Employee turnover is important to individuals; organizations and society. From an individual’s perspective, turnover can have both potentially positive and negative consequences not just on himself or herself, but also on his or her family members and those who remain with the organization, irrespective of whether they are close associates with the person who has decided to leave the organization. From the organizational perspective, employee turnover can be costly - time and effort on loss recruitment, training, socialization investments, disruption, etc. From the societal perspective, turnover can bring in significant consequences which include mobility and migration to new industries and organizations for economic development. This study focuses on the relationship between one of the antecedents of organizational commitment – group/leader relations and the turnover intention of local marketing officers in securities firms owned by foreign interests in Hong Kong. Various studies have shown that the antecedents of organizational commitment such as personal traits, job characteristics, group and leader relations and company attributes are related to the turnover intention of staff but not much of it has been done in Hong Kong. The primary objective of this study is to propose a parsimonious model to address the issue of employee withdrawal among a sample of marketing executives working in foreign securities firms in Hong Kong SAR. The research design is quantitative in nature, testing various hypotheses on two levels of exchange within organizations - between subordinate and organization and between subordinate and supervisor. Factors involved in the first category of exchange – subordinate/organization are referred to as organizational factors and those in the second category (subordinate/supervisor) as supervisory factors. / These factors were regressed against turnover intention to establish their role in the employee withdrawal process. Organization commitment was then introduced into the model as a mediating variable and results on further regression of the organizational and supervisory factors against turnover intention were noted. Before organizational commitment was introduced as a mediating variable, all the hypotheses with the exception of leader participation were rejected. When organizational commitment was introduced as a mediating variable on the regression of turnover intention on organizational and supervisory constructs, all of the hypotheses with the exception of group cohesiveness and leader participation were rejected. While the results seemed to lend some support to the postulation on the important role played by organizational commitment and group/leader relations in the employee withdrawal process, more studies must be carried out to substantiate the findings. Directions on future study were discussed and managerial implications for both practitioners and researchers were suggested.

Past studies of cohesiveness-performance effects thriving from 1950¡¦s were mainly experimental studies and the results of whether group cohesiveness contributed to performance were always disputable. Researchers believed that the construct of cohesiveness was multidimensional; and the components of cohesiveness were therefore scrutinized to see its influence upon performance. Results varied from only task commitment contributed to performance (Mullen & Copper, 1994) to all three components bear significant influence to performance (Beal et al., 2003). Not only was the cohesiveness-performance relation discussed, but were cohesiveness components to performance criteria and work patterns as a moderator to cohesiveness-performance relation examined in Taiwanese work groups. Consequently, the purposes of this study are to (a) have empirical study for cohesiveness-performance effect in real groups, (b) reexamine the influences of the three components of cohesiveness to cohesiveness-performance effect in work groups, (c) know which cohesiveness component brings about each kind of members performance, and (d) figure out how each type of workflows relates to cohesiveness- performance effect. This study represented work groups¡¦ cohesiveness- performance relation. Furthermore, cohesion components to performance criteria were reexamined for better understanding of which component can substantially benefit to which kind of performance. As a result, interpersonal attraction led to group members¡¦ behaviors performance, and task commitment brought about group efficiency. Last, this study helped to realize the fact that work groups were cohesive disregarding how much interdependence the job required.

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Conflict among members of the United States Congress has been a regular occurrence throughout our nation's history. Existing literature suggests that some amount of conflict is essential to healthy deliberation, but that too much discord can be harmful and unproductive. The Progressive Era is unique in that legislative productivity increased to unprecedented heights. The theory driving this research is that the type, quality, and absolute level of legislative conflict in the Progressive Era can help explain this productivity. Specifically, the research holds that legislative conflict is multidimensional and that partisan difference, representing one form of legislative conflict, can aid productivity while personal incivilities, a second form of conflict, detract from productivity. After controlling for such variables as the budget situation, the competence of the sitting president, divided government and majority party cohesiveness, this thesis finds that, indeed, the Progressive Era does witness higher levels of partisan conflict and less personal incivility than either the period immediately preceding or subsequent to the Era.

The world has been transformed through the internet into a "global village",and social media platforms have possibly transformed the world into a larger neighborhood covering many regions of the world. Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter came into people’s lives through the Internet, growing daily at a large rate, and it has been proven that they are very popular. This study examines links between different phenomena through social media platforms (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc.). It is discusses cohesiveness, desire to belong, sense of community, beliefs and opinions about different forms of these phenomena in popular virtual platforms in correlation with trust in social media, criticism of information that is spread by these virtual platforms, and if people are influenced in consumer decision making. A questionnaire has been distributed to a convenient sample of 159 international and Swedish students in Sweden in October-November 2012 in both English and Swedish versions. According to the peoples’ answers, tendencies were observed such as to not trust the platforms, and also the information received, beliefs such that social media are "controlled", negative critique, but also an expression for a need for ‘membership’.

This thesis analyzes the cohesiveness, and voting likeliness of the political groups in the European Parliament on Turkey between 1980-1996. The thesis consists of two main parts: in the first part the structure, and historical evoluation of the European Parliament has been analyzed. In the second part, the changes in Turkish politics between 1980-96, and the cohesiveness, and voting alliances of the political groups have been analyzed by using roll call vote data.

No description available.

During the previous years there has been a lot of focus on e-commerce in the fashion and clothing industry and that everything will be bought online in the future. However, several e-commerce companies have decided to expand into offline retail. This dissimilarity between theory and reality creates an interest for further research and a curiosity of how the future within retail will develop. The purpose of this research is to understand why Swedish online fashion retailers expand through an offline strategy. An Expansion Theme Model, which emerged from the theoretical framework, is used throughout the research to create a cohesive presentation of the material. In this research two case studies were conducted with e-commerce companies that are moving towards offline retail, one that is planning to open their own offline store and the other that is selling to external offline retailers. The findings present the reasons for expanding into offline retail according to the respondents in the two cases. Two reasons that were discussed in both cases were to enhance the brand image and use offline retailing as a marketing tool to reach a larger customer group and ultimately enhance the company’s profit. The findings present several problems within each case that can be solved by expanding into offline retail. The first problem is about suppliers that protect offline retailers. The second problem is about how to reach the minimum quantities that the suppliers require. The third problem is how to achieve a better negotiation power with the suppliers. The fourth problem discusses the challenge of displaying products online. The view of the future within retail is also presented, where all of the respondents agreed that the two selling channels will be more integrated in the future. Finally, the transition towards offline retail creates many new possibilities in the world of retail that is yet undiscovered and it is therefore exciting to follow this development.

The main purpose of this dissertation was to relate a study within the framework of Peer Student Group Research to the basic Process-Product Paradigm for Research on Teaching. Information about previous research within this field was given in the chapter on background. A total of 287 peer students at the Department of Education, Umeå University and at the teacher training colleges at Umeå and Luleå participated in this study. Thirty-one students worked individually and constituted a control group. The remaining 256 students were divided into 64 groups. Each group consisted of four students and was videoed during the problem-solving phase (60 minutes). The task dealt with a discipline case in the Swedish compulsory school. This case was discussed on the basis of four different psychological theories. A 2(Content, Group vs. Individual Content) X 2(Cohesiveness, High vs. Low Cohesiveness) X 2(Credit, Group vs. Individual Credit) design was used. A mediating model, i.e. Contribution(Analytical vs. Structural Contribution) X Persistence(Task Persistent vs. Task Non-Persistent Contribution) was used to observe the processes. Two of the videoed groups were analysed naturalistically. The results were measured psychometrically by means of an ANOVA. The ANOVA analysed main effects and interactions between the factors for the four process variables and for the product variable. The results of this study revealed the importance of studying Educational Productivity, i.e. both the process and the product. Furthermore, the study demonstrated that interactions could be discovered with psychometric methods but not with naturalistic methods. On the other hand, the naturalistic method revealed more sensitively how the group members worked and how they attempted to solve their task. The traditional assumption of group work vs. individual work was falsified. Individuals did better than groups on this type of problem. The results were discussed in both psychometric and naturalistic terms. / <p>Diss. Umeå : Umeå universitet, 1996</p> / digitalisering@umu

Informationsteknologins utveckling under de senaste decennierna har möjliggjort en utveckling mot en allt mer global värld. Marknaden internationaliseras och geografiskt avstånd väger inte längre lika tungt när ett samarbete ska etableras. Genom att lösningar för elektronisk kommunikation blir mer spridda, lättillgängliga och billiga, och i takt med att teknikmognaden i organisationer och hos medarbetare ökar, har inte bara den teoretiska organisationsbilden utan även vardagen i många företag börjat präglas av en ny geografisk bredd. Den här studien fokuserar på hur projektledare arbetar med lag- eller teamkänsla i projektgrupper som verkar i en miljö där de fysiska mötena är få eller helt saknas. Undersökningen fokuserar på de praktiska verktyg och arbetssätt som projekt­ledaren har och kan använda i projektet för att skapa lag- eller teamkänsla. Undersökningen genomfördes med hjälp av kvalitativa intervjuer med åtta projektledare i Sverige. De representerar olika branscher inom offentlig och privat verksamhet och arbetar med distribuerade team av olika typ och storlek. Materialet analyserades baserat på sju teman identifierade i tidigare forskning. De projektledare som intervjuas arbetar alla med att stärka teamkänslan gruppen men väljer att fokusera på olika aspekter och verktyg. Kommunikation och tydlighet löper som röda trådar genom de strategier som tillämpas. Trots att projekten är virtuella uppfattar respondenterna i undersökningen att gruppens fysiska möte är betydelsefullt för att teamkänsla ska skapas. Grundläggande är också en välfungerande teknisk plattform med stöd för synkron kommunikation. / The development of information technology during the recent decades has enabled a shift towards an increasingly global world. The market becomes international and the geographical distance is of less importance when a new partnership is to be established. As solutions for electronic communication becomes more widespread, accessible and cheap and the technology maturity in organizations and among its employees increase, not only the theoretical organizational image, but also the everyday life of many companies has started to be characterized by a new geographic spread. This study focuses on project teams operating in an environment where the physical meetings are few or non-existent. So-called virtual project teams. The study examines how a project manager for a virtual project works with team cohesiveness within his virtual project team. The study focuses on the practical tools and approaches that the project manager has and can use in the project to create team cohesiveness. The survey is conducted by qualitative interviews with eight project managers working with distributed teams in Sweden, representing various industries in both the public and private sectors. The material is analyzed based on seven themes identified in previous research and in responses. The result shows that the project leaders in the study all are working to strengthen the team cohesiveness. The project managers chose to focus on different aspects and tools in the process. Communication and clarity are common themes in the strategies that the project managers apply. Even though the projects are virtual the physical meeting is pointed out as important in shaping team cohesiveness. Well-functioning technical platforms that support synchronous communication are part of the foundation for the team cohesiveness in a virtual team.