Projects at CRESS

Motivation and Engagement of Volunteers
Kerstin Alfes & Amanda Shantz
In this research project we are interested in exploring the motivations of volunteers across a range of different volunteering organisations. We link volunteering motivations to different positive outcomes such as engagement, commitment, satisfaction and happiness. We are also interested in exploring the extent to which individual characteristics moderate these relationships.

Diversity and Work Overload in Public Organizations
Adrian Ritz & Kerstin Alfes
In this research project we are interested in exploring how diversity is related to work overload in the public sector in Switzerland. Specifically, we propose that surface-level and deep-level diversity impact upon work overload in different ways. We use multi-level data from 4,000 employees in 245 organisational units to test our hypotheses.

When leaders make a difference
Adrian Ritz, Amanda Shantz, Kerstin Alfes & Alana Arshoff
The purpose of this paper is to shed light on an understudied topic in public administration, namely, commitment to organizational change. Specifically, this study examines the extent to which the quality of the relationship between employees and their managers positively influences employee’s commitment to change. Further, it investigates whether this relationship varies as a function of a person’s core self-evaluations. Evidence from a multivariate regression analysis in a public sector organization at the local level in the UK revealed that individuals who have high quality relationships with their managers are more likely to be accepting of change; this is especially true for individuals with lower levels of core self-evaluations.

Back to Baseline in Britain: Adaptation in the BHPS
Andrew E. Clark & Yannis Georgellis
We look for evidence of adaptation in sixteen waves of British panel data.  We find that, with the exception of unemployment, adaptation to other life events including marriage, divorce, birth of a child and widowhood is rapid and complete.  These findings are remarkably similar to those in previous analysis of German panel data. Equally, the time profiles of well-being as measured by life satisfaction data are very close to those from the analysis of a twelve-item scale of psychological functioning. As such, the phenomenon of adaptation may be a general one, rather than being only found in German data or using single-item measures. Last, we uncover some systematic differences in adaptation profiles according to “Big Five” personality measures.

Explaining Health Managers' Information Seeking Behaviour and Use
Christine Edwards, Stephen Gourlay, Steve Iliffe, Vari Drennan, Steve Gillard, Mary Chambers, Pinar Guven

The project is concerned with the information behaviour of health service managers in decision-making in innovative change projects; with identifying the facilitators and barriers to the use of information; and with developing guidelines for improving practice. “Information behaviour” covers the range of activities from awareness of a need for information or evidence to inform decision-making, through to the activities of searching, collecting, evaluating, and using such information. Managers' information behaviour will clearly impact on their use of evidence in decision-making, and thus their potential for making high quality judgments that should improve organizational efficiency and effectiveness. The focus of the research is on innovative change projects where managers cannot rely on past experience and in which awareness of the need for information tends to be highest. Data was collected through a combination of in-depth interviews, Q-methodology, and a national survey of healthcare managers. The final project report will be delivered to the funding body, the NHS SDO, early in 2012.

Engagement – with what?
Stephen Gourlay

Research literature on personal engagement, employee engagement, and work engagement has not grappled with the important conceptual issue of what it is that employees might be engaged with. A review of various strands of academic literature on engagement by employees reveals that at various times, different authors have made different assertions and assumptions about what employees are engaged with. The relevance of establishing what it is employees are engaged with is discussed, and an attempt will be made to propose a theoretically defensible position. The implications for academic and managerial practice will be considered.

Training and development for ERP systems’ implementation
Stephen Gourlay

ERP systems implementation is fraught with difficulties, and many projects are deemed failures in some respect, one of which being that the changes in skills wrought by the new system had not been appreciated sufficiently beforehand such that sufficient training had been put into place. A review of the literature shows that the issue of training in the context of ERP systems’ implementation has been largely neglected by training and development professionals. However, research by systems’ specialists has identified a number of issues relating to training in this context. The wide potential scope of ERP systems suggests that in order to make best use of the systems an equivalently wide scope of training and development activities needs to be undertaken. The traditional focus on end-users is too limited, and a strategic approach to training needs to run parallel to systems development, covering all staff from the most senior managers to end-users. Furthermore, forms of participative development appear to offer benefits to companies in terms of operating efficiency.