Joel Harmon

Effects of high-involvement work systems on employee satisfaction and service costs in veterans healthcare.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Two strong imperatives for healthcare managers are reducing costs of service and attracting and retaining highly dedicated and competent patient care and support employees. Is there a trade‐off or are there organizational practices that can further both objectives at the same time? High‐involvement work systems (HIWS) represent a holistic work design that includes interrelated core features such as involvement, empowerment, development, trust, openness, teamwork, and performance‐based rewards. HIWS have been linked to higher productivity, quality, employee and customer satisfaction, and market and financial performance in Fortune 1000 firms. Apparently, few prior studies have looked at the impacts of this holistic design within the healthcare sector. This research found that HIWS were associated with both greater employee satisfaction and lower patient service costs in 146 Veterans Health Administration centers, indicating that such practices pay off in both humanistic and financial terms. This suggests that managers implementing HIWS will incur real expenses that are likely to be more than offset by more satisfied employees, less organizational turmoil, and lower service delivery costs, which, in this study, amounted to over

Implementation research design: Integrating participatory action research into randomized controlled trials

1.2 million in savings for an average VHA facility.

Influences on the organizational implementation of sustainability: an integrative model

BackgroundA gap continues to exist between what is known to be effective and what is actually delivered in the usual course of medical care. The goal of implementation research is to reduce this gap. However, a tension exists between the need to obtain generalizeable knowledge through implementation trials, and the inherent differences between healthcare organizations that make standard interventional approaches less likely to succeed. The purpose of this paper is to explore the integration of participatory action research and randomized controlled trial (RCT) study designs to suggest a new approach for studying interventions in healthcare settings.DiscussionWe summarize key elements of participatory action research, with particular attention to its collaborative, reflective approach. Elements of participatory action research and RCT study designs are discussed and contrasted, with a complex adaptive systems approach used to frame their integration.SummaryThe integration of participatory action research and RCT design results in a new approach that reflects not only the complex nature of healthcare organizations, but also the need to obtain generalizeable knowledge regarding the implementation process.

Relative effect of geographic context and international strategic approach on sustainability management

Multiple forces in the 21st century have propelled businesses into confronting conditions that challenge their own and the worlds sustainability. This paper illuminates the factors influencing companies to implement sustainability practices. It validates an integrative model of the effects that external influences, foundational organization enablers, decision drivers, and inhibitors had on both sustainability implementation and organizational performance. Using data from a worldwide survey of 1514 managers, we showed how external forces for sustainability and support from organizational leaders to create an enabling foundation are likely to translate into decision priorities, implementation of sustainability practices, and perceived performance improvement. We also showed the considerable power of internal inhibiting forces and outlined how they may be overcome. The results point to the steps leaders can take to achieve their environmental, social, and financial goals, as well as to further streams of inquiry.

How Appreciative Inquiry Can Help Managers Gain Trust

Organisations around the world are increasingly factoring in environmental and social demands as they strive to achieve enduring success beyond near-term financial returns. Only partially understood are the ways that organisations manage sustainability based on geographic location and multinational standardisation. This study analysed a worldwide survey of managers (N = 1,514) to compare across borders their perceptions of sustainability-related external influences, internal inhibitors, internal enabling factors, decision drivers, practices, and operating performance. Guided by an existing integrative model combining these factors, this paper analysed variation across geographic region, country-wide sustainability conditions, and level of economic development. Corporate sustainability motives, practices, and benefits do vary significantly across geographic contexts, but organisation size and strategy of operating as a national, multi-local, or global firm make an even bigger difference. Further research is suggested to deepen these findings.

A Multi-Theory Approach to Managing Knowledge Assets: The Case of Complex Professional Human Service Organizations

Energizing and enabling deep change in organizations are often necessary and always challenging. In “Creating a Healthy Workplace Culture Using an Appreciative Inquiry 4-D Cycle,” Raymond Calabrese, Erik Cohen, and Dustin Miller of The Ohio State University offer interesting and valuable insights on the way that appreciative inquiry (AI) can be used to create healthy and productive workplaces. AI continues to expand as a theoretical research perspective and as a change methodology. It employs a highly collaborative and distinctly positive approach to discovering what is good and what works in an organization (rather that what isn’t/doesn’t). The goal is to replace negative-reinforcing loops with positive, optimistic ones that result in new values and positive actions leading to innovation and sustainable higher levels of organizational functioning. Calabrese, Cohen, and Miller walk us through an in-depth, hands-on case study of AI’s successful application in a publicly funded organization. Actually an amalgamation of cooperating social and government agencies, the organization was considered a last resort for substance abusers and was coordinated by a manager and supervised by a court magistrate, both of whom had limited oversight of interagency personnel and had to rely on goodwill. At the onset, it was characterized by low staff morale and lack of cooperation. The authors detail the

The Impact of Perceived Corporate Hypocrisy on Employees in the Retail Industry

ABSTRACT A multi-theory framework is offered for guiding managerial decision making in complex professional human service organizations; a growing segment of the economy for which the ability to proactively and dynamically manage knowledge assets is naturally critical to performance. Following a call for greater theoretical integration, this framework synthesizes essential and complimentary elements of three theoretical domains. It combines Transaction Economics’ focus on the appropriate procurement of knowledge assets, with Knowledge Management’s focus on how to dynamically unleash the potential of those assets, and Contingency Thinking’s focus on how to structurally harness and direct that potential. Two key “bridging constructs” emerge offering useful insights both for theory and practice: 1) learning systems as a key element of functional design for managing knowledge assets, and 2) learning costs as a key factor in managing the economic structure of knowledge assets. We apply our integrated framework to two professional human services sectors – business education and health service delivery-- and discuss broader implications for research and practice.

Toward Holistically Mapping the Spread of Workplace Emotions

The Linking Theory & Practice section contains the article “Exploring U.S. Retail Employees’ Experiences of Corporate Hypocrisy.” A great many companies have come under criticism for behaving inconsistently with their promises, not acting according to their own policies, and even lying.What happens when a business is perceived as “hypocritical”—when its actions don’t match its rhetoric? In recent years, research into this question has mostly looked at the negative impact on consumers’ and shareholders’ reactions of perceived corporate hypocrisy, and the consequences (e.g., lost brand equity, sales, and profits). In this article, authors Saheli Goswami and Jung E. Ha-Brookshire offer a relatively rare piece of work exploring how employees experience corporate hypocrisy (CH), with potentially valuable theoretical and practical insights. To advance our understanding of CH, the authors conducted in-depth interviews with employees in the U.S. retail industry (one of the largest employment sectors in the United States) to explore how they form their perceptions of CH and the impacts CH had on their feelings, behavior, and employment. They note that “people might have different sets of expectations toward and obligations for a corporation as an employee or as a consumer,” and that “employees are in more vulnerable situations than consumers when it comes to responding to perceived CH.” Thus, they speculate that employees will experience different consequences of CH than consumers typically do. From their interpretive analysis of 16 interviews, the authors found that both the corporation and their immediate supervisors represented the company for these study participants. Inconsistencies between the words and actions of either resulted in these employees perceiving them as hypocritical in nature. This perceived hypocrisy, in turn, seemed to be related to participants’ feelings and their overall employment intentions. The authors note that “the consequences of CH on employees, particularly the study participants, seemed much more severe than those on consumers, as the study participants expressed their personal moral value compromise and voluntary employment termination with visceral physiological responses.” Among the commonly reported issues that drove participants’ perceptions of corporate hypocrisy and led them to feel skeptical, distrustful, threatened, and scared were favoritism, biased penalizing, and inconsistent instructions. Despite acknowledged limitations, this article has something valuable to offer to researchers and managers who are interested in CH. Theoretically, this study’s insider’s look at how immediate supervisors could also create corporate hypocrisy, jeopardizing retail companies’ image or reputation, seems to call for a new theory on the sources and effects of corporate hypocrisy that could be created through daily activities and performance within corporate settings. This would differ from existing literature focusing on consumer responses and reactions. In their discussion, the authors suggest many future research opportunities in this area to gain a holistic picture of the employment and management problems of the retail industry. From a practical perspective, the study’s findings indicate the importance of retail company managers or supervisors on sales floors, as they almost become the face of the companies for front-line employees who have limited exposure to corporate management. Thus, the authors suggest that retail companies might benefit from developing responsible and respectable managers who encourage a consistent work environment, and who are more communicative and transparent in explaining the rationale behind any inconsistencies, instead of just implementing what may seem to be random changes. They urge hiring teams to specifically consider these common issues while assigning candidates to store managerial positions. They assert that in industries with high employee turnover, such as the retail industry, a focus on creating conditions that reduce CH perceptions among employees can reduce turnover rates, increase organizational effectiveness, and improve organization reputation.

HR's Role in Building a Sustainable Enterprise: Insights from Some of World's Best Companies

Notwithstanding the strong influence and value of rational, scientific management thinking, there is increasing recognition of the important role that emotional dynamics play in understanding organization behavior and leadership. In “Mapping the Association of Emotional Contagion to Leaders, Colleagues, and Clients: Implications for Leadership,” Laura Petitta and Shahnaz Naughton share the foundations and results of an exploratory study offering potentially valuable theoretical and practical insights about emotional exchange in the workplace. The authors define “emotional contagion (EC)” as “the automatic and unintentional tendency of people to catch/absorb another individual’s emotional experience and simultaneously infect others with their own emotions, thereby achieving emotional convergence during social interactions.” They consider EC as ubiquitous and a basic building block of human interaction. They note that “most influential and emerging theories of transformational, charismatic, and servant leadership posit emotional links between leaders and followers, and speculate that affect and emotions are deeply intertwined with the process of leading, with leading outcomes and follower outcomes.” Going beyond typical studies of dyadic emotional exchange, Pettita and Naughton try to advance our understanding of emotion circulation dynamics in the workplace by applying and validating an instrument for “holistically mapping” the simultaneous contagion of four types of emotions—joy, sadness, fear, anger—among three stakeholder groups—leaders, colleagues, and clients—in six very different types of organizations. Their basic research question was: Would the emotions (i.e., joy, sadness, fear, anger) absorbed from and infected into others be differentially associated to the respondent’s leaders, colleagues, and clients?