Groups (FGs) analysis was used, are provided. A structured questionnaire, made specifically for this study by operationalizing the variables raised in the previous phase in ten types of questions, has been used. The sample is composed of 775 employees and managers users of the ERP system. Results show that, broadly speaking, employees believe that organizational rather than technical aspects are the main obstacle to fully utilizing the ERP system, that knowledge of the system did not spread through structured or programmed actions (e.g. training). Limitation and future research perspectives are also discussed.

The Impact of Using an ERP System on Organizational Processes and Individual Employees

This article reports the results of a research aimed at investigating the impact of an ERP system on organizational processes and individual employees in a public sector organization (Italian Regional Council). Through a qualitative method (Focus Groups – FG) interesting results have come out: system introduction planning, organizational and technical aspects seem to be relevant issues to be addressed in order to improve ERP system’s effectiveness. Through a structured questionnaire, a larger sample of employees will be involved in the second phase, aimed at testing the constructs which emerged with the FG analysis and the relationships among them.

The power of peers

Although the role of creativity in the entrepreneurial process has long been analysed, only recently scholars have begun addressing its influence on entrepreneurial intentions, showing that complex dynamics characterise this relationship. The purpose of this paper is to understand the surrounding mechanisms (moderation and mediation) that connect creativity to entrepreneurial intentions, with a focus on social context and entrepreneurial self-efficacy.,A structured questionnaire was administered to a sample of 507 students from 17 to 21 years old. The effect of creativity on entrepreneurial intentions and the moderating role of social context were tested with a three-step hierarchical regression, while the mediating effect of self-efficacy was tested by a multiple regression analysis based on the bootstrapping method.,The results reveal that: peers who encourage entrepreneurship moderate the relationship between creativity and entrepreneurial intentions by strengthening this relationship, and entrepreneurial self-efficacy mediates the relationship between creativity and entrepreneurial intentions.,In light of these results, institutions should draw attention to how creative potential in students differs in order to provide new educational programmes to strengthen self-efficacy in entrepreneurial students and support encouraging social context of peers in which entrepreneurial intentions can be fostered.,The study, by responding to the suggestions of conducting research on the interface between creativity and entrepreneurship (Shane and Nicolaou, 2015), brings new empirical details regarding the mechanisms that link creativity to entrepreneurial intentions. Furthermore, it casts light on the interaction between dispositional and social variables, showing the crucial role of peers in enhancing the interaction between creativity and intentions.

Business Intelligence in Public Sector Organizations: A Case Study

Information Technology (IT) makes it possible to manage the increased complexity that all businesses, both public and private, face. One of the consequences of the growing use of IT is the large quantity of data produced and stored. However, very often this data is not exploited to their full potential. An existing tool that can increase the benefits related to the availability of data, specifically for supporting the decision-making process, is Business Intelligence (BI). BI may be defined as “an integrated, company-specific, IT-based total approach for managerial decision support” (Kemper et al. Business intelligence and performance management: theory, systems, and industrial applications, Springer, U.K., pp. 3–12, 2013). We investigate the impact of BI on managers’ behaviours. More specifically, the main aim of our research is to understand how the information provided by BI is used, what the perceived advantages and disadvantages are of its use and how the use of the BI module influences the managerial decision-making process.