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No description available.

No description available.

Current scholar-practitioner literature demonstrates that diversity and inclusion (D&I) are necessary for organisational performance. All organisational members are needed for an inclusive corporate culture to be genuine. The problem for a large global organisation with Swedish roots was that its D&I strategy had not been turned into action as expected. This was evident from discussions with the organisation's D&I manager and from the 2014 employee satisfaction survey. The research question of this study was: How can the organisation turn its D&I strategy into action? Using a purely qualitative case study design, the research objective of this study was to investigate how 18 very diverse middle managers and rank and file employees throughout this global organisation would turn the organisation's D&I strategy into practical action using existing D&I material. Key questions to be answered included how research participants view the D&I material provided by the organisation and how they would use it to promote the action change needed and avoid pitfalls. Data collection and analysis through in-depth, face-to-face interviews coupled with document analyses in accordance with the case study methodology (Yin, 2003) provided a rich and thick description of the case. Condensing emerging categories into four major themes relating to established theory as presented in extant literature provided the base for answering research questions. The four major themes were: The Need for D&I, Effective Awareness-Building, Effective Implementation, and Effective Conflict-Handling. Identifying researcher bias, member checking, and triangulation established trustworthiness. Key findings included that the organisation's D&I material were useful and globally valid. It could be used to build awareness and promote action change. Drawbacks with D&I can be handled. Middle management is the key employee group to turn strategy into practical action in the workplace. Actionable knowledge derived from the findings was the detailed recommendation for turning the D&I strategy into practical action throughout the entire organisation. Implementing the recommendation could be swift, decentralised, and organization-wide. Middle managers, as the key change agents, would drive action and change in the D&I area to achieve a sustainable organisational inclusive culture. Other organisations could use the recommendation to achieve action change.

Changing employees’ behaviour to be more environmentally friendly, as a means to increase environmental performance of a business, is a widely accepted strategy in organisations. However,as many organisations can report, it is not always a panacea. Whilst technological solutions are simple and uncomplicated, they are often expensive and, with the continuous increase in resource use, many organisations encourage their employees to adjust their behaviour. Aiming to help organisations understand how employees decide to adopt pro-environmental behaviour, researchers of workplace pro-environmental behaviour have attempted to answer this question through the development of conceptual workplace frameworks and quantitative behavioural analysis. But,despite this contribution this body of research currently suffers from the fact that no systematic effort has been made to establish, which of the multitude of factors within these framework and models have the biggest impact on employee pro-environmental behaviour. Thus, the aim of this thesis is to understand the factors that impact pro-environmental behaviour in the workplace by testing an integrated model that encompasses all key variables, that originate from general and workplace pro-environmental literature. The integration of these variables will enable the researcher to draw conclusions on the impact of each variable and therefore confirming the key factors that explain pro-environmental behaviour in the workplace. The first stage of this study involved a review of the literature on general and workplace pro-environmental behaviour. Using inductive theory building, this study developed a theoretical framework of pro-environmental behaviour in the workplace; incorporating the findings of the previously reviewed literature. The model consists of intra, inter, motivational and external factors, all of which have potential to impact pro-environmental behaviour in the workplace. After having established the theoretical framework, quantitative methods were utilised to test the hypothesised model. An online questionnaire was distributed to a panel with a representative sample of the UK workforce. The questionnaire was further distributed to two higher educational institutions in order to collect additional data that could act as a source of rich detail and aid interpretation of the results from the representative sample. Through statistical analysis, including multiple regression, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling, the final structural model confirmed some of the initial hypothesis. The conclusion drawn is that human behaviour is driven by employee’s confidence in the ability to exert control over their own motivation and behaviour. Employees with high confidence in their own abilities also take responsibility for their actions, particularly if they are aware of environmental issues. It is the workplace’s responsibility to foster this behaviour by creating an environment that encourages work satisfaction and ease of behaviour.

Informal learning is relatively underexplored in the work psychology literature, with most existing efforts tending to focus on formal learning or general workplace learning. This thesis develops understanding as to how employers can best support their employees’ informal learning, using samples drawn from a large UK energy firm, a small UK charity, and an international telecoms business. The study is of a mixed methods design: a qualitative study, in which 31 interviews and 900 open-ended survey responses are thematically analysed, explores the barriers that learners may face when attempting to engage in informal learning, as well as the roles that other groups of people play in supporting, or hindering, learners’ informal learning. The quantitative study tests hypotheses relating to personality (curiosity, proactive personality, Big Five, age, tenure) and situational factors (interpersonal support, time demands, autonomy) that may predict informal learning, contrasting how these relate to formal learning and intention to develop. Relative importance analysis and mediation analyses are also carried out so as to better understand the importance of, and the processes that may underlie, these antecedents. Differences between groups of employees are also tested. The findings from both studies are discussed separately, and are later integrated to form a broader understanding of how employers might support informal learning. Together, both studies offer new suggestions for both research and practice, especially in terms of curiosity, autonomy, and the consideration of support sources outside of the workplace. The study is one of a few to focus on informal learning, and is the first to consider the differences between informal and formal learning, and between incidental and intentional informal learning.

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The Irish Nonprofit Voluntary and Community Sector (NPVCS) is a growing and critical part of the socio-economy. However, there is a lack of understanding of the dynamics of change in this third sector which merits investigation. This study explores such change, particularly around work and people management at a time of unprecedented turmoil in the macro environment and in the institutional and policy landscape. One of the biggest catalysts for change has stemmed from New Public Management (NPM), which has infiltrated the sector through the sector’s growing dependence on the State for funding and service contracts. Empirically, this creates the warrant for the study which explores the dynamics of this change in the neglected context of the Irish NPVCS. Theoretically, the study expands our understanding of the NPM construct under austerity. The study gives a nuanced picture of the realities and contradictions of a sector in transition from a traditionally benevolent model of a charity to that of a commercial like business, whilst still trying to retain and uphold its original values, ethos and mission. There is a paucity of research on work and HRM in the Irish NPVCS and this study addresses the knowledge gap by exploring the nature and extent of NPM inspired change via a theoretical framework which includes environment-organisation analysis, institutional, resource dependency and strategic choice theories. The employee perception and reaction to such NPM inspired change is captured via the developmentof a unique conceptual framework that incorporates the psychological contact, commitment and OCB. This model tests the employee reaction to NPM inspired change through a number of research hypotheses, while the moderating effect of the voluntary sector ethos (VSE) is examined to determine its presence and impact. This empirical study pursued a mixed method, multi-level inquiry in two case study organisations in the Irish Physical and Sensory Disability (PSD) sub-sector using qualitative interviews and an on-line survey instrument. The findings indicate that both case study organisations have experienced significant NPM inspired change. This ha shad a strategic, operational and cultural impact on both organisations, particularly in how they manage work and people, which is consistent with the extant literature. Surprisingly, the employee perception and reaction to such change has been mixed but remains relatively positive on a number of barometers, with the proffered explanation partially residing in the VSE and partially in the collective solidarity of a sector and nation in crisis survival mode. The adoption of NPM change by choice and by necessity has been a moderated process in which both organisations to varying degrees, have still managed to retain and preserve core elements of their VSE and values but not without some tensions and contradictions. The outcomes of this research have lessons for practitioners, leaders and policy makers in the sector and in HR and signals fertile areas that warrant future academic research.

The provision o f Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs) in this country has seen a rapid growth in recent years. However, there has been relatively little research into the effectiveness of such programmes in reducing costs of sickness/stress, absenteeism or in improving work place performance, particularly with respect to gender, age and professional status differences in responses to counselling. This research sought to evaluate the clinical change produced by a very specific mode o f counselling which was 'brief (up to a maximum of 8 sessions). The research also aimed to estimate the costs of stress to the organisation more accurately, by way of costing absenteeism and 'presenteeism' (the level of efficiency at which the employee estimates s/he is working). The first stage of this research was to find the baseline scores for the measures going to be used for the counselling sample. 'Well-being' questionnaires were randomly distributed to the 17,500 workforce (i.e. 5295 questionnaires were sent out). Over 2,300 responses were received. The results from this stage allowed for baseline mean scores to be obtained for all measures used. The responses focussed on the interaction between gender and other demographic variables such as age and professional status, and the effects of those interactions on the various means for stress factor and coping strategy responses. The second stage of the study examined the change process for clients coming for brief therapy as provided to them under an external EAP (241 subjects). The mean scores on a variety of scales at the pre-treatment stage were matched against responses at the post-treatment stage and again at a six month follow-up stage, and these scores were compared with the baseline means obtained for each factor from the earlier 'Well-being' study of the whole organisation. The process of matching looked at whether there were significant changes between the stages of the study and whether the changes produced clinically significant and reliable change. The effect size of that change was also examined. It was found that the counselling process was effective in reducing the costs of the work stress, sickness and 'presenteeism' in the counselling sample. However, the male and female clients responded differently. It was also seen that the counselling process was effective in producing change in work stress, particularly with respect to 'home/work interface', mental health, work and personal functioning, and in most of the coping strategies examined. The relevance of these findings is discussed in relation to implications for policy, research and practice.

Creative ideas are valued increasingly in all kinds of organisations. Searching to facilitate creative processes, organisations recognise that the source of new ideas and information lies in the interaction between different functional departments, as well as in the cooperation with external actors. For this reason organisations engage in collaborative innovation projects. These inter-organisational or networked employment structures provide a setting in which employees interact with a multitude of entities. In this context, employees can be expected to develop commitment to multiple foci, such as the organisation, the profession and the client. Employee attitudes, especially their level of commitment, are likely to be central to their willingness to engage in activities which are vital to the creative process. Employing a field theoretic lens, this thesis seeks to examine employees’ affective commitment to seven foci: the project, the organisation, the profession, the client, the lead project manager, the career and the job. The emphasis lies on the examination of the interactions between these foci of commitment in their influence on employees’ creative work behaviour. The thesis offers the integration of previous research into a new concept central to the management of creativity in the workplace. Creative Work Behaviour (CWB) is conceptualised on the basis of four phases of the creative process (1) problem identification, (2) information search, (3) idea generation, and (4) idea evaluation. In addition, in this thesis two types of creative work behaviour are recognised: incremental and radical, which are contrasted with routine in-role behaviour. Thereby, the concept of creative work behaviour is advanced, both theoretically as well as empirically, by the test of the survey measure of the concept showing reliability and validity across a wide variety of participants in innovation projects. This thesis relies on individual data from 450 Inter-organisational Innovation Projects (IIPs) funded by the UK government. The data is analysed using both variable centred and person-centred types of analysis. Fitting the data into a series of latent regression, structural equation, and latent mixture models, the analyses provide comprehensive insight into the interactions between the multiple foci of commitment in their effect on creative work behaviour. Analysis of the data showed employees to distinguish between the seven foci of commitment in the IIP context. The results showed the effects of commitment to differ in strength between the types as well as the phases of CWB. Direct effects were strongest for commitment to the project on routine behaviour, commitment to the job on the generation of incremental creative ideas, and commitment to the profession on the evaluation of radical creative ideas. Commitment to the leader had a weak effect on employee behaviour, specifically for radical CWB. Commitment to the profession had an overall strong effect, except for information searching and encoding. Commitment to the project was found to be the key mediator in the effect between multiple foci of commitment on both routine and incremental CWB. For incremental CWB the mediation model was a poorer representation of the variance in the data; moreover the models must allow direct effects of commitment to the job on the generation of incremental creative ideas. For radical creative behaviour commitment to the job was found to be the best fitting mediator between commitment, representing the variance in the data equally as well as the full direct effects model. Latent Profile / Mixture Analysis enables additional insight into the combinations of foci of commitment (commitment profiles) and their relations to creative work behaviour, as well as underlying motivation and experienced creative support. This thesis is the first to propose and empirically examine the relations between commitment and creativity using a multiple foci approach. The concepts of commitment and creativity are embedded in two different fields of research and, therefore, have rarely been studied together. The results demonstrate multiple foci of commitment to be fundamental to employees in the context of inter-organisational innovation projects, interacting strongly in affecting employee behaviour. The specific context of inter-organisational innovation projects increasingly represents the emergent workplace setting in the current knowledge era. Understanding of the interplay between commitment to multiple targets in inter-organisation innovation projects provides a basis of the management of employee commitments, and, thereby managing employees’ creative behaviour. Creative work behaviours are a vital behavioural outcome in innovation projects, increasingly valued in all kinds of organisations.