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Accumulating evidence indicates that time spent in natural environments promotes creativity, but few researchers have considered how this occurs. We evaluate two candidate mechanisms, attention restoration and mind wandering. We compare the accounts in terms of attentional focus, brain network activation, cognitive effects, and the temporal progression of these processes across the stages of creativity. Based on this analysis, we propose that (1) gentle shifts between externally oriented soft fascination and internally oriented mind wandering can occur during nature experience; (2) this provides the basis for mutually reinforcing pathways that enhance attention control following nature experience; and (3) mind wandering might support additional benefits for creativity, including flexibility and new associations of ideas. We propose research to test the proposed pathways, including the conditions under which environments influence creativity, the ebb and flow of attention orientation during environmental experience, and the links between attentional focus, brain network activation and creativity.

We developed and tested a model linking developmental experiences to leadership effectiveness and promotability through 2 mediating processes based on social cognitive and social capital theories. We hypothesized that a manager's exposure to 3 types of developmental experiences (formal development programs, developmental job challenges, and developmental supervision) would positively relate to supervisor's assessment of the manager's leadership effectiveness in the current job role and promotability within the organization through the manager's leadership self-efficacy and size and quality of the manager's mentor network. Results based on a sample of 235 retail managers showed that leadership self-efficacy and mentor network fully mediated the relationship between job challenges and promotability, whereas leadership self-efficacy also fully mediated the relationship between job challenges and leadership effectiveness. Developmental supervision was indirectly related to promotability through mentor network. In addition, a 3-way interaction analysis revealed that participation in formal development activities had a positive indirect relationship with leadership effectiveness and promotability mediated by leadership self-efficacy when a manager experienced either lower levels of job challenge and developmental supervision, or higher levels of both. Our findings contribute to leadership knowledge by examining how both formal and informal developmental experiences relate to leadership effectiveness and promotability through social processes.

Academia has changed over the last decades and so have academic careers. In a 2019 special issue of the journal Academy of Management Learning and Education, we have brought together a set of paper...

Theoretical developments in the analysis of organizations have recently turned to an “organizational becoming” perspective, which sees the social world as enacted in the microcontext of communicative interactions among individuals through which meaning is negotiated. According to this view, organizational change is endemic, natural, and ongoing; it occurs in everyday interactions as actors engage in the process of establishing new meanings for organizational activities. We adopt this approach to study how meanings were negotiated by senior and middle managers in a workshop held as part of a culture change program at a telecommunications company. Our study identifies two very different patterns in these negotiations, constituted by the particular communicative practices adopted by participants. We discuss the implications of these patterns for organizational change in relation to generative dialogue and power-resistance relations between senior and middle managers.

In spite of the growing body of research on high performance work systems (HPWS), there is little evidence on their application in the service sector. It is commonly argued, however, that occupational segmentation in services is a barrier to HPWS. Analysis of data from aged-care workers indicates that: HPWS have positive outcomes for workers; highly skilled nurses are no more likely than lowly skilled personal care workers to be subject to HPWS; and in some cases, HPWS are associated with more positive outcomes for low-skilled than high-skilled workers. These findings suggest that HPWS may well be widely applicable in service settings.

The present study examined the effects of work control and job demands on employee adjustment and work performance using a multidimensional measure of work control (assessing levels of task control, decision control and work scheduling control). It was proposed that the negative effects of job demands and employee adjustment would be moderated by high levels of task control. It was also proposed that there would be evidence of main effects of both job demands and work control (particularly task-related levels of control) on employee adjustment. To test these predictions, a study of 135 university employees holding administrative positions was undertaken. Methodological improvements over previous research included the use of both self-reported adjustment measures and supervisor ratings of work performance as outcome variables, and the assessment of the predictor and outcome measures at different points in time (self-reported adjustment was assessed at both Times 1 and 2). The results revealed some support for the proposal that the effects of job demands would be buffered by high levels of task control, but not more peripheral aspects of work control. There were also significant main effects of task control on job satisfaction.

This qualitative study examines the patterns in human resource (HR) approaches to retirement across 24 organizations to explore innovative practices as well as gain understanding of the differences in how firms are dealing with major changes surrounding retirement and workforce demographics. Using organizational adaptation theory and carrying out a thorough analysis of in-depth interviews with HR managers, we identify three dimensions that differentiate organizations’ approaches to retirement: (1) actions and interactions of key stakeholders in the retirement process; (2) HR information gathering focus regarding workforce issues; and (3) HR posture around changes needed in retirement policies and practices. Based on organizational profiles on these dimensions, four distinct approaches to retirement emerge and are described in some detail: gatekeeping, improvising, orchestrating, and partnering. These different approaches also provide insight into how organizations differ in their adaptation to change. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.