The IUP Journal of Organizational Behavior

Employee Empowerment: A Dire Need for Organizational Excellence

-- A Venkatachalam and M Veera Shanmugha Moni

Globalization leads to increased competition both in the national and international markets. So, pressure is mounting on organizations for sustained effectiveness. Empowerment is a promising way to improve organizational and personal effectiveness. The success of empowerment depends on the culture of the organization. This article studies the attitude of employees toward empowerment by focusing on the feedback received from employees working in various units of the Madurai Industrial Estate.

©2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.

Strategic Approach to Manage Organizational Stress: A Conceptual Model

-- Parvaiz Talib and Mohsin Aziz

The detrimental effect of stress on individuals and organizations is widely recognized. Stress is not only troublesome but expensive as well. So, organizations have given enough attention to understand the causes of organizational stress. Yet, comprehensive response to tackle the problem is missing. There are two aspects of the management of occupational stress. One is the individual effort of the employees to manage stress at a personal level. This is called coping. The second, and perhaps the more important aspect, is the efforts of the organization to manage stress among its employees. These efforts are called `organizational interventions' or `stress management interventions'. This paper presents a model to manage stress at organizational level.

© 2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.

Integrating Importance into the Relationship between Job Satisfaction and Commitment: A Conceptual Model

-- T Ramayah and Aizzat Mohd Nasurdin

This paper looks at integrating importance into the much researched link of job satisfaction and commitment. The reason behind the proposed integration is the contention that the importance an individual attaches to the different facets of the Job Descriptive Index (JDI) is not equal. The traditional methods used in most job satisfaction and organizational commitment researches do not incorporate this aspect into their measurement. The proposed model borrows the idea from the service quality research and attempts to apply the gap and also the weighted model to compare, using this instrument, if the explanatory power is greater. The implications are that the managers have to look into the needs of the individual employees if they want to keep them satisfied. As for researchers, the proposed measurement is an alternative that can be explored, in their future researches.

© 2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.

Burnout Prevention and Employee Retention: An Analysis

-- Harsh Bhargava and Annie Acharya

Industry segments like the BPO are witnessing high levels of employee attrition. Retention management of employees in the knowledge sector is therefore a live issue. This paper, which is based on a Management Research Project (including fieldwork), highlights and defines `burnout' and related terms in a layman's words. It then analyzes the symptoms, types and phases of `burnout', followed by the findings of a field survey and recommendations. The authors discuss a few practical remedial measures, both at the individual as well as organizational levels, to reduce the employee `burnout', so that the sunrise sector of Indian industrythe BPO Industriescan prosper in the global arena.

© 2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.

The Relationship between Task and Ego Orientation, Sport Confidence, Trait Anxiety and Goal Setting Styles in Elite Indian Athletes

-- Yogamaya Panda

The purpose of the present investigation is to examine the relationship between task and ego orientation, sport confidence, trait anxiety and goal setting styles in elite Indian athletes (n=100; male=51, female=49). All the subjects were tested on the psychological variables, i.e., task- and ego-orientation, sport self-confidence, sport competition anxiety and goal setting styles. The relationship between task orientations, self-confidence, success-oriented goal setting styles, and performance-oriented goal setting style was found to be significant. A significant relationship was found between ego orientation and success-oriented goal setting styles, performance-oriented goal setting styles and self-confidence. Results indicate that high/low task oriented athletes differed significantly in their performance-oriented goal setting styles, sport confidence and success oriented goal setting styles. The high ego and low ego groups differed significantly on performance-oriented goal setting styles. But the high/low ego oriented athletes did not differ significantly in sport confidence level and success-oriented goal setting styles. High/low task and high/low ego-oriented athletes did not differ significantly on anxiety and failure-oriented goal setting styles.

© 2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.

A Study of the Organizational Climate of Professional Colleges

-- Harish Shukla and D P Mishra

Professional education has expanded rapidly in the last few decades. Professional colleges such as those for medicine, engineering, management, pharmacy, architecture, etc. are established with the purpose of developing quality professionals. These professionals are molded by these colleges as per the requirement of society and nation. With the nation witnessing global challenges, the employees of these colleges, through their updated knowledge, skills, experience, are providing students able guidance and training in order to enable them to handle these challenges. Professional education helps students develop creative thinking; an attitude to act accordingly; an approach for continuous improvement; ethical values to justify their professional commitment; and the capacity to determine professional goals. The prerequisite of the desired outcome from the faculty is the healthy organizational climate of these colleges. Professional colleges have an important responsibilityto produce high quality professionals. These professionals should shoulder responsibility of the nation in future. Such goals can be achieved only when the employees (faculty members) feel satisfied with the climate of these colleges since the yield of quality professionals is largely dependent on these employees. In the present scenario, the researcher strongly feels that there is a need to study the present climate of professional colleges. The paper studies the organizational climate of professional colleges from the employees' point of view.

© 2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.

Dimensions of Downsizing

-- G Sreenivas Reddy and Ravi Dasari

This article discusses the concept, strategies, impact, and implications of downsizing in a general way, followed by a focus on the present state of downsizing in India. In the light of the above statement, it presents some case studies on downsizing with a view to providing a multidimensional picture of this paramount phenomenon. The study reveals that there is a general tendency with firms to resort to downsizing as a short-term strategy to solve their long-term problems. Further, though the downsized firms could register rise in productivity initially, these gains could not be sustained over a period of time. Finally, it reveals that success in downsizing requires matching the strategies with situations and convincing employees about the logic of downsizing.

© 2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.