Search results

The professional development (PD) of teachers is vital to student learning, yet PD continues to be plagued by positivist assumptions and low teacher buy-in. Because PD is based on persuasion, and because the roles of PD providers and receivers are not as discrete as they appear, rhetorical theory offers a valuable framework for understanding teacher PD. This study applied rhetorical theory to educator PD to elucidate the complex roles that educators take on as the event unfolds, whether in person or on social media.

This collective instrumental case study used a holistic design structure to examine how educators embrace, resist or otherwise respond to the roles they are given in PD in person and using social media; and how educators use the affordances of X (formerly Twitter) to shift rhetorical roles in X-based PD activities. A taxonomy was developed to apply the theory accurately and consistently. Data collection included semi-structured interviews and participants’ PD-related X use. Interviews were analyzed using descriptive coding by theme. X data was analyzed in three dimensions by use type, topic and rhetorical move.

The participants exhibited enthusiasm about both receiving and providing PD. Analysis of the participants’ perceptions of their PD and of their PD-related X use revealed shifting and layered ways they embrace, resist and otherwise engage with the roles they are given in PD, as well as the complex ways they used the affordances of X to engage with all of the available roles online.

In examining teacher PD using an ecological model of the rhetorical situation, this case study demonstrated the usefulness of rhetoric as a framework for PD that recognizes the nuanced and powerful roles teachers fulfill in their own PD activities in person and on social media.

This manuscript explores the evolving roles of HR professionals amidst global megatrends and organizational transitions, focusing on the Italian context, which has experienced disruptive adoption of new forms of work such as remote and hybrid work. In this challenging scenario, our research aims to uncover if and how HR professionals are transforming their roles or maintaining the status quo in navigating organizational changes, dealing with the upcoming working scenario, and challenging conventional perceptions of HR practitioners.

The study employs the social-symbolic work lens, that contributes to a deeper understanding of how HR professionals work to construct organizational life, the identities of employees, and the societal norms and assumptions that provide the context for organizational action. This perspective highlights HR professionals’ personal efforts, consisting of the emotional labor entailed in steering organizational transformations and, eventually, maintenance in a context where remote work has become prevalent. Data was collected through 16 online focus groups involving 76 HR professionals from Italian organizations.

Our research offers two interrelated contributions to HR literature. First, we provide pieces of evidence on how HR practitioners act as agents of change in two emerging roles: the “Wannabe Hero” and the “Ordinary Hero”. This challenges the prevailing rhetorical discourse about the so-called HR business partner. Secondly, we delve into the persistent obstacles that hinder HR professionals from making a substantial impact in addressing radical changes. These findings will provide useful insights into effectively engaging HR practitioners as agents of change in organizational transformation, shedding light on praxis, structures, and their emotional work.

The paper analyzes HR professionals’ social-symbolic work, which offers an original contribution to the comprehension of the activities they carry on in practice and the emotions they have been experiencing. These influence both the way HR professionals play their role and the organizational and institutional environment.

This study investigates how compulsory citizenship behaviors (CCB) affect employees’ energy and motivation to engage in other voluntary behaviors, such as service-oriented citizenship behavior and creativity. Specifically, we explore how employees’ perceptions of job overload mediate this relationship, based on their generational differences.

This study employed a time-lagged survey design to collect data from 265 frontline employees and their supervisors in Pakistani-based organizations. The data was collected in three rounds, with a three-week gap between each round.

The findings suggest that role overload, resulting from compulsory citizenship pressure, undermines millennial employees' service-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and creativity. However, these negative effects are less salient among non-millennials.

The findings of this study provide valuable insights for managers, emphasizing the importance of exercising caution when imposing excessive citizenship pressures on employees against their will. In addition, organizations and human resource (HR) managers should consider devising policies for formal recognition of voluntary behaviors that contribute to organizational effectiveness.

This study contributes to existing CCB research by unraveling the previously unexplored mediating role of role overload and the contingency role of generational difference in explaining how and when coerced citizenship demands hinder employees’ propensity to engage in service-oriented OCB and creativity.

This paper aims to identify and report the differential effects of activity control and capability control on role stressors, which subsequently affect salespeople’s job satisfaction and sales performance.

Drawing on job demands-resources (JD-R) theory, the authors defined active control and customer demandingness as the job demands and capability control as the job resource, and designed their relationship with role stressors, which are indicated as role ambiguity, role conflict and role overload. The authors enrolled a sample of 223 industrial salespeople from pharmaceutical companies. After collecting the data, the authors used structural equation modeling using AMOS to test and estimate causal relationships along with a two-step approach to examine the interaction effect. The authors have also tested the simple slope of two-way interactions. All of the measured variables were identical to those used in previous studies.

The study findings indicate that behavior-based control can be counterproductive. Reducing activity control can decrease role stress, increase job satisfaction and improve job performance; increasing capability control, however, can reduce role stress and increase job satisfaction and performance. It is also important to acknowledge the external environment of the sales context in which behavior-based control is most effective: whereas high customer demandingness and capability control are related to reduced role stress, high customer demandingness and activity control are related to increased role stress.

Sales managers should recognize that different control management regimes reinforce or mitigate salespeople’s job stressors and outcomes under specific conditions (i.e. work environments marked by higher or lower customer demandingness).

Drawing on JD-R theory, the research shows that a behavior control (i.e. activity control and capability control) has differential, and even opposite, psychological consequences.

This study investigates how the interrelated elements of organizational roles – activities, motives, resources and relationships – are mobilized to construct a code of conduct for the proxy advisory (PA) industry in Europe.

This qualitative study uses archival documents from three consecutive regulatory consultations and 16 interviews with key stakeholders. It analyzes how different stakeholder groups (i.e. PA firms, investors, issuers and the regulator) perceive and mobilize the elements of PA firms’ role to construct the accountability regime’s boundaries (accountability problem and action, and users and providers of accounts).

This study shows how PA firms, investors, issuers and the regulator refer to the perceived motives behind PA firms’ activities to construct an accountability problem. The regulator accepted the motives of an information intermediary for PA firms’ role and required PA firms to develop a corresponding accountability action: a code of conduct. PA firms involved in developing the code of conduct formalized who is accountable to whom by aligning this accepted motive with their activities, relationships, and resources into a common role.

The study highlights how aligning role elements to reflect PA firms’ common roles enables the construction of an accountability regime that stakeholders accept as a means of regulation. Analyzing the role elements offers insights into the development and functioning of accountability regimes that rely on self-regulation. We also highlight the role of smaller regional firms in helping shape transnational accountability regimes.

The paper aims to propose and validate a process-based model to enhance managerial effectiveness among micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). It has been observed that business uncertainties and inadequate financial resources that MSME entrepreneurs and managers face require them to constantly engage in strong self-awareness and self-regulating behavior to enhance the efficacy in their roles and, henceforth, their role performance effectiveness.

The approach for data collection was based on the clustering of MSMEs belonging to the clusters machine tool, pump manufacturing, foundry, textile and auto-component clusters in India. The respondents to the study were MSME entrepreneurs and managers who oversee and manage multiple functions like operations, quality, marketing, sales, supply chain management, procurement, personnel and administration and general administration.

The self-efficacy of entrepreneurial managers of MSMEs is observed to play an integral role in enhancing the efficacy of their roles, thus highlighting the use of a process-based perspective while dealing with constant resource constraints and excessive dynamism in their business contexts. The ability to handle multiple tasks effectively and resilience to manage challenges enhances their role-making process, which is significant in achieving and sustaining goal-oriented behavior among MSME entrepreneurs and managers.

This paper would serve as an effective model for entrepreneurs and managers to enhance their efficacy in the individual and interdependent role context, which would help achieve their individual and organizational goals. The model emphasizes a process-based perspective that thrusts the need to relate to the organizational context, enhancing individual confidence for goal-related behavior and fulfilling their role-related expectations.

This paper presents a model of enhancing managerial effectiveness that discusses self-efficacy as antecedent behavior. Here, personal and environmental factors aid cognition to one’s capability to construct reality, self-regulate, encode information and engage in effective managerial action.

Despite much attention being devoted to shared leadership, the negotiation of such arrangements remains underexplored. In parallel, the revival of interest in matrix structures reveals their challenges but neglects the dynamics of shared leadership. In this case study, the author analyzes the tensions experienced by senior managers of a healthcare organization transitioning from a hierarchical to matrix structure as they negotiate their leadership roles in this new arrangement.

The author interviewed 16 senior managers, observed their meetings and analyzed documents. These data were combined with secondary data including previous interviews and observations of this top leadership team. The author then conducted an inductive data analysis.

The author's analysis reveals that the tensions experienced by senior managers as they negotiate their roles reflect the co-existence of leadership surpluses (too much leadership) and deficits (too little leadership) in matrix organizations. The author argues that surpluses and deficits are not mutually exclusive but are interrelated and shows how leadership surpluses can create leadership deficits.

The author’s findings suggest that in contexts of leader abundance, actors should explore leadership voids. Particular attention should be paid to incidents of intrusion and exclusion, moments of transition and intense role negotiation, as those contexts are particularly conducive to leadership deficits.

While previous work on matrix structures focuses on leadership surpluses, the author discusses leadership deficits. The author explores how more leaders do not necessarily mean more leadership, but instead how more leaders may result in leadership voids.

This paper investigates the influence of employees’ extra-role and in-role behaviours on customer service alongside the moderating role of gender.

This paper employs the theory of behavioural intentions, cross-sectional survey design and quantitative approach to collect the data from 426 purposively sampled workers and customers of oil marketing companies. The data were analysed using descriptive statistics, correlation and the hierarchical regression model in SPSS.

The results indicate that employees’ extra-role behaviour has a significant positive effect on customer service while employees’ in-role behaviour has no significant effect on customer service. It is also established that gender of staff can significantly moderate the relationship between extra-role behaviour and customer service such that the behaviour of female staff has greater effect on customer service than their male counterparts. However, the gender of staff has no moderating effect on the relationship between in-role behaviour and customer service.

The findings imply that female staff should be allowed to directly engage customers more often than male staff to promote superior customer service. Managers should continuously improve upon the behaviour of employees through orientations, workshops and mentoring. Behaviour stimuli such as awards, appreciations and recognition for best workers would have to be encouraged to induce employees to act beyond their prescribed-roles.

This study is the first to investigate how staff behaviours (in-role and extra-role) impact customer service, with gender of the employees as a moderator. This paper contributes to literature by empirically confirming the differential influence of employees’ extra role and in-role behaviours on customer service and the effectiveness of gender as a moderator on the relationship between extra-role behaviour and customer service from a developing country perspective and an industry where there is dearth of research.