Identifying organizational knowledge creation enablers through content analysis: The voice from the industry

The primary purpose of the current research was to identify core contextual factors that facilitate or hinder the process of organizational knowledge creation practices. The grounded theory framework and negotiated coding approach were employed. Serving as the fundamental research framework was Nonaka and his colleagues' knowledge creation and conversion theory, along with their proposed knowledge creation enablers. A total of 314 codeable units from 153 individuals were used for data analysis. All answers were coded and categorized into three emerged domains—organization, team/subgroup, and individual—for both areas of facilitating and hindering factors. Limitations and implications for further research are presented in the discussion section.     

The key to organizational performance improvement: A perspective of organizational knowledge creation

The primary purpose of this research is to explore the impacts of knowledge creation practices on organizational performance improvement. Research has been empirically assessed on the basis of the collected data from three Korean private organizations. The concept of knowledge creation theory was adapted as the theoretical framework of this research (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995). Structural equation modeling has been used in order to assess the fit of the hypothesized model with the collected data. The result of the confirmatory factor analysis suggests that the hypothesized measurement model is a reliable and valid construct in the Korean context; multiple regression analysis reveals that knowledge creation practices have a positive and strong influence on performance improvement. Conclusions, limitations, and implications for human resource development are discussed.     

Creating procedural justice and legitimate authority within school discipline systems through youth court

Schools' ability to manage student misbehavior rests largely on students' perceptions of the discipline system and authority. According to the procedural justice perspective, when schools use discipline practices students perceive as unfair, they fail to see authority as legitimate, making them less likely to comply with rules and demand. Youth Court, a peer adjudication program, has been implemented in schools as an alternative to punitive policies. While effective, there is no current research that examines if Youth Court creates procedural justice and legitimate authority. Using qualitative data from three urban schools, this study investigates the fairness of Youth Court procedures within a procedural justice framework, as well as perceptions of primary discipline practices and authority. Findings revealed that each school still largely uses punitive policies that create procedural unfairness and undermine legitimate authority. Additionally, findings indicate Youth Court utilizes practices that allow for procedural justice that foster legitimate authority.     

Creativity and knowledge creation practices in the school context: The moderating role of task‐related job autonomy

The aim of this research is to investigate the moderating role of task‐related job autonomy to explain the impact of team creativity on organizational knowledge creation in the school context. From the applied performance improvement standpoint, this research differs from previous studies in that more behavioral constructs were considered rather than policy‐related issues in the school context. Hierarchical multiple regression and general linear modeling approaches were utilized to examine the general relations among the constructs and the moderating role of task‐related job autonomy. Results show that task‐related job autonomy was not found to be a statistically significant moderating construct. This finding is in contrast to that of most previous studies on the workplace performance improvement field due to the internal nature of the school system and environment.     

Team performance improvement: Mediating roles of employee job autonomy and quality of team leader–member relations in supportive organizations in the Korean business context

The purpose of this research was to examine the mediating roles of job autonomy and the quality of the leader–member relationship to explain the impact of organizational support on team performance. A total of 228 cases collected from Korean business organizations were used for data analysis. Hierarchical multiple regression, Type 1 SS‐based general linear modeling, and structural equation modeling were used for analyses. All results were compared to examine the magnitude of the interactions of two mediating variables—job autonomy and leader–member relation quality—to predict the influence of organizational support on team performance. Results include (1) two mediating variables played partial mediating roles; (2) between the mediating variables, leader–member relations maximized the magnitude of job autonomy; (3) organizational support was the commanding predictor for team performance, while it was found to be a statistically nonsignificant factor, which did not directly influence team performance. Conclusions are described, followed by limitations and future research recommendations.     

Strategic factors and barriers for promoting educational organizational learning

This article uses a global model to analyse empirically how the personal and professional development of educators (personal mastery) facilitates the creation of a series of basic shared values (shared vision) and of team learning by the members of the educational centre, these inter-related strategic factors favouring, in turn, educational organizational learning and subsequent improvement in organizational performance. Likewise, verification is made of different learning barriers that hinder the acquisition, dissemination and sharing of knowledge by blocking shared vision and team learning. Using a national survey in educational centres in Spain, we found that these hypotheses are verified and that organizational learning plays a key role in the generation of organizational performance.     

Gerechtigkeit und Studienabbruch. Die Rolle der wahrgenommenen Fairness von Benotungsverfahren bei der Entstehung von Abbruchsintentionen

This article investigates the relationship between grading fairness and university students’ dropout intentions. Our focus is on the extent to which students assess the grading procedures as fair from a procedural justice perspective. We distinguish between control-related and validity-related aspects of procedural justice. The fairness of grading procedures is incorporated into a rational choice model on educational decision-making. We theorize that students consider questions of procedural justice in determining their chances of success. Thus, unfair grading practices lead to an increased risk of the students developing dropout intentions. Further, we investigate the relationship between students’ socioeconomic characteristics and procedural justice. Data from the first wave of the CampusPanel are used (n = 1393). Results show that dropout intentions are significantly affected by evaluations of procedural justice. Further, there is evidence that students with low parental socioeconomic status as well as students with an immigrant background are especially prone to exhibit dropout intentions when confronted with low procedural justice.     

How the Organizational Learning Process Mediates the Impact of Strategic Human Resource Management Practices on Performance in Korean Organizations

The primary purpose of this research is to examine the structural relationships among several workplace‐related constructs, including strategic human resource management (HRM) practices, organizational learning processes, and performance improvement in the Korean business context. More specifically, the research examined the mediating effect of the organizational learning processes at three levels—individual, group, and organizational—to explain the relationship between strategic HRM practices and performance improvement. A total of 640 cases were used for data analysis, with general multivariate analyses and structural equation modeling. The results suggest that the learning processes at the three levels have a significant direct impact on organizational performance and that they also serve as a mediating interaction construct to maximize the effect of strategic HRM practices. The article provides conclusions, discusses the limitations of the research, and makes further recommendations.     

基于程序公正性的母子公司知识转移的过程管理研究

母子公司是一种特殊的公司关系。与外部市场机制相比,更有效的知识转移是母子公司存在的一个重要理由。因知识转移过程具有非随机性,母公司能够设计各种内部政策、结构对转移过程进行管理。通过分析程序公正性、知识转移与母子公司过程管理三者间的内在关联性,提出母子公司知识转移过程中的管理关键在于选择充分体现程序公正的母子公司管理度、管理模式和控制机制,并构造了基于程序公正性的母子公司知识转移过程管理的一个基本理论框图。     

Why are some universities better? An evaluation in terms of organizational culture and academic performance*

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships between organizational culture and academic performance among higher education institutions. The sample was composed of 647 faculty members working in the colleges of education, health, engineering, law, economics, and administrative sciences in four central research universities in Turkey. The Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI) was used to describe organizational culture, whereas University Ranking by Academic Performance (URAP) data were used to investigate academic performance. A multilevel analysis in which one unit of analysis (i.e., faculty member) was nested within another (i.e., college) was performed. The original contribution made to the literature by this research is its examination of the relationships between organizational culture and tangible performance indicators (e.g., the number of academic publications and citations). Results show that three different culture types were observed in the universities: Innovative team culture, competitive culture, and hierarchic culture. Although significant relationships were found between academic performance and both competitive culture and innovative team culture, the sole significant predictor of academic performance was competitive culture. One particularly interesting finding was that whereas competitive culture was effective on quantitative indicators (i.e., number of publications and number of citations), only innovative team culture affected the indicators related to effectiveness (i.e., article impact level and citation impact level).     

Exploring the potential for and promise of incorporating distributive and procedural justices into post-secondary assessment of student learning

This paper explores the potential of incorporating constructs of distributive justice and procedural justice into summative assessment of student learning in higher education. I systematically compare the process used by managers to evaluate employee performance in organizations – performance appraisal (PA) – with processes used by professors to assess student learning in academe. These procedures are remarkably similar in terms of objectives to facilitate and measure performance/learning, criteria for defining desired performance/learning, the procedures used by raters to evaluate performance/learning, and the procedure used by employees and students to assess fairness of their PA/grades. I then summarize empirical research regarding distributive justice (DJ) and procedural justice (PJ) in organizations. Finally, I posit how positive attitudes and behaviors associated with DJ and PJ in organizations might transfer to benefit students, professors, administrators, and universities in academe.     

Classroom justice: Perceptions of fairness as a predictor of student motivation,learning, and aggression

The present study examined the relationship between students’ perceptions of distributive and procedural justice in a college course and student motivation concerning the course, affective learning in the course, and aggression toward the course instructor. Although student perceptions of both distributive and procedural justice were positively correlated with student motivation and affective learning and negatively correlated with student aggression toward the course instructor, multiple regression analyses indicated that only perceptions of procedural justice predicted the three criterion variables at a statistically significant level while distributive justice perceptions did not. Implications and suggestions for future research in classroom justice are offered.     

Beyond the learning process and toward the knowledge creation process: Linking learning and knowledge in the supportive learning culture

This integrative literature review synthesizes the concepts and process of organizational knowledge creation with theories of individual learning. The knowledge conversion concept (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995; Nonaka, Toyama, & Byosière, 2001) is used as the basis of the organizational knowledge creation process, while major learning theories relevant to working adult learners are newly synthesized into four types of individual learning processes: adaptive, generative, transformative, and reflective. The results suggest an integrative conceptual flow map of individual and organizational learning facilitated by culture and management system enablers. Implications for using this conceptual framework for practicing performance technology solutions are also discussed.     

Influential Factors for Teachers' Creativity: Mutual Impacts of Leadership,Work Engagement,and Knowledge Creation Practices

This research examined the structural relationships among transformational leadership, work engagement, knowledge creation practices, and the level of creativity among the teachers in career and technical education (CTE), and investigated the mediating role of work engagement and knowledge creation practices in explaining the association between transformational leadership and the level of teachers' creativity. A total of 304 responses from CTE school teachers were analyzed. The structural equation modeling (SEM) method was employed. Transformational leadership was found to have positive impacts on work engagement and knowledge creation practices of teachers, but no direct relationship was found between transformational leadership and the level of teachers' creativity. Teachers' work engagement and knowledge creation practices were respectively associated with their perceived creativity levels. Therefore, work engagement and knowledge creation practices of teachers may be considered as mediating factors in the relationship between transformational leadership and teacher's creativity. To promote teachers' creativity, transformational leadership should be complemented by a school climate where teachers' work engagement and knowledge creation are encouraged.     

Managing knowledge performance: testing the components of a knowledge management system on organizational performance

The main purpose of the current study is to validate the framework of knowledge management (KM) capabilities created by Gold (Towards a theory of organizational knowledge management capabilities. Doctoral dissertation, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) 2001) in a study of South Korean companies. However, the original framework did not provide a thorough explanation of the effect of incentives, which motivate and encourage the knowledge management process. In this study, the modified framework that includes incentives in the knowledge infrastructure capability was tested. Moreover, since there is a weak linkage between KM and organizational performance, this study used empirical evidence to identify the relationship between KM capabilities (KMC) and four perspectives of organizational performance. Since structural equation modeling (SEM) is mostly used to describe causal relationships among unobserved (latent) and observed variables, this study used SEM procedures to determine whether there were any structural relationships between knowledge management capabilities and four perspectives of organizational performance. Moreover, the SEM procedure is “a statistical test to find whether a model fits a set of data, whether it matches a theoretical expectation” (Vogt, Dictionary of statistics & methodology. Sage Publications Inc., Thousand Oaks, CA, p 135, 2005). Therefore, this study also used SEM procedures to test a hypothesized model that had a good fit indicates that the model adequately describes the sample data. This study assumed that knowledge management capabilities could be divided into two types: knowledge infrastructure and process capabilities. The original hypothesized model showed that there was a positive relationship between knowledge management capabilities and organizational performance, but the overall model fit was insufficient to be accepted, because knowledge infrastructure and process capabilities were highly correlated. This study proposed two alternative models to find the best fit and found that knowledge infrastructure and process capabilities should be combined under the higher-order latent variable as subordinate latent variables. Lastly, there was a positive relationship between KMC and organizational performance. This study might not be free from common method bias to some degrees. It would be better to divide participants into two groups to respond to either the knowledge management capabilities survey or the organizational performance survey and to investigate the correlation between them. There are two main contributions for the field of knowledge management. First, this study attempted to integrate the fragmented literature of knowledge management into a holistic view and develop a framework for knowledge management. Moreover, this study found that there is a strong and positive relationship between KM infrastructure and process, which could refer that, to improve organizational performance, an organization should support KM processes, as well as build decent KM infrastructure. The results of this study would help KM practitioners to advocate the importance of KM to top managements.     

Testing Leader–Member Exchange Theory as a Lens to Understand Students’ Classroom Justice Perceptions and Antisocial Communication

The purpose of this study was to test whether leader–member exchange theory (LMX) offers an explanatory lens for the program of classroom justice research. To that end, relationships among justice, LMX, and antisocial communication were explored. Findings indicated that perceptions of justice and LMX were positively related. Likewise, perceptions of interactional and procedural justice negatively predicted indirect interpersonal aggression, hostility, and revenge. Similarly, LMX perceptions were negatively related to students’ hostility and revenge and mediated the relationships between students’ perceptions of distributive justice and these outcomes. LMX also moderated the relationships between students’ perceptions of classroom justice and indirect interpersonal aggression and deception. Implications, limitations, and future research are discussed.     

Influential factors for knowledge creation practices of CTE teachers: mutual impact of perceived school support, transformational leadership, and work engagement

This study examined the structural relationships among perceived school support, transformational leadership, teachers’ work engagement, and teachers’ knowledge creation practices. It also investigated the mediating effects of transformational leadership and work engagement in explaining the association between perceived school support and knowledge creation practices. Samples included 284 career and technical education teachers in the United States. Structural equation modeling was employed. Perceived school support was positively associated with transformational leadership and teachers’ work engagement, but had no direct impact on knowledge creation practices. Transformational leadership was found to affect knowledge creation practices, but not work engagement of teachers. Although a supportive school climate had no direct relationship with knowledge creation practices, it indirectly affected this outcome variable through transformational leadership and teachers’ work engagement. The results suggest that in order to increase teachers’ knowledge creation activities, a supportive school climate should be provided with efforts to improve teachers’ work engagement and transformational behaviors of the principal.     

两个不同阶层中国人公平取向的实验研究

以程序公平和分配公平的假设情景进行实验研究,探讨当前中国社会不同阶层的公平取向。结果表明知识分子阶层与农民工阶层在程序公平和分配公平的情景选择取向上没有差异,但是在程序公平感的得分上,前者显著高于后者,而在分配公平感的得分上,则是后者显著高于前者。同时,本研究也表明大部分在城市生活了较长一段时间的农民工和知识分子阶层均对程序公平有明显的认知,但前者对此缺乏深层次的理解。