Suchergebnisse

In order to survive, the contemporary organization must quickly adapt to its ever-changing markets and environment. The methods of structural control associated with the bureaucratic organizational form impede such adaptation. As a result, organizations are supplanting structural control with newer means of control - the control of ideas. Drawing on and extending social accounts theory, the authors explore how social accounts are used as one method to help to gain control of ideas, lessening management's dependence on bureaucratic structures. The article exemplifies the managerial use of social accounts by reviewing the text of a videotape used by one organization in its attempt to influence workers' ideas about management, unions and their own interests in order to keep the organization union free. The authors conclude with a discussion of how managerial uses of social accounts can be resisted by workers.

ABSTRACTResearch in organizational ethics emphasizes those dispositional factors that are expected to foster positive ethical behavior. We seek to contribute to this literature by including personal values that are in contention with moral outcomes. Specifically, we combine the values of hedonism and power with benevolence and universalism. Our underlying premise of this value–pragmatics model is that nonmoral, as well as moral, dispositional characteristics simultaneously influence ethical decision making. We further contribute to the existing research by investigating how these contending values interact with situational factors, such as performance rewards and punishments for unethical conduct. We administer an experiment to subjects (N = 177) and analyze their decisions regarding the likelihood they would act unethically. Results indicate that both morally relevant and nonmoral variables have direct effects on these decisions, and that nonmoral as well as moral values interact with situational factors to significantly influence decisions. Implications for practice and research are discussed.

We respond to recent calls for a more inclusive behavioral as well as structural perspective on today's state-of-the-art manufacturing designs. Specifically, we empirically examine individualism—collectivism's productivity-related consequences for today's agile, cellular manufacturing designs across incentive systems. Findings indicate that, as hypothesized, the alignment of cell members' collectivistic orientation, a cooperative task structure, and equalitarian performance incentives resulted in one of the higher levels of productivity. However, the assumption that productivity will monotonically increase with the alignment of organizational components and worker orientation now appears questionable. While complete misalignment resulted in a productivity deficit averaging 7.6 percent, as long as one of the two major organizational design elements explored in this study (task structure and individual- versus group-based incentives) is aligned with the individualistic or collectivistic orientation of workers, optimal cell productivity is achieved.