Change has become continuous, and innovation is a primary approach for hospitality, i.e., hotel companies, to become or remain economically viable and sustainable. An increasing number of management researchers are paying more attention to workplace rather than technological innovation. This study investigates workplace innovation in the Dutch hotel industry, in three- and four-star hotels in the Netherlands, by comparing them to other industries. Two samples were questioned using the Workplace Innovation survey created by the Dutch Network of Social Innovation (NSI). The first was conducted in the hospitality industry, and these data were compared with data collected in a sample of other industries. Results suggest that greater strategic orientation on workplace innovation and talent development has a positive influence on four factors of organizational performance. Greater internal rates of change, the ability to self-organize, and investment in knowledge also had positive influences on three of the factors—growth in revenue, sustainability, and absenteeism. Results also suggest that the hospitality industry has lower workplace innovation than other industries. However, no recent research has assessed to what degree the hospitality industry fosters workplace innovation, especially in the Netherlands. Next to that, only few studies have examined management in the Dutch hotel industry, how workplace innovation is used there, and whether it improves practices.
This study investigates the mediating role of organizational citizenship behaviours (OCBs) on the leader-member exchange (LMX) and employee performance relation and the degree to which work experience moderates the relation between leader-member exchange and OCBs. Lecturers from six technical universities in Ghana, making up three hundred and thirty-six lecturers, were selected using convenience sampling. The participants completed self-administered surveys. OCBs fully mediated the association between LMX and employee performance. Furthermore, the findings indicate that the interplay between LMX and work experience on OCBs is compensatory in nature such that as work experience increases, the positive association between LMX and OCBs decrease. Managers of higher education institutions should create enabling work environments that encourage high-quality LMX and citizenship behaviours. Moreover, as work experience tends to attenuate the positive influence of LMX on OCBs, managers in higher education should focus their attention on employees with low rather than high work experience. This research adds to the employee performance literature through examining a novel link among leader-member exchange, organizational citizenship behaviours and performance.
A methodology for doing research into corporate spirituality should enable us to deal with the religious component of spirituality instead of trying to separate spirituality from religious beliefs, as the positivist school proposes. Waaijman’s phenomenological-dialogical research cycle enables us to deal with religious diversity in a scientific way. Sölle’s concept of democratized spirituality allows for discovering everyday (corporate) life as a finding place and workplace for spirituality. Replacing theistic terms by the concept of ‘alterity’ in a definition of spirituality may stimulate corporate spirituality without excluding or disqualifying spiritual diversity. Arendt’s concept of ‘action’ is closely connected to democratised spirituality. From that we can deduce a number of characteristics of corporate spirituality that give flesh and bone to what corporate spirituality can be. This allows us to see that many elements of corporate spirituality are already present in our organizational praxis. It also tells us that we need to become more aware of them and practice them. In doing so we set out on a ‘via transformativa’ that eventually may transform our organizations.
Collaborative networks for sustainability are emerging rapidly to address urgent societal challenges. By bringing together organizations with different knowledge bases, resources and capabilities, collaborative networks enhance information exchange, knowledge sharing and learning opportunities to address these complex problems that cannot be solved by organizations individually. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the apparel sector, where examples of collaborative networks for sustainability are plenty, for example Sustainable Apparel Coalition, Zero Discharge Hazardous Chemicals, and the Fair Wear Foundation. Companies like C&A and H&M but also smaller players join these networks to take their social responsibility. Collaborative networks are unlike traditional forms of organizations; they are loosely structured collectives of different, often competing organizations, with dynamic membership and usually lack legal status. However, they do not emerge or organize on their own; they need network orchestrators who manage the network in terms of activities and participants. But network orchestrators face many challenges. They have to balance the interests of diverse companies and deal with tensions that often arise between them, like sharing their innovative knowledge. Orchestrators also have to “sell” the value of the network to potential new participants, who make decisions about which networks to join based on the benefits they expect to get from participating. Network orchestrators often do not know the best way to maintain engagement, commitment and enthusiasm or how to ensure knowledge and resource sharing, especially when competitors are involved. Furthermore, collaborative networks receive funding from grants or subsidies, creating financial uncertainty about its continuity. Raising financing from the private sector is difficult and network orchestrators compete more and more for resources. When networks dissolve or dysfunction (due to a lack of value creation and capture for participants, a lack of financing or a non-functioning business model), the collective value that has been created and accrued over time may be lost. This is problematic given that industrial transformations towards sustainability take many years and durable organizational forms are required to ensure ongoing support for this change. Network orchestration is a new profession. There are no guidelines, handbooks or good practices for how to perform this role, nor is there professional education or a professional association that represents network orchestrators. This is urgently needed as network orchestrators struggle with their role in governing networks so that they create and capture value for participants and ultimately ensure better network performance and survival. This project aims to foster the professionalization of the network orchestrator role by: (a) generating knowledge, developing and testing collaborative network governance models, facilitation tools and collaborative business modeling tools to enable network orchestrators to improve the performance of collaborative networks in terms of collective value creation (network level) and private value capture (network participant level) (b) organizing platform activities for network orchestrators to exchange ideas, best practices and learn from each other, thereby facilitating the formation of a professional identity, standards and community of network orchestrators.
Dit project zet een lange-termijn samenwerkingsverband op tussen NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences, Dutch Game Garden (DGG) en Dutch Games Association. Het uiteindelijk doel is om nieuw organisatie- en managementkennis over overleving en groei als startend gamebedrijf in Nederland te ontwikkelen, valideren en integreren in DGG’s Incubatieprogramma en ander hoger onderwijs. Er wordt kwalitatief vooronderzoek gedaan naar de organizational performance, organizational fitness en partnerrelaties/-netwerken van 9 long-run en daarna 3 wankelende of gestrande gaming startups in DGGs regio’s: midden (Utrecht/Hilversum), zuid (Breda) en oost (Enschede).
A growing part of contemporary arts practices in the Netherlands has reoriented itself from studio and institutional art towards self-organization in self-run initiatives. In this type of contemporary art, self-organization is not only a way of gaining economic independence. Just as importantly, it is a form of expression where the organizational structure becomes the art project: self-organization-as-contemporary-art. Often using informal and underground settings, these initiatives reach audiences who have little or no access to the established system of cultural institutions. Aiming to bring art closer to everyday life, they often are no longer easily recognizable as art projects at all. Instead of individual studio practice with the artist as the central figure, these projects and initiatives are based on participation and non-hierarchical collaboration and rarely produce art objects for the traditional gallery art market. Examples include restaurants run as art projects, experimental schools, radio stations run as art performances, and do-it-yourself publishers. Rotterdam is an ideal case study for this development, since the city has played a role in self-organized artists’ initiatives and activist practices like no other city in the Netherlands. The trend towards self-employed work and flexibilization in the creative sector after 2008 accelerated this development. Self-organization-as-contemporary-art has developed throughout the years into an active, extensive and complex network of more than 80 self-organized initiatives; a fabric of autonomously operating initiatives that covers the entire city which we have mapped in previous research. This leads to the questions: How can the creative industries and cultural institutions adapt to these new forms of artistic practice which are no longer based on (a) individual work and (b) classical artists’ portfolios? How can art school curricula be adapted so that they educate innovative network artists who actively contribute to the fabric of self-organization-as-contemporary-art?
