Mihaela Enache

Career attitudes and subjective career success: tackling gender differences

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of gender upon the relation between protean and boundaryless career attitudes and subjective career success, in todays dynamic and changing organizational context.Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected using a questionnaire conducted on 150 graduate and post‐graduate distance learning students. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.Findings – The analysis indicates that womens career success is positively related with self‐direction and negatively related with their reliance on their own values. Furthermore, the authors found a negative relation between organizational mobility preference and mens subjective career success.Research limitations/implications – A potential limitation of this study is that all participants were distance‐learning students, thus limiting the generalizability of the findings to other populations. Furthermore, cross‐sectional designs do not permit drawing conclusions regarding the causal...

Organizational commitment within a contemporary career context

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relation between the underlying dimensions of protean (self-direction and values driven) and boundaryless (boundaryless mindset and organizational mobility preference (OMP)) career attitudes (Briscoe et al., 2006) and organizational commitment, within todays unstable and uncertain business scenario. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from 167 professionals attending graduate and postgraduate distance learning courses. The hypotheses were tested using hierarchical regression analysis. Findings – Research results suggest that protean career attitudes contribute significantly to individuals’ emotional attachment to their employing organization. Furthermore, OMP was found to be significant in predicting both affective and continuance commitment. Research limitations/implications – First, cross-sectional correlational designs impede conclusive inferences regarding causal relationships among the variables. Second, the use of a sample of professionals attending distance learning business courses could limit the generalizability of the study findings, because the majority of the respondents were homogenous in terms of age and educational background. Practical implications – Fostering individuals’ self-direction results in enhanced affective commitment to their employing organizations. Workshops oriented at clarifying and communicating organizational values, philosophy and principles can be all beneficial for strengthening employees’ commitment to the organization. Originality/value – This is the first paper to test the relationship between boundaryless and protean career attitudes and organizational commitment on a European sample.

Evolution of online discussion forum richness according to channel expansion theory: A longitudinal panel data analysis

The selection and use of communication media has been the center of attention for a great number of researchers in the area of organizational communication. The channel expansion theory combines elements of the main theories in this area; however, these investigations have a static cross-sectional design rather than a longitudinal analysis. With the objective of filling this gap, we research how the perception of media richness varies over time with a longitudinal study. The results suggest that the perception of richness of a channel by different individuals is different but that those variations due to a change in acquired experiences, are influenced in a similar and significant way by all individuals over time. Highlights? How the evolution of the richness perception on discussion forums vary over time. ? Uncommon study due to its longitudinal design rather than the traditional design. ? The time factor has a significant effect on the richness perception. ? The time factor has a significant effect on the usefulness of a communication media.

Managing personal human capital for professional excellence: an attempt to design a practical methodology

Within the context of the knowledge-based economy, individuals increasingly control their own development, careers and destinies, rather than the organisations that employ them. Work drawing on the new career orientations has been mostly conceptual rather than empirical. The existing literature focuses mainly on explaining the conditions under which new career orientations emerge and the changes these can bring to the lives of individuals. However, we found that there is no practical methodology to help individuals face the challenges of the future in a proactive manner. The aim of this paper is to develop a practical methodology (the PHCN – Personal Human Capital Navigator) that helps individuals to systematically manage their personal human capital so they can achieve their strategic objectives and outstanding results.

The frequency of the dyadic influence tactics according to communication media

One of the most important determinants of managerial effectiveness in achieving organisational objectives is the success in influencing subordinates, lateral peers and supervisors through influence tactics. However, little attention has been paid to the use of a communication medium in the context of influence tactics. Our objective is to study the frequency of these dyadic influence tactics on diverse communication media. The study involves a questionnaire-based survey conducted on Spanish post-graduate students who had been working in medium-sized or large companies during the last 2 years or more. The results suggest that the richness of the medium explains most similarities and differences in the frequency of influence tactics for different communication media. Furthermore, in the study of hard influence tactics in communication media with similar richness, it is necessary to introduce social aspects and the level of surveillance in order to explain it fully. This study helps managers to understand the relationships between influence tactics and the use of communication media in order to improve their communication effectiveness.

Relations between organizational commitment and focal and discretionary behaviours

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the relations between organizational commitment (OC) dimensions and two focal and discretionary behaviours (intention to stay and organizational citizenship behaviour). Drawing on a sample of 310 Spanish employees of small services firms, this research reveals that in contrast to recent findings that detected a nonlinear (inverted U-shaped) relationship between continuance commitment and intention to stay, the form of the relationships between OC dimensions and the proposed outcomes is linear rather than nonlinear. Furthermore, when dividing continuance commitment into two subcomponents, the research results indicate that the dimension associated with commitment based on few existing employment alternatives is significantly, negatively and linearly related to intention to stay and organizational citizenship behaviour. This suggests that the three-component model of OC suffers from a conceptual inconsistency, which is further discussed.

Change-oriented organizational citizenship behavior: analysis of antecedents centered on regulatory theory focus at the workplace

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between a challenging dimension of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and self-regulatory focus in an academic work setting. Job performance indicators were included to assess the nomological validity of regulatory focus measures. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected using a questionnaire conducted with 251 Spanish academic workers. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Findings Results reveal the existence of positive relationships between promotion focus and two of the outcomes: change-oriented OCB and research-oriented performance-enhancement intention. On the other hand, prevention focus had only a significant relationship with teacher-oriented performance-enhancement intention. Research limitations/implications The limitations of this research are twofold: on the one hand, further research should overcome the methodological limitations related with data gathering, looking for third-party measures of performance and favoring longitudinal data collection designs. On the other hand, more research is needed on the malleability of regulatory focus, defining models when prevention and promotion focus act as mediating variables. Practical implications Individuals with high levels of promotion focus will put their efforts on the tasks which are more valued in the processes of tenure, promotion and compensation. On the other hand, individuals with high levels of prevention focus will tend to meet the minimum of requirements and accomplish salient job duties. That can be taken into account when defining human resource policies, giving a high weight in the assessment of tenure and promotion programs to the tasks where the organization wants their promotion focus individuals to center their attention. Originality/value This paper is one of the first efforts of validating the Regulatory Focus at Work Scale in organizational and academic contexts different from the initial validation study. The study also contributes to research on the antecedents of change-oriented OCBs, and defines new measures of intentions to perform in specific working activities.

Organizational Forgetting/Unlearning: The Dark Side of the Absorptive Capacity

During the past twenty years, absorptive capacity has become one of the constructs most widely used in diverse lines of work on the subject of organisational research. Initially, Cohen & Levinthal (1998,1990) defined absorptive capacity as the ability of a company to recognise the value of knowledge from the environment, assimilate it and exploit it for commercial purposes, with its development being a critical factor in obtaining a competitive advantage. The enormous potential for explanation of the construct (Lane et al., 2002) has led to its use in more than one thousand publications indexed in research lines as organisational learning (Simonin, 1999; Barkema & Vermeulen, 1998), knowledge management (Szulanski, 1996; Ahuja & Katila, 2001), strategic alliances (Lane & Lubatkin, 1998; Lane et al., 2001) and innovation management (Kim & Kogut, 1996; Van den Bosch et al., 1999). The application of the absorptive capacity in different, important, complex organisational phenomena has given rise to the use of diverse measures which are not clearly seen to converge in the same construct (Zahra & George, 2002). This has led some investigators to try and reconceptualise the construct absorptive capacity (Zahra & George, 2002; Lane et al.; 2002; Van den Bosch et al., 2003; Fernandez, 2005; Lane et al., 2006), obtaining similar results which offer a new starting point for conducting research into the construct. These publications propose various lines of research about how to study the construction of a sustainable competitive advantage through possessing absorptive capacity. However, in our opinion, investigating the absorptive capacity of a company is merely a part of this research, for which reason, we postulate that research into the development and maintenance of absorptive capacity is equally important as investigating the causes and circumstances involved in the loss of this capacity. Based on the above publications, this study establishes a working framework for including organisational forgetting or loss in the study of absorptive capacity and the creation of competitive advantages. Specific reference has been made to the concept of organisational forgetting, loss or unlearning by a small group of academics (Prahalad & Bettis, 1986; Nystrom & Starbuck, 1984; Martin de Holan & Phillips, 2003), in most cases, without it being the main subject of the research. This investigation also uses as a starting point the studies conducted by Martin de Holan & Phillips (2003, 2004) and Fernandez & Sune (2009) investigating how and why organisational forgetting occurs.