Strong performing companies often have intents that state their ambitions for the future and this will be clearly communicated to stakeholders by the chief executive officer. The chief executive officer should lead company strategy and play the key role in establishing and communicating the strategic intent. This conceptual paper uses insights mainly from the strategy process and corporate governance literature to build better understanding of how a business can achieve a strong sense of strategic intent to inform their strategy work. Three dimensions of the strategic intent construct are identified – shared vision, resource focus and foresight. Through the development of a series of research propositions a substantial future research agenda is offered in an area where the literature is quite limited. Points of interest to the strategy practice field are also discussed.

Abusive supervision has a significant impact on employee turnover intentions. An underexplored factor in this area is the influence of support: we test perceived organisational support as a mediator. The present study utilised data from three distinct populations within New Zealand: (1) ethnically diverse blue-collar workers, (2) Māori (the indigenous people of New Zealand) employees, and (3) Chinese employees working within New Zealand. Structural equation modelling from the combined sample of 432 respondents (in total) showed that the indirect-effects model fit the data best, where abusive supervision was positively related to turnover intentions and negatively towards perceived organisational support; while support was negatively related to turnover intentions. Our findings bear out the notion that organisational support mediates the influence of abusive supervision on turnover intentions, highlighting the effect of organisational influence within this area. By exploring these relationships on three distinct populations, this study improves the generalisability of the related theories.

Using trait activation theory as a framework, this study developed and tested a cross-level model of individual innovative behavior. Data from a sample of 334 employees within 75 work teams were used to examine the hypothesized model. Results showed that employee learning goal orientation was positively related to innovative behavior only when the team structure was more organic. Additionally, the relationship between employee learning goal orientation and innovative behavior would be strongest when both the team structure was more organic and team mean learning goal orientation was higher.

Management research has been challenged by the altering realities of organization life, job roles, and individual motivations that have long guided traditional theoretical thinking. The classical frameworks regarding managerial performance requirements have been largely based upon organizationally driven underpinnings. We propose a cognitive shift suggesting that individually driven roles and desires are impacting the relevancy of conventional job requirements. Our study analyzes the utilization of managerial skills, mindsets, and roles as perceived by 259 executives representing nine industries and ~200 organizations. The results reveal that the interpretation and application of managerial roles are primarily influenced by the individual’s intentions rather than adherence to the current organizationally based theoretical taxonomy as taught by many business schools. These findings illuminate the gap between the vast amount of effort researchers and educators have expended on taxonomic precision and its questionable relationship to organizational and individual learning and effectiveness. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed along with recommendations to extend the current research.

Previous studies have identified numerous factors that affect incident-reporting behavior. However, few studies have applied an individual psychology perspective to identify and examine the factors affecting the intention of nursing staff to report incidents. We integrate the theory of planned behavior, organizational behavior, psychological behavior, and social exchange theory to identify which factors affect the intentions of nursing staff to report incidents. Samples were collected from nursing staff at 40 regional or larger hospitals for model verification. The results of this study show that psychological safety, attitude toward reporting incidents, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control correlate positively with the intention to report incidents. The perceived cost and perceived benefit of incident reporting directly affects the attitude toward incident-reporting behavior, and self-efficacy influences perceived behavioral control. Furthermore, subjective norms and the perceived benefits of incident reporting mediate the effect of psychological safety on attitude toward incident-reporting behavior.

The purpose of this study is to employ Koeske and Koeske’s stressor-strain-outcome model of stress to examine the extent to which strain, a central component of occupational stress, mediates the relationship between safety climate and safety-related outcomes. The relationship between safety climate, strain and safety outcomes has been relatively under tested where strain is a mediating variable. This study makes a contribution to the literature by examining the dynamics of these relationships. Questionnaires were sent to 1,800 employees of an electricity provider, with a 41.4% response rate. The hypothesized model was tested using structural equation modeling. Analysis of the hypothesized model indicated that, while safety climate had a significant direct relationship with safety-related behaviors, the model was also partially mediated by the experience of strain. Understanding the relationship between safety climate, strain and safety outcomes is important. Support for the model verifies that safety climate is mediated by strain in terms of safety outcomes. Practical implications include the need to manage safety climate through management attitudes to safety, maintaining high safety standards and communication to reduce ambiguity on safety norms.

This study investigates the effects of learning orientation and global mindset on virtual team member’s willingness to cooperate. It also explores the mediating role of self-efficacy in these relationships. To test the hypothesized relationships, the study used a sample of 224 employees from five global companies in South Korea. The results show that while global mindset is directly and positively related to virtual team members’ willingness to cooperate, learning orientation is not. Self-efficacy serves as a mediator in these relationships. The study concludes with a discussion of the theoretical contributions and managerial implications for improving virtual team members’ cooperative behavior.

Professional research and development (R&D) organizations typically employ highly educated professionals to work on a range of creative, intellectual projects in their chosen fields. In these organizations, organizational culture and subculture are critical factors connected with project success. This paper explores the existence of subcultures and the factors that contribute to subcultures within a professional R&D organization, and examines subcultural effects on the job satisfaction of R&D professionals to suggest a suitable cultural type for professional R&D organizations. Autonomy and group cohesion are considered, so grid–group theory is applied to measure R&D culture. The subjects were 285 full-time researchers who had worked at the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, an international IT institution, for over 5 years. Differences were found in organizational culture according to the research fields and types (applied and developmental research). The egalitarian culture type (low grid, high group) is found to be suitable for improving job satisfaction in R&D organizations.

The paper aims to investigate the relationship between strategy and structure in the high-technology enterprises. The study attempts to ascertain how chief executive officers perceive the impact of strategy on organizational structure, and likewise impact of structure on strategy, at two phases in the innovation process: the phase of innovation exploration; and the phase of innovation exploitation. The research was conducted in 61 high-technology companies based in Poland that operate either in Poland or in the global marketplace. The results show that, during the exploration of innovation, chief executive officers consider that the impact of organizational structure on strategy is stronger than the impact of strategy on structure. During the exploitation of innovations, the impact of strategy on structure is stronger.

The article reviews the literature for the key markers of high growth firms, which create the majority of new jobs. From the review, a template is developed comprising the key markers. They include: training and experience in entrepreneurship and management; and strategies that emphasise innovation, marketing and employee and organisational learning. High growth firm owners take steps to access management skills that complement theirs through employment of a management team, outsourcing management tasks or making decisions with oversight from an informal board. Good reward structures, which may include ownership interests, are essential to performance of the management team. Access to resources, especially finance and human capital is critical to growth but abundant resources could compromise efficiency. The article finds that personality characteristics of owners and postgraduate education in management are not effective identifiers of high growth firms. Some of the barriers to identifying high growth firms are presented and suggestions made to overcome them.

In many countries self-employment has increased recently. But, despite evidence that many people enter self-employment willingly out of choice, there appears to be an instinctive aversion to it, possibly based on an assumption that employment is more desirable and beneficial and is, and should be, the norm. Often using a UK viewpoint, this paper examines the history of work and suggests that, in historical terms, employment is the exception not the norm. The age of the job, it is claimed, lasted only from 1840 to 1980, but its influence continues and many government regulations and union practices are still based on the era of the big business, big labour and big government triumvirate. Therefore, if the future is not to be constrained by laws and practices designed for the past, it is important to identify the perceptions and assumptions which prevail about employment and to highlight those which are incorrect.

This article focuses on a thus far insufficiently explored theme within management sciences, specifically the direct supervision of frontline workers, that is, frontline command. Frontline command can be defined as making decisions in the frontline and ensuring that frontline workers carry out these decisions accordingly. Scholarly knowledge on frontline command is still fragmented and the associated implications for frontline commanders have not yet been described or discussed in depth. This contribution aims to make up for that deficiency. For this purpose we brought together existing insights derived from research into Naturalistic Decision Making and other relevant research which we subsequently present using the FADCM model. This model sets out frontline command in five steps, already described in scholarly literature, and provides, per step, recommendations for frontline command. Finally, we provide associated examples derived from the Dutch firefighting practices.

Given the growing demand for aged residential care facilities in Western industrialised economies, the adequate staffing of these facilities is a growing concern. Increasingly migrant care workers are being employed to fill the local labour shortfall. In this paper we present findings of a qualitative study exploring how managers of aged residential care facilities work to ensure consistent delivery of quality care through their migrant care workers. The issues raised by the 16 managers cluster around three themes: communication and language barriers; racism by residents, families and managers; and underemployment of tertiary qualified migrant care workers. In addition to issues of quality care delivery, concerns around migrant employee well-being are seen to be difficult to avoid.

With data collected from 632 manufacturing firms in South Korea, we investigated (1) the relationship between high-performance work systems (HPWSs) and firm performance, and (2) the moderating effect of the human resource (HR) function’s influence on the relationship between HPWSs and firm performance. Our findings showed the existence of both the main effect of HPWSs, supporting the universalistic perspective, and the moderating effect of the HR function’s influence, supporting the contingency perspective. Based on the findings, we concluded that HPWSs can be regarded as universal or best practices; at the same time, the presence of an influential HR function may intensify the effect of HPWSs on firm performance. This study contributes to the debate over the respective merits of the universalistic and contingency perspectives by showing that the two perspectives are not necessarily incompatible; rather, they can be complementary.

The study analyses the broad sets of factors that influence the innovation adoption process in the environmental, organizational, top managers,’ innovation and user acceptance context. The innovation adoption process is presented as a sequence of stages, progressing from initiation through adoption decision to implementation of an innovation and it is considered at the organizational level. The Delphi survey conducted among 264 experts of a diverse professional and academic experience allowed examining the perceived significance of each factor for the various stages of the innovation adoption process. The results of the analysis show that the considered factors do not affect the innovation adoption process with the same strength but exert varying levels of influence on the subsequent stages. The study discusses the implications of these findings and suggests ideas for future research.

Using new product announcement events made by group member firms in Taiwan, this study examines whether the firms’ multiple network ties within business groups benefit member firms or whether they provide a channel for controlling shareholders to tunnel. We find that the announcement of new products by group member firms has a positive effect on the market value of other, non-announcing group peers. This evidence is consistent with the value-added hypothesis. More importantly, this effect is stronger when member firms are connected via equity ties. Furthermore, we also offer an original analysis of how family control in business groups affects the impact of network ties on value creation. Our results suggest that the controlling family may discount the market value of member firms.

National cultures have a strong influence on the performance of organizations and should be taken into account when studying the traits of high performing managers. At the same time, many studies that focus upon the attributes of successful managers show that there are attributes that are similar for managers across countries. This article reports on the development of empirically validated profiles of Dutch and British high performing managers. Based on a sample of 808 Dutch and 286 British managers and using the cross-cultural framework of Excellent Leadership by Selvarajah et al., the profiles of excellent Dutch and British managers was derived. The profiles of Dutch and British high performing managers can be described by a four-dimensional factor structure consisting of Managerial behaviours, Environmental influences, Personal qualities and Organizational demands. Based on these validated profiles, the similarities and differences in attributes for managerial success between Dutch and British high performing managers can be identified.

Organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) plays a pivotal role in organisational success. This research explored factors hypothesised to facilitate OCB within a primary school context. Two studies using questionnaire survey’s explored: (i) OCB relative to personal differences and psychological contracts; (ii) the relationship between OCB and principals’ leadership frames. Primary school teachers were recruited and responses analysed from 547 and 488 respondents, respectively. Results from both studies combined suggest that the leadership style of the principal and the employee’s expectations of their role within the school strongly influence their OCB. This study identifies factors that influence the prevalence of OCB in primary school teachers and confirms that the new theoretical framework provides a useful heuristic for managers, human resource management policy makers and academic researchers alike.