Managing performance through employee attributes: implications for employee engagement

The key success factors to adopting lean practices: the case of South American manufacturing firms

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors that promote the successful adoption of lean practices in manufacturing firms operating in developing economies in South America.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on the results obtained from using structural equation modeling to analyze the collected data, the authors argue that manufacturing organizations need to identify the factors that assist in successfully adopting lean practices in manufacturing firms operating in developing economies in South America. A dataset of 1,809 responses, gathered from manufacturing firms as part of the World Management Survey, was used to find support for the proposed hypotheses.

Findings

Several hypotheses were tested finding that lean practice success factors such as organizational targets proved to have a significant and positive relationship with the mediating factor, performance management. Likewise, performance management was also found to have a significant and positive relationship with lean practices adoption. Human capital management (HCM) has a significant but negative predictive relationship with lean practices.

Research limitations/implications

The empirical results of this study provide valuable managerial insights. The results are therefore limited to the economies analyzed and to the variables surveyed as part of the World Manufacturing Survey research.

Practical implications

The results of this research provide a starting point for researchers to continue studying the key lean practice factors and relationships in the achievement of improved performance management, thereby helping managers in developing strategies to improve the lean capabilities of their practices. This, in turn, will increase the organization's competitive advantage sustainably.

Originality/value

This paper identifies and tests the impact of key factors on successful lean practices adoption in South American organizations in the manufacturing sector.

Human resource management (HRM) in the performance measurement and management (PMM) domain: a bibliometric review

Purpose

The literature highlights the key role of human resource management in developing effective organizational performance measurement and management. To understand the state of the art of this role, the paper reviews the literature on human resource management in the performance measurement and management domain.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper conducts a bibliometric literature review on 1,252 articles to identify the prevailing research trends and the conceptual structure of human resource management in the performance measurement and management domain.

Findings

The study highlights a growing number of publications and four themes related to human resource management in performance measurement and management. It also underlines the shift from static to the dynamic performance measurement and management systems within organization which is expected to be more suited to current and future contexts.

Practical implications

The paper highlights the need to manage the identified themes as strategic organizational assets and further develop the strategic dimension of human resource management practices leveraging on project management and information systems.

Originality/value

The paper goes beyond the traditional focus on performance appraisal of human resource management studies and assumes the challenge of connecting two research fields: human resource management and performance measurement and management.

A study of the impact of COVID-19 on construction workforce productivity in Malaysia

Purpose

This paper aims to study the reaction of construction project managers in coping with workforce productivity challenges that arise from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Design/methodology/approach

Quantitative research via questionnaires targeting the project managers from G7 contractor companies in Malaysia was carried out in the data collection process. In total, 182 responses have been analysed descriptively and inferentially using SPSS software.

Findings

The research discovers that most of the construction projects and their workforce productivity were adversely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Besides, the strategies adopted by project managers in Malaysia and the ranking of strategies based on their effectiveness were indicated.

Originality/value

The findings of this research have contributed to a new understanding of the construction workforce productivity during the COVID-19 era from the perspective of project managers in Malaysia. A guideline established from the ranking of strategies would be useful to ensure the survival of the industry in Malaysia aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Managing the most important asset: a twenty year review on the performance management literature

Purpose

The three objectives served by this review are to provide readers a limpid insight about the topic performance management (PM), to analyse the latest trends in PM literature and to illustrate the theoretical perspectives. It would be fascinating for the practitioners and researchers to see the latest trends in the PM system, which is not yet covered in previous reviews. The study covers the historical and theoretical perspectives of human resource management practices. We also try to unveil some of the theoretical debates and conflicts regarding the topic.

Design/methodology/approach

We reviewed 139 studies on PM published within the last 20 years (2000–2020). The method used here is the integrative review method. The criteria used to determine studies are articles from peer-reviewed journals regarding the PM system published between 2000 and 2020. The initial search for studies was conducted using an extensive journal database, and then an intensive reference-based search was also done. Each selected article was coded, themes were identified, and trends for every 5 years were determined. All the articles were analysed and classified based on the methodology used to identify qualitative and quantitative studies.

Findings

The review concludes that PM literature's emphasis shifted from traditional historical evaluations conducted once or twice a year to forward-looking, feedback-enriched PM systems. By segregating the studies into 5-year periods, we could extract five significant trends that prevailed in the PM literature from 2000 to 2020: reactions to PM system, factors that influence PM system, quality of rating sources, evaluating the PM system and types of the PM system. The review ends with a discussion of practical implications and avenues for future research.

Research limitations/implications

It is equally a limitation and strength of this paper that we conducted a review of 139 articles to cover the whole works in PM literature during the last 20 years. The study could not concentrate on any specific PM theme, such as exploring employee outcomes or organizational outcomes. Likewise, the studies on public sector and non-profit organizations are excluded from this review, which constitutes a significant share of PM literature. Another significant limitation is that the selected articles are classified only based on their methodology; further classification based on different themes and contexts can also be done.

Originality/value

The study is an original review of the PM literature to identify the latest trends in the field.

Linking supply chain professional's competencies to resilience in a turbulent world

Purpose

This research aims to understand how competencies for supply chain professionals are developed and how they can affect the manager's performance, especially the manager's resilience in times of significant supply chain disruptions.

Design/methodology/approach

A research model was developed based on a comprehensive literature survey in the area of individual competencies grounded in the knowledge-based view of the firm. We tested our research model using a quantitative, survey-based study with a sample of 175 Pakistani supply chain managers. The hypotheses were tested using structural equation modelling (SEM).

Findings

The analysis identified corporate training and knowledge sharing as the main antecedents of supply chain professional's competencies. It also showed that these competencies result in higher performance in the form manager's resilience and job performance.

Research limitations/implications

This study provides a valuable framework for organisations to focus on skill-developing training and promoting a knowledge-sharing culture among employees to achieve desired performance levels.

Originality/value

This study is unique as no prior research studied such a comprehensive model of antecedents and consequences of supply chain professionals' competencies.

“My colleague is a robot” – exploring frontline employees' willingness to work with collaborative service robots

Purpose

As service robots increasingly interact with customers at the service encounter, they will inevitably become an integral part of employee's work environment. This research investigates frontline employee's perceptions of collaborative service robots (CSR) and introduces a new framework, willingness to collaborate (WTC), to better understand employee–robot interactions in the workplace.

Design/methodology/approach

Drawing on appraisal theory, this study employed an exploratory research approach to investigate frontline employees' cognitive appraisal of service robots and their WTC with their nonhuman counterparts in service contexts. Data collection consisted of 36 qualitative problem-centered interviews. Following an iterative thematic analysis, the authors introduce a research framework of frontline employees' WTC with service robots.

Findings

First, this study demonstrates that the interaction between frontline employees and service robots is a multistage appraisal process based on adoption-related perceptions. Second, it identifies important attributes across three categories (employee, robot and job attributes) that provide a foundation to understand the appraisal of CSRs. Third, it presents four employee personas (supporter, embracer, resister and saboteur) that provide a differentiated perspective of how service employee–robot collaboration may differ.

Practical implications

The article identifies important factors that enable and restrict frontline service employees' (FSEs’) WTC with robots.

Originality/value

This is the first paper that investigates the appraisal of CSRs from the perspective of frontline employees. The research contributes to the limited research on human–robot collaboration and expands existing technology acceptance models that fall short to explain post-adoptive coping behavior of service employees in response to service robots in the workplace.

Job demands-resources model, transformational leadership and organizational performance: a multilevel study

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to integrate an extended by personal resource job demands-resources (JD-R) model in the relationship between transformational leadership and organizational performance. It is argued that the responsive, supportive and developmental leader's style will reduce employees' levels of burnout and increase their levels of work engagement and ultimately will increase organizational performance expressed by productivity, growth and creativity.

Design/methodology/approach

The hypotheses were tested among a national sample of 1,011 employees in 107 Greek public and private organizations operating within an environment of economic and financial crises. The operational model was tested using a multilevel structural equation modelling.

Findings

It appeared that job demands and work burnout and job resources and work engagement, serially and fully mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and organizational performance. Further, it is found that personal resources negatively and fully mediate the relationship between job resources and work burnout and positively and partially mediate the relationship between job resources and work engagement.

Research limitations/implications

Data were collected using a cross-sectional design, not allowing dynamic causal inferences.

Practical implications

Considering that the transformational leadership style reduces employees' levels of burnout and increases their levels of work engagement and accordingly improves organizational performance, organizations are well advised to encourage this leadership style.

Social implications

Transformational leadership by balancing job demands and job resources could have a positive impact on employee well-being.

Originality/value

The study, using multilevel testing, demonstrates that the extended JD-R model can be integrated into the transformational leadership– organizational performance relationship.