Mind your E-manners: Impact of cyber incivility on employees’ work attitude and behavior

We examined cyber incivility in the workplace of Singapore and also examined its impact on employee job satisfaction, organizational commitment, quit intention, and workplace deviance. Data were collected from 192 employees. Results of the survey showed that male supervisors engaged in active forms of cyber incivility while female supervisors engaged in passive cyber incivility. Regression analyses also showed that cyber incivility was negatively related to employees’ job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Employees who experienced cyber incivility were also more likely to quit their jobs or engaged in deviant behavior against their organization. Thus, cyber incivility has negative consequences on both individuals and organizations. Consequently, it is important that firms educate employees and have appropriate policies to discourage cyber incivility.     

Linking employees’ e-learning system use to their overall job outcomes: An empirical study based on the IS success model

e-Learning systems are increasingly being adopted by modern enterprises, because of their cost-down effect. However, the extant literature provides little insight into their beneficial consequences. It is expected that a transfer of acquired knowledge, skills and/or work attitudes to jobs will occur through e-learning systems use. This makes e-learning systems a useful tool for improving job outcomes, although this is not well documented. The IS success model, which captures both the human and technological elements of information systems, provides a theoretical basis for linking system use to system task. The current study then examines the relation between e-learning systems use and overall job outcomes based on the model. The data collected from one hundred and ninety-three e-learning system users were analyzed with partial least square (PLS). The results indicate that e-learning systems are perceived as useful and satisfying by employees, and employees’ e-learning systems use is significantly associated with overall job outcomes. In practice, these results provide a basis for establishing a link between an organization’s investment in e-learning and human capital management. They also lend empirical support to the IS success model.     

Impact of Lean Production on Perceived Job Autonomy and Job Satisfaction: An Experimental Study

Previous studies have indicated positive and negative effects of lean production on employees’ perceived work characteristics and job attitudes. The most detrimental consequence of lean production is a decrease in the perceived job autonomy of workshop employees. To reduce these negative consequences, we propose human resource practices for integration with lean production. Drawing on the job characteristics model, we hypothesized that the implementation of lean production combined with human resource practices would enhance perceived job autonomy, job satisfaction, and operational performance. To evaluate our hypotheses, we used an experimental design consisting of a simulation game that mimics a manufacturing company. We implemented lean production combined with human resource practices in this simulated company. The results indicated a significant increase in perceived job autonomy, job satisfaction, and operational performance. Moreover, the results revealed a positive relationship between job satisfaction and operational performance.     

The effects of organizational learning environment factors on e-learning acceptance

Workplace learning is an important means of employees’ continuous learning and professional development. E-learning is being recognized as an important supportive practice for learning at work. Current research on the success factors of e-learning in the workplace has emphasized on employees’ characteristics, technological attributes, and training design elements, with little attention to workplace contextual effects. The study aims to investigate the impacts of organizational learning environment factors, including managerial support, job support, and organizational support, on employees’ motivation to use a workplace e-learning system. A model was proposed based on the expectancy theory of training motivation and the social influences and facilitating conditions in technology acceptance models. The model was tested on sample data collected from mainland China using Structural Equation Modeling and Moderated Structural Equation Modeling. The results suggested that employees’ perceived managerial support and job support had a significant impact on their perceived usefulness of the e-learning system for individual learning, and that perceived organizational support had a significant influence on the perceived usefulness of the e-learning system for social learning. Perceived usefulness for individual learning was found to completely mediate the environmental influences on individuals’ motivation to use the system, while perceived usefulness for social learning made partial mediation in the effects of the environmental factors on intention to use. In addition, perceived job support was found to have moderating effects on the relationship between employees’ perceived usefulness of the e-learning system and their intention to use the system. Consistent with previous findings, employees’ perceptions about the usefulness of the e-learning system have significant effects on their intention to use the system in the work setting.     

Correlates of different forms of cyberloafing: The role of norms and external locus of control

Cyberloafing is the personal use of email and the Internet while at work. The purpose of this study is to identify the different forms of cyberloafing and their antecedents. We propose that cyberloafing has two primary forms: minor cyberloafing (e.g., sending and receiving personal email at work) and serious cyberloafing (e.g., online gambling, surfing adult oriented web sites). Additionally, we hypothesize that employees’ perceptions of coworker and supervisor norms supporting cyberloafing are related to minor cyberloafing but not serious cyberloafing. We also hypothesize that external locus of control (i.e., a belief that chance and powerful others determines one’s outcomes), as an antecedent of other counterproductive work behaviors, will be related to both minor and serious cyberloafing. Two hundred and twenty two employed graduate business students were surveyed. Two forms of cyberloafing were identified: one composed of minor cyberloafing behaviors and one composed of the more serious cyberloafing behaviors. As predicted, employees’ perceptions of their coworkers’ and supervisor’s norms were positively related to minor cyberloafing, but not related to serious cyberloafing. Also as predicted, belief in chance was positively related to both minor and serious cyberloafing. A belief in powerful others was not related to minor or serious cyberloafing. Implications for policy development to regulate cyberloafing in organizations are discussed.     

A manufacturing-oriented model for evaluating the satisfaction of workers – Evidence from Turkey

Job satisfaction, in terms of worker's satisfaction, is one of the intensively studied areas in human resource and management. However, there is little information available on how ergonomics and the manufacturing environment affect job satisfaction. This study analyzes the extent of the relationship between job satisfaction and work and workplace related conditions. A conceptual model is proposed to evaluate job satisfaction that considers 34 elements in four categories: manufacturing systems, facility design, safety and ergonomics, and human resources and management. A survey of 169 blue-collar workers working in the automotive industry was conducted to investigate the applicability of the model. A comprehensive exploratory factor analysis was used to determine inter-related elements, their underlying factors and their effects on job satisfaction. The analysis revealed 6 factors with 18 related elements. From a multi linear regression analysis, we develop a job satisfaction model built on factors of human resource policies, safety, ergonomics, air quality, thermal comfort and disturbing equipment. The results reveal that ergonomics plays the most important role in workers' satisfaction for the respondent Turkish automotive workers. In contrast, human resource policies seem not play a critical role in job satisfaction because of higher standards in automotive industry compared to other industries in Turkey.     

Enhancing Employee Job satisfaction via E-learning: The Mediating Role of an Organizational Learning Culture

Although e-learning systems have been widely employed to develop employee learning at a workplace, discerning what influences the interaction between employee acceptance of an e-learning system within an organizational learning culture (OLC) and the resultant impact on job attitudes remains under-researched and requires further investigation. This study examined the relationship between employee perceptions of an e-learning system, the existing OLC, and job satisfaction. Structural equation modeling was applied to analyze data collected from 297 employees of a telecommunications company. The results suggest that employee acceptance of e-learning is a positive predictor of the OLC and employee job satisfaction. OLC mediates the relationship between the use and acceptance of e-learning by employees and their job satisfaction. Recommendations and implications are subsequently provided in terms of the future for human resource development researches and practices.     

Information systems security policy compliance: An empirical study of the effects of socialisation,influence, and cognition

This study investigated employees’ information systems security policy (ISSP) compliance behavioural intentions in organisations from the theoretical lenses of social bonding, social influence, and cognitive processing. Given that previous research on ISSP compliance has been based on deterrence theory, this study seeks to augment and diversify research on ISSP compliance through its theoretical perspective. Relevant hypotheses were developed to test the research conceptualisation. Data from a survey of business managers and IS professionals confirmed that social bonds that are formed at work largely influence attitudes towards compliance and subjective norms, with both constructs positively affecting employees’ ISSP compliance. Employees’ locus of control and capabilities and competence related to IS security issues also affect ISSP compliance behavioural intentions. Overall, the constructs in the research model enhance our understanding of the social-organisational and psychological factors that might encourage or accentuate employees’ ISSP compliance in the workplace.     

A model of job satisfaction for collaborative development processes

Modern software development relies on collaborative work as a means for sharing knowledge, distributing tasks and responsibilities, reducing risk of failures, and increasing the overall quality of the software product. Such objectives are achieved with a continuous share of the programmers’ daily working life that inevitably influences the programmers’ job satisfaction. One of the major challenges in process management is to determine the causes of this satisfaction. Traditional research models job satisfaction with social aspects of collaborative work like communication, work sustainability, and work environment.This study reflects on existing models of job satisfaction in collaborative environments, creates one for modern software development processes, and validates it with a retrospective comparative survey run on a sample of 108 respondents. In addition, the work investigates the impact on job satisfaction and its model of the agile practice of Pair Programming that pushes job sharing to the extreme. With this intent, the questionnaire also collected feedback from pair programmers whose responses were used for a comparative analysis. The results demonstrate that Pair Programming has actually a strong positive effect on satisfaction, work sustainability, and communication.     

Is social capital effective for online learning?

The popularity of online social networking has heightened academic interest in social capital. However, few studies have investigated the role of social capital in online learning. Using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of data from online MIS classes, we find that online learning facilitates social capital formation mostly in terms of the dimensions of community, trust, collective action and cooperation, communication, and sociability and inclusion, depending on the media-based human interaction forms of online learning employed. Structural equation modeling confirms a causal effect of social capital on student satisfaction. Social capital is also found to positively affect learning outcomes as measured by students’ group project scores but not class scores. The study's contribution to the literature and practice are discussed.     

Employee positioning and workload allocation

Assigning tasks to employees is a difficult task. Errors committed in such assignments can have far-reaching consequences, such as reduced efficiency due to absenteeism, lack of job satisfaction, formal grievances, and generally deteriorating labor relations. This paper approaches the problem from a spatial point of view. First, the employees and the relevant tasks are mapped in a skill space. After feasible task assignments are determined, tasks are assigned to employees so as to minimize employee—task distances in order to avoid boredom, and minimize disequity between the individual employees’ workloads, and minimize costs. Computational results are provided for an engineering department of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago, Chile.     

Out of fear or desire? Toward a better understanding of employees’ motivation to follow IS security policies

Given the significant role of people in the management of security, attention has recently been paid to the issue of how to motivate employees to improve security performance of organizations. However, past work has been dependent on deterrence theory rooted in an extrinsic motivation model to help understand why employees do or do not follow security rules in their organization. We postulated that we could better explain employees’ security-related rule-following behavior with an approach rooted in an intrinsic motivation model. We therefore developed a model of employees’ motivation to comply with IS security policies which incorporated both extrinsic and intrinsic models of human behavior. It was tested with data collected through a survey of 602 employees in the United States. We found that variables rooted in the intrinsic motivation model contributed significantly more to the explained variance of employees’ compliance than did those rooted in the extrinsic motivation model.     

Modeling job effectiveness and its antecedents from a social capital perspective: A survey of virtual teams within business organizations

This study develops two alternative models concerning job effectiveness, knowledge sharing, and their antecedents related to individuals’ perception about their job effectiveness in a team. Model 1 of this study intends to be as parsimonious as theoretically justifiable. It posits that three dimensions of social capital - structural, relational, and cognitive social capital - simultaneously influence knowledge sharing and job effectiveness indirectly through the mediation of team commitment, while job effectiveness is also influenced by knowledge sharing. Based on Model 1, Model 2 further adds that knowledge sharing is influenced directly by three dimensions of social capital. The two models are tested by collecting data from professionals of virtual teams in high-tech industries. The test results support seven out of nine hypotheses in Model 2. Finally, managerial implications of the empirical findings are also discussed.     

A path model linking organizational knowledge attributes,information processing capabilities,and perceived usability

Employees’ perceptions of knowledge management (KM) has been of increasing interest to organization researchers who have suggested that the understanding of organization information processing (OIP) capabilities is important in providing KM activities. Yet, there has been little research on the link between OIP capabilities and employees’ perceived usability of KM tools in an organization. We developed a path model employing several constructs: teachability, codificability, information acquisition, information dissemination, organizational memory, information integration, and perceived usability. We then explored the relationships between employees’ perception of the effectiveness of KM activities and empirically tested the model using a sample of 157 enterprises from the Taiwanese Information Service Industry. Our results showed that all proposed relationships except a link between codificability and memory capability were supported by the data. The findings and their implications are discussed.     

Acceptance of competency-based workplace e-learning systems: Effects of individual and peer learning support

Current endeavors to integrate competency-based learning approaches with e-learning systems designed for delivery of training to adult learners in the workplace are growing. However, academic efforts in examining learners’ perceptions of, and reactions toward, this technology-delivered pedagogical innovation are limited. Drawing together perspectives from the literature on training and instructional design and technology acceptance, this research proposed a conceptual model to examine the influences of perceived individual and social learning support on employees’ acceptance of competency-based e-learning systems. Structural equation modeling and multi-group structural equation modeling techniques were applied to sample data collected from work settings in Mainland China. The results show the positive effects of perceived individual learning support and perceived support for promoting a norm of cooperation on employees’ intention to use the competency-based e-learning system. It was also found that perceived support for enhancing social ties had a negative effect on employees’ behavioral intention. The gender, age, prior experience, and work experience differences in the main effects were also investigated. Besides, qualitative data collected via semi-structured in-depth interview provide complementary evidence to the findings.     

Explaining non-work-related computing in the workplace: A comparison of alternative models

Our study was initiated to provide a better understanding of the factors influencing employees’ non-work-related computing (NWRC) behavior by comparing two models, one based on Triandis’ theory of interpersonal behavior (TIB) and the other derived from the theory of planned behavior (TPB). Results of the study showed that the TIB-based model had higher explanatory power than the TPB-based model. Specifically, affect, social factors, and perceived consequences significantly influenced employees’ intention to engage in NWRC, while intention to engage in it, habit, and facilitating conditions determined employees’ NWRC behavior. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Employees’ adherence to information security policies: An exploratory field study

The key threat to information security comes from employees who do not comply with information security policies. We developed a new multi-theory based model that explained employees’ adherence to security policies. The paradigm combines elements from the Protection Motivation Theory, the Theory of Reasoned Action, and the Cognitive Evaluation Theory. We validated the model by using a sample of 669 responses from four corporations in Finland. The SEM-based results showed that perceived severity of potential information security threats, employees’ belief as to whether they can apply and adhere to information security policies, perceived vulnerability to potential security threats, employees’ attitude toward complying with information security policies, and social norms toward complying with these policies had a significant and positive effect on the employees’ intention to comply with information security policies. Intention to comply with information security policies also had a significant impact on actual compliance with these policies. High level managers must warn employees of the importance of information security and why it is necessary to carry out these policies. In addition, employees should be provided with security education and hands on training.     

A bipolar resource management framework for resource provisioning in Cloud’s virtualized environment

Cloud’s profitability is mainly driven by the business, and on the other hand, a successful business is hardly geared with clients’ satisfaction. Therefore, there is high competition between cloud providers for satisfying clients and attracting more of them. In this way, long term business success factors should also be considered in addition to short term profit factors regarded in conventional resource provisioning procedures. Conventional resource management approaches to achieve short term profit inevitably lead to job rejection and violation from response time based SLAs while short response time and low job rejection are of those important factors to clients’ satisfaction. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel bipolar resource management framework which results in preventing from job rejection and having considerably reduced violations from response time based SLAs as well as providing short term profits. The proposed framework uses a neural network based predictor and genetic algorithm for optimal resource management through live migration. It also employs a prediction based temporal infinite pool, called the temporal cloud, which regards job rejection prevention. The evaluation of the proposed framework demonstrates that it can provide short term profits, beside it prevents from job rejection and reduces response time violations considerably.     

Clarifying the empirical connection of new entrants’ e-learning systems use to their job adaptation and their use patterns under the collective-individual training environment

In recent years, with the development of e-learning, it is feasible for enterprises to adopt information systems to enhance organizations’ human capital and knowledge renewal for competition. e-Learning systems designed for new entrants training aim to facilitate new entrants’ job adaptation; however, the empirical link between their system use and job adaptation lacks. In addition, the influence of environmental variables on new entrants’ e-learning training still needs clarification. Thus, based on the theoretical framework of the IS (information system) success model, this study is motivated to make an empirical connection of new entrants’ e-learning systems use to their job adaptation, including organizational socialization and overall job-adaptation outcome, and also to clarify their system use patterns under different collective-individual socialization training environments. Data from one hundred and eighty-six valid respondents who entered their organizations within a year were gathered and analyzed with PLS (partial least square). The results suggested the valid connection of new entrants’ e-learning systems use to their organizational socialization and overall job-adaptation outcome. New entrants also presented partially different system use patterns for adaptation under the different human interaction environments. The findings facilitated the design of training programs for new entrants at the e-learning environment.     

The roles of intrinsic motivators and extrinsic motivators in promoting e-learning in the workplace: A case from South Korea

Acceptance of e-learning by employees is critical to the successful implementation of e-learning in the workplace. To explain why employees might accept the e-learning technology, motivational factors must be considered. Although the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) has identified many variables to understand employees’ motivation to use e-learning, current literature cannot conclude the roles of extrinsic and intrinsic motivators in the technology adoption process. Consequently, organizations often overestimate the effects of extrinsic motivators in promoting e-learning while ignoring employees’ intrinsic motivation. To examine the effect difference between the two motivational factors, this study surveyed 261 employees in a food service company in South Korea with the UTAUT instrument. Upon analyzing 226 valid cases with LISREL, the findings revealed that intrinsic motivators (effort expectancy, attitudes, and anxiety) affected employees’ intention to use e-learning in the workplace more strongly than did the extrinsic motivators (performance expectancy, social influence, and facilitating conditions). Furthermore, the effects of intrinsic motivators mediated the effect of extrinsic motivators. Implications of this study are important for both researchers and practitioners.