the Journal of Behavioral and Applied Management

 

Winter/Spring, 2001                                                                  Vol. 2  No. 2

Abstracts

Diversity, Inclusion, and Commitment in Organizations:
International Empirical Explorations
Michŕl E. Mor Barak
University of Southern California
Liora Findler
Bar-Ilan University
Leslie H. Wind

University of Southern California Research on social demography in the workplace indicates that people from diverse groups commonly find themselves excluded from networks of information and opportunity.  In today’s global economy, diversity needs to be examined from an intra-national as well as international perspective.  Utilizing social identity and intergroup theories and focusing on the inclusion-exclusion construct, this article formulates a conceptual model of the relationship between diversity, inclusion and commitment and tests it in two samples drawn from high-tech companies in the U.S. and in Israel. The results support the applicability of the model across the two cultures, but the role of diversity in the model proves to be more limited than hypothesized.  The results suggest that, while the context of diversity and its specific categories differ across cultures, there are similarities in the associated experience of exclusion.      Go to Article   

Connection in Creative Virtual Teams
Jill E. Nemiro
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

This paper describes a qualitative study investigating the work environment necessary for virtual teams to be creative. Nine virtual teams, with a total of 36 team members participated. One semi-structured, telephone interview was conducted with each participant. Team members also completed a background survey. Grounded theorizing was used to analyze the data and generate meaning. Connection, defined as the elements that need to be in place for a team to develop and maintain identity and a sense of community, emerged as important to the realization of creativity in virtual teams. Connection was further subdivided into task connection (made up of dedication/commitment, and goal clarity); and interpersonal connection (made up of information sharing, trust, and personal bond).  Go to Article 

Agenda-building Theory: A Stakeholder Salience Approach for
Determining Agenda Placement
David Wasieleski
University of Pittsburgh

Management within an organization is constantly faced with decisions regarding the interests of the constituents or stakeholders of the firm.  Every stakeholder’s interests cannot possibly be dealt with equitably by an organization due to constraints upon available resources.  Thus, decisions must be made regarding the priority of competing stakeholder claims.  This paper considers this important stakeholder management dilemma by applying a stakeholder theory of salience to agenda-building theory. Propositions regarding the relationship among salience, the issue dimensions, and utilization of symbols in the issue expansion process are offered.  Based on these propositions, a revised agenda-building model is presented, which joins the attributes of stakeholder salience with the basic components of agenda setting to demonstrate when decision-makers are forced to cope with a stakeholder issue.  Go to Article

The Use of Organizational Culture and Structure to Guide Strategic Behavior:  An Information Processing Perspective
John W. O'Neill
Johnson & Wales University
Laura L. Beauvais
University of Rhode Island
Richard W. Scholl
University of Rhode Island

This article presents a descriptive model explaining the roles and relationships of organizational culture and organizational structure in guiding employee behavior toward strategic objectives.  Using an information-processing view, we propose that organizational culture and structure direct the behavior of employees through the reduction of uncertainty and equivocality.  Furthermore, we propose that differing levels of both cultural and structural influences are implemented in different organizational types based on the level of skill, originality, and training required of the tasks being performed by members of the organization, and based on the geographical dispersion of the employees themselves.  We present the concept of the “cosmopolis,” which is an organization rich in both cultural and structural elements.  Implications for both research and managerial practice are discussed.  Go to Article

Tradition, Technology and Faculty Partnership: An Integrated
Approach to Course Delivery
Anthony F. Chelte
Western New England College
Peter Hess
Western New England College

Technology continues to reshape the dimensions of virtually every industry and institution in our society.  This is no less true for higher education than for any other institution.  And within higher education, perhaps nowhere has the impact of technology been more powerfully felt than in schools of business where the customer demand for "distance learning" has been pervasive.  As these schools have attempted to respond to the opportunity to enhance learning and to expand learning options through technology-delivered education, the challenge is to understand what the most appropriate use of technology for learning might be for a given institution.  This study reports on the efforts of one school of business to answer this question for itself.  The findings from this study suggest that distance learning may not be the preferred model of educational program delivery for many students.  For at least some segment of the non-traditional student market, face-to-face interaction with faculty and classmates may be the priority in course design, with technology valued primarily for ensuring that time spent in the classroom is as productive and meaningful as possible. Go to Article

Teaching Business Students About Diversity:
An Experiential, Multimedia Approach
Pamela L. Cox
State University of New York College at Oswego

To prepare business students for an increasingly diverse workforce, business schools are beginning to include diversity training in their curriculum.  The content and evaluation of a diversity course for business students are described along with the objectives of the course and the factors that contributed to successfully meeting these objectives.  Go to Article