Zoekresultaten

Embrace the complex dynamics of twinning!

The professional growth of midwives, essential for optimizing midwifery leadership globally, can be enhanced through twinning collaborations. How twinning promotes growth is unclear. This case study explores how professional growth is affected by cultural differences between twins. We used a longitudinal qualitative design including data from open-ended questionnaires and focus groups. These data were analyzed using a content analysis. Our findings show that cultural differences were capable of both hindering and facilitating professional growth. Within the complex dynamics of twinning, professional growth was facilitated by twins’ preparedness to bridge cultural differences. Common goals positively influenced this process. Friction was more likely, and professional growth was hindered, when midwives were unprepared to bridge cultural differences. To optimize professional growth through twinning, we recommend a clear focus on common goals and consideration of the interaction between the length of a project and the extent of the cultural differences between twins.

Collective convening: Organizational and interorganizational-level tensions in joint cross-sector partnership formation

The role of conveners in initiating and/or leading the formation of cross-sector partnerships (CSPs) has received ample attention in the literature on partnership formation. However, what happens when two organizations jointly take up this role? This question is important in many complex partnerships, such as those on sustainable supply chains. We present a qualitative, longitudinal case study explaining how two organizations together convened the formation of a complex cross-sector partnership, and emphasize the changing roles of each organization individually and their shared relationship over time. We analyze how this process of ‘collective convening’ unfolded, how it impacted the collaboration, and how the conveners coped with the tensions brought about by the constellation of collective convening. These tensions manifested at the interorganizational level in the relationship between the two conveners, but were also fed by each convener’s organizational level dynamics, as these dynamics influenced the collective convening process. A paradox perspective is appropriate to analyze the tensions emerging from the collective convening process and the ensuing organizational response strategies. We contribute to the literature on CSPs by introducing and elaborating on the notion of ‘collective convening’, which reflects a reality in complex CSP formation but has remained largely unstudied in the existing literature on convening. Further, we show how conveners bring their organizational level dynamics to the interorganizational level and how these dynamics influence the CSP formation process in positive and negative ways.

Employees’ psychological contracts and social dynamics during organizational change in dutch travel industry

Leader–member exchange

This study investigates the mediating role of organizational citizenship behaviours (OCBs) on the leader-member exchange (LMX) and employee performance relation and the degree to which work experience moderates the relation between leader-member exchange and OCBs. Lecturers from six technical universities in Ghana, making up three hundred and thirty-six lecturers, were selected using convenience sampling. The participants completed self-administered surveys. OCBs fully mediated the association between LMX and employee performance. Furthermore, the findings indicate that the interplay between LMX and work experience on OCBs is compensatory in nature such that as work experience increases, the positive association between LMX and OCBs decrease. Managers of higher education institutions should create enabling work environments that encourage high-quality LMX and citizenship behaviours. Moreover, as work experience tends to attenuate the positive influence of LMX on OCBs, managers in higher education should focus their attention on employees with low rather than high work experience. This research adds to the employee performance literature through examining a novel link among leader-member exchange, organizational citizenship behaviours and performance.

Accreditatie: kans voor een doorbraak

Kansen voor accreditatie vanuit spiral dynamics

How will the story end: followers’ prospective scenarios of organizational change

The aim of this paper is to understand how employees, in their role of follower of change, frame upcoming change by studying the prospective stories they tell (n=110). This study complements the dominant retrospective approach to the research of employees’ change sensemaking. We incorporate forward-looking awareness into organization theories and add to the scholarly interest in prospection (Gioia & Patvardhan, 2018). This could lead to a better understanding of followers’ adaptation- or rejection intentions in response to change initiatives (Konlechner et al., 2018). Theoretical background Employees experience continuous shifts in relationships and organizational roles (Van der Smissen et al., 2013). This ‘turbulence’ triggers intensive sensemaking (Weick, 1995) of what is going on and how to respond. In uncertain times, employees often form expectations towards the future based on their remembered experiences from the past, and organizational change literature has traditionally taken a retrospective approach to understand followers’ change sensemaking (Boje, 2008). However, traditional literature neither provides elaborate insight in followers’ attempts to build scenarios for their future, nor do they add to the understanding of followers’ hopes, dreams, concerns, or fears (which all have a future time orientation) in the context of upcoming change. Scholars suggested that the current radical changes employees face cannot be anticipated easily from a mere retrospective approach (MacKay & Chia, 2013). In reality, employees think as often about their future as they do about their past and tend to create complex, temporal ranges of future orientations (Klein, 2013). Hence, researchers have critiqued the omission of the possible impact of beliefs and expectations about the future (e.g., Kaplan & Orlikowski, 2013), and have developed complementary notions to develop temporal sensemaking to challenge us to “mentally reverse the arrow of time” (Lord et al., 2013, p. 4) by focusing on expected futures to understand the present. The acknowledgement of prospective sensemaking directing attitudes and behaviors today (Maitlis & Christianson, 2014), expectedly offers novel insights to those interesting in understanding employees’ change behaviors. Design/Methodology/Approach/Intervention. A narrative approach is used to capture 110 individuals’ idiosyncratic and cultural sensemaking efforts (Pentland, 1999). We created a digital research set-up in which participants were guided to write a narrative that resembles a biographical account about a fictive colleague. Participants were introduced to the task by a video message from the fictive focal actor “Jim” and a video announcement of upcoming change by a fictive CEO in a Zoom-call for the entire organization. By means of the Story Completion Method, participants were asked “how does the story end?” and invited to write subsequent chapters on how they expected this story to continue, and how the roles and responses of the different actors would unfold along the way. Research context is provided by the Dutch travel industry in which organizations are dealing with heavy consequences of the COVID19 pandemic. Results will be available by November 2021. Limitations Qualitative research is less generalizable given the sample size and scope. Besides, the method requires specific skills and a level of empathy with the scenario, this proved to be difficult for some of the participants. In our analysis we therefore have to account for a difference between prospective sensemaking efforts and mere extrapolations of past experiences. Research/Practical Implications This study reveals potentialities that are considered to be available in the future. For change leaders, it is helpful to understand these potentialities as they reveal explanations for differences in followers’ prospective change strategies, and diverse anticipative responses to change efforts. We extend the concept of prospective sensemaking, and explore its use in a follower-based, dynamic context of organizational change. Originality/Value Advancing the concept of follower-based prospective sensemaking is important as it could provide explorative notions that illustrate the formation and use of expectations. Especially interesting is the context Dutch travel industry context as employees at the time of data collection experienced a ‘cosmology episode’ triggering sudden loss of meaning and coherence. This is perceived to be a critical trigger for sensemaking in the absence of past empirical experience (as no one experienced a pandemic and resulting business challenges before, but rather relies on transcendent belief systems in the face of future uncertainty (Weick, 1993)).