This study explores attitudes towards employability among a small group of individuals who were in career transition as a result of taking voluntary redundancy. Contemporary models of career suggest that much of the responsibility for career and employability has been transferred from the organisation to the individual. This study indicated that, in general, mid-career individuals were yet to recognise this transfer and to take ownership of their employability. When moving from a stable career within a paternalistic organisation to an uncertain job market they were unsure what they had to offer an employer, how to approach job search or how to market their skills and experience. The majority did make a successful career transition but more in the absence of, rather than because of, individual career management strategies.

In this article we will argue that leaders facing complex challenges can learn from the arts, specifically that leaders can learn by examining how theatre directors direct creativity through creative constraints. We suggest that perceiving creativity as a boundary phenomenon is helpful for directing it. Like leaders who are caught in paradoxical situations where they have to manage production and logistics simultaneously with making space for creativity and innovation, theatre directors need to find the delicate balance between, on the one hand, renewal of perceptions, acting and interaction and on the other, getting ready for the opening night. We conclude that the art of directing creativity is linked to developing competencies of conscious presence, attention and vigilance, whereas the craft of directing creativity concerns communication, framing and choice.

The study determined whether psychological empowerment and work–life balance jointly mediate between transformational leadership and in-role performance of employees in Nigerian not-for-profit (NFP) universities using data collected through a 360-degree performance review of employees. Data were collected from the employees, their supervisors, colleagues, and customers. A sample of 360 comprising 36 faculty finance officers (the employees), 36 assistant faculty finance officers (colleagues), 36 deans of faculties (supervisors), 36 finance supervisors (supervisors), 108 undergraduate and 108 postgraduate students (customers) from Nigerian universities were surveyed using Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire, employees' in-role performance questionnaire, four dimensions of psychological empowerment questionnaire, and work–life balance questionnaire. The reliabilities of the questionnaires were estimated using Cronbach's α technique. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics and correlations at the preliminary level, while three separate Hierarchical Multiple Regression and 5000 re-samples BC bootstrapping method on PROCESS macro were used to test the hypotheses to determine the total, direct, and indirect effects of the study variables. The study established that psychological empowerment and work–life balance jointly and significantly mediated the high relationship between transformational leadership and the in-role performance of the faculty finance officers. The implications for researchers and organizational practitioners, limitations, and suggestions for future research were discussed.

Drawing on the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm, this study proposes two levels of resource action: shedding resources and adding resources as the main two turnaround approaches. Since firms differ in the way they manage their resources over stages of organizational development, this study further analyzes the link between the RBV and organizational life-cycle model to investigate the contingency role of life stages in the turnaround context. The study sample consists of 72 Taiwan firms had ever experienced a successful turnaround. The results indicate that cost-cutting and investment in training and R&D, which represent respectively a shedding and an adding resource action, enable firms to turn around their deteriorating performance. The results also show that R&D investment is more effective for early-stage firms, while cost-cutting is more useful to firms in the late-stage.

With women representing nearly half of the workforce in Western countries, it is likely that a woman will have a woman manager and/or employees at some point during her working life. In our research, we worked collaboratively with 13 New Zealand women to develop personal and organisational responses when hierarchical relationships between women become strained. We identified four interlinked strategies at the personal and organisational level: developing awareness of the existence and nature of the conflict, enhancing personal and relational skills such as confidence and communication, building support networks within and outside the organisation, and finding acceptance when change is needed. Taking a gendered relational perspective, we propose that responses to a strained relationship need to be considered within the broader personal, organisational, societal and temporal context within which the relationship is situated. Therefore, we propose a more holistic relational and context-focussed framework to create an environment more conducive to understanding and positive change.

In two experiments, we examined the function of procedural justice in signaling individuals’ value to the group by arguing that individuals treated fairly are more likely to engage in proactive preventive behavior, a behavior that involves proactively revising or correcting the mistakes and intentional deceptions of coworkers. In addition, we extend Staw and Boettger’s (1990) work on task revision and demonstrate that procedural justice and goal setting have compensatory effects, such that procedural justice can be combined with performance goals to reap the valuable aspects of goal setting while minimizing some of the unintended side-effects. Our findings also contribute to the ongoing discussion of the mixed effects of goal setting, as well as the effects of multiple goal assignment.

As a firm prepares for initial public offering, the Securities and Exchange Commission mandates that top managers must record risks to their firms’ survival or performance in the prospectus. More specifically we propose that external risk factors (market risks, legal risks, and government regulations risks) have a more negative effect on investor optimism and initial public offering valuation, while internal risk factors (management risks, operational risks, technical risks) have a more negative effect on post-initial public offering long-term firm survival. This study illustrates a major gap between risk factors that investors initially focus on and the true determinants of long-term success.

This paper discusses how transnational knowledge intensive firms manage complexity across multiple locations, integrating various functional specializations and catering to multifaceted customer demands. Practice theory is used to help us understand collaboration among experts across national borders. By exploring what experts do and analyzing their practices transnationally, different configurations to provide services were found. In total, six configuration types are identified: bilateral, trilateral, chain, star, network and co-location. These configurations differently relate to three interdependent axes: coordinated actions, interaction modes and spatial dimensions. The configurations expose the relevant integrative and responsive settings. The paper contributes to the international organization literature by extending, elaborating and providing examples of transnationality; and to practice theory by exposing shapes and qualitative complexity of transnational collaboration and service provision.

Typically most studies of individual employees perceptions of the work place adopt multiple regression models (ordinary least squares [OLS]) which ignore inherent clustering in their data. However, such an approach does not supply unbiased and accurate answers to research questions. This study intends to simulate three data alternatives – weighted, disaggregated (individual level), and aggregated (organizational level) using the OLS and multilevel models to compare the results of different research designs. To answer the research questions, the current study investigates the impact of individual and organizational factors on job satisfaction, using a 2000 USA National Partnership for Reinventing Government survey. This study presents the methodological misuse and measurement errors of the previous research and presents guidelines for future research.

This paper focuses on the effects of entrepreneurial overconfidence at new venture creation. By analyzing Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data and using the theory of planned behavior as a framework, the study provides new evidence on the relative or absolute nature of overconfidence in entrepreneurial skills and the effect of overprecision on new venture creation. Overprecision of supporting beliefs is newly linked to venture creation and it is shown that nascent entrepreneurs’ overconfidence is based on a self-focusing attitude. The results confirm that overconfidence is not a single construct and highlights the differences between the forms of overconfidence habitually confused in the entrepreneurship literature.

Inclusive workplaces rely on the joint optimization of disability management and human resource management. However, disability management has been predominantly investigated as an independent issue, overlooking its interplay with human resource management. The article delivers a bibliometric and interpretive review of the scholarly debate falling at the crossroad of disability management and human resource management, mapping the state of the art of this study domain. Departing from a knowledge core of 91 papers, 6 research streams were identified through bibliographic coupling. They account for the evolution of disability management from a fix-it initiative aimed at fostering return to work of people with disability towards a holistic management approach targeted at inclusiveness. Aligning the hard and the soft sides of disability management and embedding it in the organizational culture are crucial to enact inclusive workplaces and make organizations able to engage people with disability at work.

The literature suggests that improving the management skills of owner-managers of SMEs contributes to their survival and growth and that there is considerable scope for further improvement in skills. However, evidence suggests that current support for management development (MD) does not meet the needs of SMEs. Nevertheless, there have been few changes on the supply side with policy makers continuously being concerned about low take-up of training. This study contributes to an understanding of how existing MD activities in SMEs can be better supported. Using Mumford's (1987) typology of MD activities to classify our interview data, findings from interviews with 25 owner-managers suggest two approaches to providing learning support: (1) incorporate structured opportunities for individual reflection and reflection within groups; and (2) address participants' concerns about training and mentoring. These findings have implications for policy makers and are timely given the current economic situation, where previous patterns of growth are being challenged and new ways of supporting MD in SMEs need to be found.

In this study we analyze the contingent effects of the firm's internal factors in the influence of pioneer orientation on new product performance. The results obtained show that in dynamic and hostile industries, pioneer orientation has a positive influence on the performance of new products. We have found that technological capabilities, cross-functional integration and internal commitment allow pioneer firms to improve their new product performance. However, strong market intelligence can induce pioneer firms to direct their new products to a secure but limited market, and worsen outcomes. We reinforce first mover advantage (FMA) literature highlighting the promotional role of several internal factors in pioneer advantage. We note the complementary character of the resource based view (RBV), marketing and the organization theory to the explanation of the performance of those firms developing a pioneer orientation.

Do perceptions of work conditions prompt employees to adopt entrepreneurial behaviors? Does well-being play a role in this relationship? This paper proposes an integrated model of the associations between perceptions of work conditions (job resources and job demands) and the dimensions of entrepreneurial behaviors (innovative behavior, proactive behavior, and risk-taking behavior). Following the job demands-resources model, we also explore whether employees' well-being (work engagement and emotional exhaustion) mediates the association between work conditions and employees' behavior. Survey data of 257 R&D employees from the chemical sector in Spain were analyzed. The research concludes that different work conditions correlate with the dimensions of entrepreneurial behavior of employees (EBE) in different ways. Job demands are associated with innovative work behavior. Feelings of engagement are related to the dimensions of EBE and play a mediating role between job resources and EBE. Moreover, feelings of exhaustion and risk-taking behavior are connected.

Managerial discourses on diversity invoke goals of inclusion and emancipation of suppressed individuals and groups as well as objectives of creating benefits for organizations and society. Partially due to this two-fold emphasis, diversity discourses may, however, be as restricting as they are liberating to the subjects of which they speak. In this article we suggest that utterances pertaining to diversity discourse should be understood as constitutive rhetoric marked by three discursive regularities: address, categorization, and invitation. These regularities underlie and restrain the multiple discursive practices of the developing field of diversity management, and as researchers and practitioners alike continue to explore and enhance this field it is important to understand – and seek to broaden – its conditions of possibility. Emphasizing the theoretical argument about discursive regularities and their articulation, we provide an illustrative example of the how different discursive practices may reproduce common limitations by exploring contributions to Danish diversity discourse.

This paper reports the results of a survey investigating the institutionalisation of business ethics among New Zealand's top 200 organisations. A majority of the respondents indicated that steps were being taken by their organisation to incorporate ethical values into daily operations. However, fewer than a quarter of those surveyed indicated that resources were being set aside to accomplish the objective. The most popular tech-nique for institutionalising ethics was the development of a code of ethics. Training in ethics, ethics officers, and ethics committees were not in common use amongst the companies surveyed. Furthermore, very few organisations indicated that ethical behaviour was specifically rewarded. In contrast, a clear majority indicated that they punished unethical actions and made use of disciplinary processes to regulate employee behaviour. Follow-up interviews with a sample of managers from the organisations surveyed high-lighted a preference for the use of informal processes for the institutionalisation of business ethics.

The employer–employee relationship is underpinned by a psychological contract, which refers to employee beliefs about the exchange of employee contributions and employer inducements. However, there is limited understanding of how employers can shape psychological contracts to meet employees' needs and aspirations. Meeting these needs starts with an understanding of employees' preferences for psychological contract contributions and inducements. We propose that career stage models can be used to achieve that understanding. Using the career stage models of Dalton, Thompson, and Price (1977) and Super (1957), we derive insights into the preferred contributions and inducements, respectively, at various points of an employee's career lifecycle. These insights will help organizations create desirable psychological contracts and retain valued employees.

In Lewis Carroll's classic poem, ‘The Hunting of the Snark’, there is little understanding about what a ‘Snark’ actually might be. There is similar disagreement about the ways in which contemporary universities should be led and managed, and few writers move beyond broad generalisations for action. This is particularly truc for writers analysing higher education from the perspectives of sociological analyses (eg. Meek & Wood 1997) political economy, and institutional theory perspectivcs (eg. Marginson & Considine 2000). Building on recent research by Poole (2000, 2001a), the paper charts current understandings of university governance and leadership, identifies research gaps, and begins to explore how apparently dichotomous managerial choices may be reconciled by university leaders confronting the complexities of managing the enterprise university.

To seek it with thimbles, to seek it with care
To pursue it with forks and hope
To threaten its life with a railway-share
To charm it with smiles and soap!
For the Snark's a peculiar creature that won't
Be caught in a commonplace way.
Do all that you know, and try all that you don't:
Not a chance must be wasted today!
(Carroll 1973)