Employee
Assistance Programs and their Implications: An Organization
Development Perspective
--Shashank
Shah, R Viswanath and William C Miller
The
wealth of any organization lies in the hands and minds of
its employees. Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) are designed
to look after the wellbeing of the `human assets' of an organization,
and are powerful tools to galvanize these `assets'. They have
been a frequent source of support for employees in personal
and organizational crises. This article highlights three major
aspects of EAPs in an organization: workforce development
and quality of work life; the importance of holistic approach
towards EAPs; and the focus on the total wellbeing of the
employees in the organization. It uses the Value System Design
(VSD) and attempts to explain the entire structure of EAPs
in an organization with the objective of striking a perfect
balance between the employees' personal and professional lives.
An organizational development perspective, which is a planned
and organizationwide topdown approach, has been used to
highlight the implications of EAPs in an organization.
2006
IUP . All Rights Reserved
Father
Leadership and Project Management in Kazakhstan
-- Patrick Low Kim Cheng
In
this paper, the researcher is convinced that project management
is given an edge when project leaders apply the vital soft
skills and high relationship aspects, that is, father leadership.
This is an expanded version of the paper first presented in
the 3rd Project Management Symposium in Almaty
in October 2004.
2006
IUP . All Rights Reserved
Putting
Business Ethics in Practice: Some
Issues
--T
Krishna Kumar
One
of the myriad issues which deserve to be addressed urgently
by corporate India is business ethics or best practices. Many
a time, business ethics is treated as a new subject. In fact,
it is not new, but the newness refers to the development of
the discipline. As an academic subject, it has come of age
after the Wall Street scandals of the 1980s. This period of
greed shocked many observers and prompted them to think about
the kind of managers being developed. In India, people started
talking about ethics after the stock scams and the collapse
of cooperative banks. The reasons attributed for their fall
are lack of ethics and misgovernance. This paper discusses
the need for having a code of ethics, areas where ethics should
be set and the manner in which they have to be adopted. It
also discusses about ensuring ethical behavior in organizations.
A company needs to define the code of ethics with respect
to consumers, shareholders, HRD practices, product quality,
intentional product obsolescence, environment, performance
of boards, remuneration of board members, etc. Code of best
practices or code of ethics in any organization cannot be
evolved unilaterally by the management. In order to be accepted
by the entire organization, people need to be involved.The
practice of providing ethics training helps in institutionalizing
ethical behavior. Further, for an ethical code to be credible,
an organization must be willing to discipline any employee
found guilty of a breach. Providing avenues for debates on
issues and generating feedback on the working of the code
will help in bringing about a solution to this problem.
2006
IUP . All Rights Reserved
Organizational
Learning Research: A Systematic Review
-- Arun
Saxena
The
purpose of this paper is to ascertain the status of, and highlight
the trends in, Organizational Learning research. The EBSCO
database is used to search articles and papers and these are
then analyzed on a number of parameters. These include types
of research methodology used, the purpose the papers serve,
the areas covered by the papers, most frequently cited papers
and most influential authors. The paper extends the work of
Crossan and Guatto (1996). It furnishes information that fulfills
the `information need' of researchers, and provides a starting
point for those entering Organizational Learning (OL) research
for the first time.
2006 IUP . All
Rights Reserved
Guidelines
for Valuebased Management from Valmiki Ramayana
-- N Sivakumar and U S Rao
The
paper discusses in detail the guidelines for valuebased management
as elicited from the Valmiki Ramayana, an epic scripture of
India. The guidelines are discussed under the various aspects
of valuebased management namely, organization philosophy,
valuebased leadership, organization culture, stakeholder
policies and valuebased decision making. The paper shows
the timeless relevance of the Indian scripture for providing
guidelines for valuebased management even in the current
times.
2006
IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Coping
Strategy for Role Stress Across Management Levels
-- Avinash Kumar Srivastav
Stress
causes imbalance but coping with it restores balance. Coping
with stress means managing the potential stressors or stressful
situations to minimize their harmful consequences and involves
individual appraisal in relation to one's coping resources.
Individuals at different management (hierarchical) levels
have different perspectives, focus and thrust. They have different
learning experiences and their perceptions differ. Coping
depends on cognitive appraisal which is influenced by perception
and learning. It is, therefore, hypothesized that there are
significant differences in the coping strategies adopted across
all management levels. In this paper, eight types of coping
strategies were measured across the three management levelsjunior,
middle and seniorin a public sector organization, using RolePICS
(O), involving 155 randomly selected executives. Statistical
analysis has revealed significant differences in the adoption
of coping strategies across the management levels in an organization.
While `defensive' is the dominant coping strategy, `intropersistive'
is the backup coping strategy across the three management
levels; and `impunitive and defensive coping strategies' are
stronger at the junior management level as compared to middle
management level. Since `extrapersistive coping strategy'
is weaker at the junior management level as compared to middle
management level, middle management is adopting more functional
coping strategies as compared to the junior management.
2006
IUP . All Rights Reserved
Emotional
Competence and Organizational Climate in relation to Anxiety
among the Supervisory Personnel: An InterCorrelational Analysis
--Sandeep Singh, B K Punia and Rakesh Kumar Behmani
Rapidly
changing organizational environments, existence of work force
diversity, nature of group dynamics and a host of allied factors
affect organizational functioning. In organizations, the prevailing
climate acts as a catalyst in revolutionizing the emotional
competence and anxiety among employees. Similarly, emotional
competence and anxiety of employees may also transform the
climate. This study has been carried out to find out the interrelationship
between organizational health and employees' mental health.
It highlights the relevance of personal and organizational
components in determining the anxiety and behavioral aspects
of employees in organizations. The analysis of the whole correlated
matrix indicates that some dimensions of the organization
climate, anxiety and emotional competency, reveal a threshold
relationship with each other. The paper proposes the cultivation
of an emotional quotient and the desired organizational climate
to enhance the employees' mental health visàvis the
organizational effectiveness.
2006
IUP . All Rights Reserved
Book
Review
The
7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave
Leigh Branham
The
reasons for voluntary turnover, as they are obviously seen
and known are lack of recognition, lack of job satisfaction,
limited career advancement, poor management practices and
a nonfunctional work culture. Then what is hidden? Branham
has indicated through survey results that, these root causes
are hidden from the very people who need to know them mostthe
line managers. These supervisors believe that it is the `Pull
Factor' that influences an employee's decision to leave his
job. They fail to understand that the `Push Factors' are the
initial triggers that open the gateway to the `Pull' of outside
opportunities. If the focus is shifted to the `Push Factors',
then the managers will find that something could be done to
stem attrition. The author provides varied and notsoexpensive
ways for retaining people.
2005
Leigh Branham. All Rights Reserved. IUP
holds the copyright for the review. |
