Michael Schiffinger

The influence of family responsibilities, career fields and gender on career success

Purpose – The paper seeks to analyze empirically the consequences of family responsibilities for career success and the influence of career context variables and gender on this relationship.Design/methodology/approach – The sample consists of 305 business school graduates (52 percent male) from a major Central European university who finished their studies around 2000 and who were in their early career stages (i.e. third and fourth career years).Findings – The paper reports a negative relationship between family responsibilities and objective and subjective career success via work centrality. There is also substantive support for the effect of contextual factors on the relationship between family situations and career success, emphasizing the importance of a multi‐level perspective. Finally, evidence of gender effects exists.Research limitations/implications – The empirical generalizability of the results is limited by the structure of the sample. Qualitative in‐depth studies are needed to further underst...

Going beyond the individual

New forms of organising and new forms of individuals private and professional life concepts have affected organisations as well as careers. The resulting new forms of careers are characterised by two major elements: organisations are no longer the primary arena for professional careers and the diversity of careers and career paths is sharply increasing. At the level of global careers similar developments can be observed. In addition, two specifics can be mentioned: a number of additional forms of working internationally supplement expatriation in its classic sense and there seems to be an increasing pressure on the speed and diversity of international assignments. There is comparatively little theoretical insight into these developments. Departing from a sociological perspective and using the theoretical framework of late French Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, this paper takes a career field and habitus perspective of careers. Based on that, it tries to identify areas of contribution for the global career discussion that can emerge from such an approach.

Attitude is everything? The impact of workload, safety climate, and safety tools on medical errors: A study of intensive care units

BACKGROUND Hospitals face an increasing pressure toward efficiency and cost reduction while ensuring patient safety. This warrants a closer examination of the trade-off between production and protection posited in the literature for a high-risk hospital setting (intensive care). PURPOSES On the basis of extant literature and concepts on both safety management and organizational/safety culture, this study investigates to which extent production pressure (i.e., increased staff workload and capacity utilization) and safety culture (consisting of safety climate among staff and safety tools implemented by management) influence the occurrence of medical errors and if/how safety climate and safety tools interact. METHODOLOGY/APPROACH A prospective, observational, 48-hour cross-sectional study was conducted in 57 intensive care units. The dependent variable is the incidence of errors affecting those 378 patients treated throughout the entire observation period. Capacity utilization and workload were measured by indicators such as unit occupancy, nurse-to-patient/physician-to-patient ratios, levels of care, or NEMS scores. The safety tools considered include Critical Incidence Reporting Systems, audits, training, mission statements, SOPs/checklists, and the use of barcodes. Safety climate was assessed using a psychometrically validated four-dimensional questionnaire.Linear regression was employed to identify the effects of the predictor variables on error rate as well as interaction effects between safety tools and safety climate. FINDINGS Higher workload has a detrimental effect on safety, whereas safety climate-unlike the examined safety tools-has a virtually equal opposite effect. Correlations between safety tools and safety climate as well as their interaction effects on error rate are mostly nonsignificant. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS Increased workload and capacity utilization increase the occurrence of medical error, an effect that can be offset by a positive safety climate but not by formally implemented safety procedures and policies.

Leadership in transformation - between local embeddedness and global challenges*

Based on empirical studies in Romania, Estonia, Germany, and Austria within the GLOBE project, the authors try to answer the question of cultural embeddedness of leadership patterns in an environment of more and more globalised management. Special emphasis is put on the match/mismatch of the observed styles of leadership behaviour of CEOs with regional and global expectations, on the differences and similarities between the examined countries, the influence of transformational settings in the CEE countries, and the prospective changes due to a new generation of managers. Auf der Basis empirischer Studien in Rumanien, Estland, Deutschland und Osterreich im Rahmen des GLOBE - Projektes, gehen die Autoren der Frage nach der kulturellen Einbindung von Fuhrungsmustern unter Bedingungen eines zunehmend globalisierten Managements nach. Im Zentrum stehen dabei der Vergleich der beobachteten Fuhrungsstilmuster von Geschaftsfuhrern mit den regionalen und globalen Erwartungen der Nachgeordneten, die Unterschiede und Ahnlichkeiten zwischen den untersuchten Landern, der Einfluss der Transformationsbedingungen in den MOE-Staaten sowie die erwarteten Veranderungen durch einen Generationswechsel im Management.

Einmal gut, immer gut? Einflussfaktoren auf Karrieren in ‚neuen' Karrierefeldern **

Der Beitrag hat zum Ziel, organisationale- „und, interpersonale” Einflussfaktoren auf Managementkarrieren in post-organisationalen Kontexten zu diskutieren. Nach einer Spezifikation relevanter Termini wird anhand der Dimensionen Kopplung und Konfiguration eine Typologie neuer Karrierefelder entwickelt, die eine Fokussierung auf zentrale Bestimmungsmerkmale neuer Karriereformen ermöglicht. Im Anschluss daran werden Indikatoren vorstellt, die auf Tendenzen einer Substitution unselbständiger Erwerbstätigkeit in Richtung von Beschäftigungsformen in den neuen Karrierefeldern verweisen. Schließlich werden im Sinne eines, State of the Art „Forschungsbefunde zu zentralen organisationalen und interpersonalen Einflussfaktoren auf Karrieren aufgearbeitet. Im abschließenden Teil kommt es zur Formulierung und Diskussion von Thesen darüber, wie sich aufgrund der geänderter Kontextbedingungen die Relevanz einzelner Einflussfaktoren verschieben könnte.

Mind the (Gender) Gap. Gender, Gender Role Types, and Their Effects on Objective Career Success over Time**

Drawing on ideas by Pierre Bourdieu, this paper analyzes the effects of gender and gender role type (GRT) for objective career success (i.e., income) over time. Empirically, data from two cohorts of business school graduates were analyzed with mixed linear models. Gender and GRT, both perceived as career capital, progressively affect objective career success over time, with feminine GRT hampering objective career success for both sexes. Remaining results vary between the two cohorts: findings for the younger cohort deviate more strongly from the hypotheses derived.

Two sides of the safety coin?: How patient engagement and safety climate jointly affect error occurrence in hospital units.

Background: Safety climate (SC) and more recently patient engagement (PE) have been identified as potential determinants of patient safety, but conceptual and empirical studies combining both are lacking. Purposes: On the basis of extant theories and concepts in safety research, this study investigates the effect of PE in conjunction with SC on perceived error occurrence (pEO) in hospitals, controlling for various staff-, patient-, and hospital-related variables as well as the amount of stress and (lack of) organizational support experienced by staff. Besides the main effects of PE and SC on error occurrence, their interaction is examined, too. Methodology/Approach: In 66 hospital units, 4,345 patients assessed the degree of PE, and 811 staff assessed SC and pEO. PE was measured with a new instrument, capturing its core elements according to a recent literature review: Information Provision (both active and passive) and Activation and Collaboration. SC and pEO were measured with validated German-language questionnaires. Besides standard regression and correlational analyses, partial least squares analysis was employed to model the main and interaction effects of PE and SC on pEO, also controlling for stress and (lack of) support perceived by staff, various staff and patient attributes, and potential single-source bias. Findings: Both PE and SC are associated with lower pEO, to a similar extent. The joint effect of these predictors suggests a substitution rather than mutually reinforcing interaction. Accounting for control variables and/or potential single-source bias slightly attenuates some effects without altering the results. Practice Implications: Ignoring PE potentially amounts to forgoing a potential source of additional safety. On the other hand, despite the abovementioned substitution effect and conjectures of SC being inert, PE should not be considered as a replacement for SC.

Lost in Transition? Complexity in Organisational Behaviour - the Contributions of Systems Theories **

The article demonstrates the usefulness of concepts and methods from systems theories for Organisational Behaviour (OB). Diagnosing development areas in OB, especially the analysis of whole systems and the degree of operationalisation and formalisation of core constructs and assumptions, the article uses the complexity hypothesis in career research to illustrate the opportunities and limitations of concepts and methods from systems theories. Finally, the consequences of such an approach for OB are discussed.

Mehr Unabhängigkeit im neuen Karrierekontext? Der Kampf um Arbeit und die rosa Brille der Karriereforschung

Karrieren sind ein zentrales Phanomen individueller Erwerbsleben, die in organisationalen und gesellschaftlichen Kontext eingebettet sind. Im deutschsprachigen Raum wird Karriere stark mit hierarchischem Aufstieg verbunden, in der englischsprachigen Literatur ist sie definiert als „the unfolding sequence of a persons work experience over time“ (Arthur et al. 1989a: 8, Arthur et al. 1989b: 8) und stellt ein bedeutendes Konzept an der Schnittstelle von Individuum, Organisation und Umwelt dar. Die starke Verbindung von Karrieren mit dem organisationalen, institutionellen und okonomischen Umfeld hat zur Folge, dass Kontextanderungen Karrieren elementar beeinflussen.

Self-Disclosure in Online Interaction: A Meta-analysis

Using the Internet increasingly requires people to disclose personal information for various reasons such as establishing legitimacy, authentication, or providing personalized services. An enormous amount of literature analyzed various influencing variables that shape self-disclosure in online interaction. However, the range of studies considers very specific variables and therefore provides merely puzzle pieces of the field. This paper puts the pieces together by combining extant evidence into a meta-study. Results suggest that, while the overall effects of demographic, environmental, person- and system-based predictors are rather weak, self-disclosure can to some extent be influenced by system design.