John W. Newstrom

Toward A Conceptual Clarification Of Employee Responses To Flexible Working Hours: A Work Adjustment Approach

An elaboration of Davis, England and Lofquists (1968) work adjustment model is employed to explain how flexible working hours can influence employee satisfaiction, performance, absenteeism, tenure, organizational commitment, and job involvement. Through need full illment, stress reduction, and the harmonization of work with human circadian rhythms, flexible working hours can contribute to a greater correspondence between (1) an individuals abilities and the ability requirements of the job, and (2) an individuals needs and the satisfaiction of those needs by, the work environment.

Employee Responses to Flexible Work Schedules: An Inter-Organization, Inter-System Comparison

An expost facto designed investigation compared employee affective and behavioral responses to four work schedules—a fixed-hour schedule and three variations of flexible working hours. Hypothesized systematic differences in employee responses reflecting increasing degrees of flexibility were not supported. However, employees generally responded more favorably to any of the flexible hour systems as contrasted with the fixed-hour work schedule.

Making workplace fun more functional

Recently, many practitioners, books, articles, and consultants have claimed that a fun work environment is a good thing for organizations to have. These sources assert fun will lead to increased productivity, higher morale, and fewer human resource problems. This paper draws the results of a large e‐mail survey of managers conducted by the authors. The results indicate that there is overwhelming support for having fun in the workplace. These respondents report that having a fun work environment will increase the levels of enthusiasm, satisfaction, creativity, communications among employees and enhanced feelings of group cohesiveness. The respondents reported few significant downside risks. The survey also asked for suggestions as to how to make the work environment more fun. Many responses were received. They were analyzed, cataloged, and evaluated by the authors and discussed in this paper.

Creating and Sustaining Fun Work Environments in Hospitality and Service Organizations

ABSTRACT Managers of hospitality and service organizations have long believed that it is critical for their employees to have fun at work. They recognize the important relationships between their employees having fun and their customers having a pleasant experience. While everyone accepts this notion, there is little empirical support for either a definition of what managers can do to promote a fun work environment or even what makes a fun work environment fun. Further, while many positive outcomes for both the individual and the organization are claimed to be associated with fun work environments, there is even less empirical data to support this belief. This primary purpose of the paper is to identify and define the actions and activities that managers can do or support to create and sustain the feeling employees have that their firm is a fun place to work or have a “fun work environment.” The paper reports results of a large e-mail survey of human resource managers designed to identify what cues managers send to create a fun work environment, the degree to which these cues actually are associated with a work environment that is fun, and the positive individual and organizational outcomes that are claimed to be associated with working in such an environment. The study offers definitions and measurements of the cueing process, a fun work environment, and outcomes of the process. We found a strong relationship between the antecedent cues and the degree to which the work environment was perceived as fun. The relationships between a fun work environment and various outcomes were not as strong or comprehensive. While the results of this research are positive and extend our knowledge of cues, culture and especially “fun work environments,” more needs to be done in validating the measures and extending the research.

Job Context and Job Content: A Conceptual Perspective

Recent research has produced seemingly contradictory findings for the moderating effect of job context satisfaction on job-contentl worker-response relationships. Four sets of possible explanations are explored: chance occurrence, sample distribution artifacts, common method variance, and a series of alternative conceptual explanations. Psychological absorption/distraction is discussed as a process to explain the role of context satisfaction. Possible determinants of absorption/distraction are explored, and competitive, testable hy-potheses are presented for each possible explanation.

An Analytic Framework for Assessing Popular Business Books

Examines business books from the point of view of managerial readers, listing the desirable elements of “bestsellers” and suggesting ways of making their reading worthwhile, including a hierarchy of learning. Goes on to critique bestsellers, discussing a range of aspects from their credentials to their practicability. Concludes that managers must be both carefully selective in their choice of books and selectively careful in how to read them, and that by following the criteria posited they should progress towards creating learning organizations.

The Potential Role of Popular Business Books in Management Development Programmes

Numerous business books have become popular (in terms of sales in the US) in the 1980s. Assuming that there is value in them for organisational managers, one issue to be addressed is how management development programmes can best incorporate these materials. The pros and cons of reading popular business books are summarised, a series of alternative pedagogical designs and the underlying assumptions they must adapt to are presented, a set of contingency factors for differentiating among the designs is proposed, and a set of operational suggestions to guide the use of these books is offered. A rough typology for classifying business books is suggested and guidelines are provided for discussion of the books.