The purpose of this prospective, descriptive, cross-sectional, correlational study was to explore the relationship between staff nurses' perceptions of first line manager coaching behaviors and nursing work environment characteristics, professional work satisfaction, job satisfaction, and intent to stay. Staff nurses perceived managers as engaging in certain coaching behaviors more frequently than others. Behaviors that established a mutually trusting and supportive relationship were reported as the most frequently occurring behaviors. Behaviors that supported the development of a mutually trusting and respectful relationship were reported as the most frequently occuring behaviors. Behaviors that supported one-on-one interactions focusing on individual development occurred less frequently. Managerial coaching behaviors were positively correlated with eight work environment characteristics which comprise professional work satisfaction, with medium to large effect sizes noted. Coaching behaviors also demonstrated positive relationships with job satisfaction and intent to stay. Correlational analyses and regression analyses illuminated the relationships between the variables. Mediation analysis of managerial coaching and the eight work environment characteristics defining professional work satisfaction provided more complete understanding of the relationship in prediction of intent to stay. The eight characteristics acted as either total or partial mediators of managerial coaching when predicting intent to stay. Demographic characteristics, managerial coaching and professional work satisfaction explained 41.4% of the variance in job satisfaction. Demographic characteristics, managerial coaching, professional work satisfaction, and job satisfaction explained 37% of the variance in intent to stay. / text

This dissertation consists of three essays. The first essay examines a general theory of information based on informal contracting. The measurement problem—the disparity of true and measured performances—is at the core of many failures in incentive systems. Informal contracting can be a potential solution since, unlike in formal contracting, it can utilize a lot of qualitative and informative signals. However, informal contracting must be self-enforced. Given this trade-off between informativeness and self-enforcement, I show that a new source of statistical information is economically valuable in informal con- tracting if and only if it is sufficiently informative that it refines the existing pass/fail criterion. I also find that a new information is more likely valuable, as the stock of existing information is large. This information theory has implications on the measurement problem, a puzzle of relative performance evaluation and human resources management. I also provide a methodological contribution. For tractable analysis, the first-order approach (FOA) should be employed. Existing FOA-justifying conditions (e.g. the Mirrlees-Rogerson condition) are so strong that the information ranking condition can be applied only to a small set of information structures. Instead, I find a weak FOA- justifying condition, which holds in many prominent examples (with multi- variate normal or some of univariate exponential family distributions). The second essay analyzes the effectiveness of managerial punishments in mitigating moral hazard problem of government bailouts. Government bailouts of systemically important financial or industrial firms are necessary ex-post but cause moral hazard ex-ante. A seemingly perfect solution to this time-inconsistency problem is saving a firm while punishing its manager. I show that this idea does not necessarily work if ownership and management are separated. In this case, the shareholder(s) of the firm has to motivate the manager by using incentive contracts. Managerial punishments (such as Obama’s $500,000 bonus cap) could distort the incentive-contracting program. The shareholder’s ability to motivate the manager could then be reduced and thereby moral hazard could be exacerbated depending on corporate governance structures and punishment measures, which means the likelihood of future bailouts increases. As an alternative, I discuss the effectiveness of shareholder punishments. The third essay analyzes how education affect workers’ career-concerns. A person’s life consists of two important stages: the first stage as a student and the second stage as a worker. In order to address how a person chooses an education-career path, I examine an integrated model of education and career-concerns. In the first part, I analyze the welfare effect of education. In Spence’s job market signaling model, education as a sorting device improves efficiency by mitigating the lemon market problem. In my integrated model, by contrast, education as a sorting device can be detrimental to social welfare, as it eliminates the work incentive generated by career-concerns. In this regard, I suggest scholarship programs aimed at building human capital rather than sorting students. The second part provides a new perspective on education: education is job-risk hedging device (as well as human capital enhancing or sorting device). I show that highly risk-averse people take high education in order to hedge job-risk and pursue safe but medium-return work path. In contrast, lowly risk-averse people take low education, bear job-risk, and pursue high-risk high-return work path. This explains why some people finish college early and begin start-ups, whereas others take master’s or Ph.D. degrees and find safe but stable jobs. / text

The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze how managerial discretion is influenced by the environment and, thereby, increase the theoretical knowledge of the concept. Hambrick and Finkelstein (1987) introduced environment as a level affecting managerial discretion. However, the authors only discussed it in an industry context. Moreover, in this dissertation we developed the environmental level by adding two more contexts. Thereby, a theoretical input –and output model were created. These include three environmental sublevels: Industry characteristics, public sector and transition economy. The analysis is under a strategic perspective, which defines top managers’ discretion as the latitude of strategic actions. Hence, managerial discretion varies in the scope of available actions influenced by environmental factors. To fulfill the purpose of this dissertation, the methodical approach is a case-study. Thus, the data consists of interviews, observations and public documents collected in a governmental organization. The findings have shown that a dynamic environment, such as a country undergoing a transition, provides context-specific factors affecting the degree of managerial discretion. Context-specific factors, such as powerful outside forces and quasi-legal constraints can increase and/or decrease the degree of top managers’ degree of discretion. The conclusion summarizesthe findings of how the different factors within each sublevel, affect the degree of managerial discretion. Moreover, the conclusion also contains the contributions of this dissertation. Firstly, the study contributes to the theory of managerial discretion, by introducing context specific factors within the public sector and a transition economy. Secondly, the study enhances the empirical knowledge about the concept, by providing new empirical evidence of managerial discretion. Finally, the results of this dissertation can help policy makers as guidelines when implementing policies. Recommendations for future research include adding the governance perspective, and/or conducting a comparison research with different organizations/contexts.

Many features of the making of major managerial decisions have been covered by research - complexity, politicality, innovations, and so forth. Yet one - to which all others may be subject - remains almost untouched by research. It is the effects of societal culture on the way managers from different nations make, and implement, such decisions. This study compares the effects of a New World Latin dominated culture with those of an Old World Anglo-Saxon dominated culture, namely in Brazil and England respectively. It arises from the proposition that decision making, as well as other managerial practices, must be shaped by the cultures of the societies of which senior executives are part, in ways of which they themselves may be unaware. Methodologically, in response to the criticisms of earlier research which often attributed managerial and organizational differences to culture without direct evidence for that, this study began by composing portrayals of both cultures. The purpose of the portraits was to enable predictions of culturally affected elements in decision making, prior to empirical investigation. Data was collected by interview on twenty Brazilian and twenty English decisions in sixteen Brazilian and seventeen English organizations, ranging through a variety of manufacturing and service industries as well as universities. The examination of the results confirmed most of the predicted cultural characteristics. Differences although small on each variable were remarkably consistent across all variables. Brazilian strategic decision making was found to be dominated by a clique around the chief executive, who make fast decisions in a process strongly based on the social relationships between the participants. This style of decision making leads, in Brazil, to very informal processes, with little or no delays and, relatively speaking, less search for information. English decisions were found to be more consultative with more interests being involved in different stages of the process. Decisions in this country were characterized by caution and conservatism with some tendency to postpone decisions. Methodologically, the value of the prior conceptualization and description of societal culture is demonstrated since this gives meaning to the extensive differences found in all aspects of decision making. Theoretically, an attempt is made to elucidate the interconnectedness of societal culture and managerial behaviour.

Trots allt jämställdhetsarbete i dagens samhälle innehar män fortfarande en större andel chefspositioner än kvinnor. Det finns många teorier som försöker förklara varför det förhåller sig så. Syftet med denna uppsats är att förklara eventuella skillnader i rekryterares attityder till kvinnors och mäns förutsättningar att nå chefspositioner inom dagligvaruhandeln. Vi har genomfört intervjuer med rekryteringsansvariga i tre dagligvarubutiker i Skåne. Resultaten från dessa har sedan jämförts med befintliga teorier och tidigare undersökningar i ämnet chefsrekrytering. Vi har kommit fram till att det finns hinder för kvinnor att nå chefspositioner i de organisationer vi undersökt. Dessa hinder verkar främst ligga i rekryterarnas attityder. Vi har funnit faktorer som verkar missgynnande för jämställdheten, men också sådant som verkar gynnande. / Even though the society of today promotes gender equality, men still hold a greater proportion of managerial positions than women do. There are many theories aiming to explain why things are this way. The purpose of this paper is to explain potential differences in recruiters’ attitudes towards the conditions of men and women reaching managerial positions in food stores. We have interviewed the recruitment managers in three food stores in southern Sweden. We then compared the results from the interviews with existing theories and previous studies in the subject. We found that barriers to women reaching managerial positions in the organizations exist. These barriers appear to be found in the attitudes of the recruiters. We have found things that appear to disadvantage gender equality, but also things that seem favourable.

This paper proposes that managerial incentive compensation affects the firm choice between public and bank debt. To motivate the case I analyze a simple model with complete and perfect information that implies a positive relation between managers’ incentive compensation and preference toward bank debt. Using firm-level data over the period 1992-2005, I empirically examine the relation between managerial incentives and financing decisions. Specifically, I examine whether managers whose compensation is tied to firm performance choose bank over public debt as a commitment mechanism to reduce the cost of debt. Consistent with a monitoring role of banks, I find that the probability of choosing bank over public debt is positively related to the level of incentive compensation. Further, I find that public lenders price the incentive alignment between manager and shareholders by increasing the cost of debt, while the overall cost of bank loan does not depend on the manager’s incentive compensation. Finally, I find that banks are more likely to include a collateral provision in the debt contract if the manager’s compensation is tied to firm performance.

Magistro darbe yra suformuluotas tikslas - diagnozuoti Šiaulių miesto ikimokyklinio ugdymo įstaigų vadovų kompetencijas bei atskleisti ikimokyklinio ugdymo įstaigų vadovų ir pedagogų požiūrį į vadovų kompetencijas. Remiantis teoriniais šaltiniais apibrėžta kompetencijos samprata. Išanalizuoti ir susisteminti Lietuvos ir kitų šalių mokslininkų požiūriai į asmeninę, socialinę, profesinę, komunikacinę kompetencijas. Atskleistas vadovo darbo ir kompetencijos ryšys. Ištirta respondentų nuomonė apie vadovų turimas įsisavintas kompetencijas ir kompetencijas, kurių labiausiai trūksta vadovams. Išsiaiškinta kurios kompetencijos yra svarbiausios vadovo darbe. Tyrimo rezultatai taikytini organizuojant seminarus ikimokyklinio ugdymo įstaigų vadovams bei vykdant ikimokyklinio ugdymo įstaigų vadovų atrankos ir vertinimo procesus. / An objective, which is formulated in the master’s work is to diagnose the managerial competences of preschool education institutions of Šiauliai city and to reveal the attitude of managers and educators of preschool education institutions towards the managerial competences. The conception of competence was made with the help of theoretical resources. Lithuania’s and other countries’ scientists’ attitudes towards the personal, social, professional and communicative competences were analysed and systematized. The connection between a manager’s work and a competence was revealed. Respondents’ opinion about the managers’ competence, which they have attained and the competence that managers lack mostly were investigated. It was cleared which competences are most important in a manager’s work. Research results can be applied while organising seminars for the managers of preschool education institutions, also while realizing the processes of their selection and evaluation.

Aim of the study. To assess managerial human skills of managers from pharmacy employees’ perspective. Objectives: · To assess employees’ opinion about managerial human skills of they managers. · To compare satisfied and dissatisfied with the work employees’ opinion about managerial human skills of managers. Methods. Research method – anonymous semi structured questionnaire, all 223 employees of “Camelia” pharmacy chain: managers, pharmacists and their helpers were involved in the survey. Questionnaire consisted from 37 questions. Statistical data analysis was performed with the SPSS 14 program. Results. More than two thirds (67.0%) of employees noted, that the managerial human skills of managers were important to them. The most important qualities that were mentioned by employees were: communication (78.8%), strategic (48.3%), negotiation with problems (67.0%) and spread of news (57.6%). 42.2% of employees affirmed that they discuss with the manager about their hobbies, 23.9% of them said that they do not know their manager very well and said that manager refuses criticism (20.6%). The majority of employees asserted that their manager is nice (85.1%), that they trust him (72.6 %). Half of the employees (50.3%) insisted the manager pays respect for them individual demands. More than a half (58. 7%) of employees noted, that they can share their worries with manager; half of them (55.0 %) deserved a pat on the back for good performed work... [to full text]

Sėkmingas komandos valdymas dažnai priklauso nuo tam tikro valdymo mechanizmo taikymo komandoje, t.y. priimamų sprendimų, daromo poveikio ir kontrolės vyksmo. Valdymo funkcijos, vadovavimo stiliai, tarpusavio santykių ir konfliktų valdymas yra esminiai vadybinės trenerio kompetencijos aspektai, lemiantys sėkmingą komandos veiklą. Trenerio veikla turėtų būti grindžiama vienokiu arba kitokiu vadybinių kompetencijų pasireiškimo lygiu ir jų tinkamu valdymu. / Successful team management often depends on using particular management mechanism in a team, i.e. decision-making, impact and control processes. Management functions, leadership styles, the relationship and conflict management are the key aspects of the managerial competence of the every coach, leading the team to successful performance. Coach work should be grounded on some managerial competencies display level and its management.

Šiuolaikiškas pasaulis su kiekviena diena keičiasi, tobulėja, pateikia vis naujus problemų sprendimo būdus. Švietimas įsipareigoja neatsilikti nuo naujovių, priimti besikeičiančio pasaulio iššūkius. Tokia padėtis daro įtaką ne tik ugdymo procesui ir jo organizavimui, bet žinoma ir visos švietimo įstaigos valdymui. Informacinės technologijos leidžia pateikti informaciją visuomenei apie jų vadovaujamą mokyklą internete, leidžia sudominti tuos, kurie nori mokytis jų ugdymo įstaigoje. To pasekoje atsiranda galimybės modernizuoti švietimo valdymą, gerinti mokyklų bendruomenių bendravimą. Besikeičiant švietimo įstaigoms, organizacinis ir administracinis darbas turėtų taip pat tapti šiuolaikiškesnis, kuriame būtų taikomos elektronin÷s priemonės ir metodai. Švietimo įstaigų vadovai tampa pagrindiniais dalyviais, iš kurių tikimasi naujovių diegimo ir palaikymo strategijos įgyvendinimas. Kitaip tariant mokyklai tampa reikalingas toks vadovas, kuris turi įgūdžių, sugebėjimų, žinių ir supratimą, kurių reikia įgyvendinant valstybinę strategiją mokykloje ir gerinant švietimo kokybę. Taip pat atsiranda būtinybė skatinti tobulinti informacines kompetencijas mokyklos vadovą, pagrindžiant informacinių technologijų galimybes, jų įtaką švietimo sistemai. Atsižvelgiant į tai, buvo iškelta problema – kokios yra bendrojo lavinimo mokyklų vadovų IT kompetencijos, kokie jų gebėjimai taikyti jas vadybinėje praktikoje, kokie galimi šių kompetencijų tobulinimo būdai. Tyrimo tikslas - ištirti bendrojo... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / The modern world is changing every day, improving, give the new challenge. Education must keep pace with innovation, accept the challenges of a changing world. This situation affects not only the educational process and its organization, but of course all the educational institutions and governance. Information technology enables the public to provide information on the Internet led by the school, allowing interest to those who want to learn the educational institution. As a result, allows to modernize the management of education, to improve communication between school communities. Changing educational institutions, organizational and administrative work should also become more modern with the use of electronic tools and techniques. Educational institutions are the major players, which is expected to support innovation and strategy. In other words, the school is required for such a leader who has the skills, abilities, knowledge and understanding needed to implement the state strategy for school improvement and educational quality. Also, there is a need to promote the development of information competencies Head of the School in support of information technology capabilities and their impact on the education system. In this context, it was raised - what are the general education competencies of IT managers what their managerial skills to apply them in practice, what the possible ways of improving skills. Objective of the study - to examine general education competencies of... [to full text]