Cross‐national Similarities and Differences in Employee Perceptions of Issues in the Work Environment

This exploratory study examines cross‐national similarities and differences in employee perceptions of issues in the work environment in 17 organizational work settings in seven Asia‐Pacific countries; Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States. Employees at these 17 sites indicated their degree of agreement with statements about 60 work environment issues which previous research has shown impact performance. Resulting data were compared using coefficients of concordance as described by Gibbons (1971) at three levels of analysis. Analysis indicated that differences and similarities in responses did not reflect those one would expect to find based on previous well‐known research concerning cultural differences in those same countries (Hall, 1976; Hofstede, 1980, 2001). This suggests that relying primarily on national cultural differences is not a sufficient guide for the design of performance improvement interventions in various countries and that other context factors need to be taken into account. Possible hypotheses for future research are offered.     

Teaching motivations,characteristics and professional growth: results from the Great Expectations (GE) programme in the United States

This present study sought to explore reasons given by K-12 teachers about their motivation to remain in teaching, their motivation for engaging in professional development, and characteristics of their teaching. Participants (N = 151) were public teachers of different grade levels from the USA enrolled in a one-week professional development training. Respondents’ ratings on reasons for continuing teaching revealed that four key-specific factors were the main influences for continuing to teach, namely intrinsic reasons, extrinsic reasons, job perception, and extended reasons. Further analysis indicated that their reasons for teaching were correlated with specific incentives for attending the professional development training, with teachers’ instructional beliefs, and with professional development programme outcomes. Study results are discussed in relationship with teaching motivation and implications for teachers’ professional growth.     

Team Cognition Conflict: A Conceptual Review Identifying Cognition Conflict as a New Team Conflict Construct

This article introduces a new conceptual model that adds to the previous intragroup conflict model by introducing a new construct—cognition conflict. In addition, it provides the defining characteristics for this new construct and presents how cognition conflict should be incorporated into the intragroup conflict literature. This conceptual review addresses the call to researchers from Song, Dyer, and Thieme (2006) by presenting cognition conflict as a new intragroup conflict construct.     

GROUNDED THEORY BUILDING FOR THE WORKPLACE

Developing and utilizing theories in the workplace are critical for managers and practitioners to make sense of real‐world issues. Grounded theory building is a viable research methodology that can be utilized in the workplace to help managers and practitioners develop theories, making better sense of workplace issues. This article looks at a general model of grounded theory building and introduces some of the key components involved in conducting grounded theory building.