Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between networking ability, autonomy and work performance. Design/methodology/approach The data, collected from a sample of 510 employees in a professional service firm, were analysed using regression analysis. Findings First, networking ability and autonomy are positively associated with in-role and extra-role performance. Second, the greater the job autonomy, the stronger the effect of networking ability on in-role performance. Originality/value This paper adds to the growing body of literature on demand for social and interpersonal skills in organisations. The authors combine the literature on work design with the literature on networking ability and complexity in employment relations. The authors’ findings show the importance of networking ability and autonomy for work performance, as well as pointing to factors such as age and work experience.

The effect of leadership behavior on work performance is highly context sensitive. We address this notion by investigating leadership behavior in one important but understudied organizational context—namely, professional service firms (PSFs). We examine how partners’ leadership behavior in a PSF relates to employee self-leadership, creative climate, and work performance (N = 442). The results show that partners’ consideration leadership behavior is positively related to employees’ perceived work performance. Moreover, partners’ consideration and intellectual stimulation leadership behavior are especially important drivers of self-leadership and creative climate in a PSF, which in turn are positively related to employees’ work performance. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

PurposeThis paper examines the relationship between chief executive officers' (CEOs') leadership behaviors (consideration and initiating structure) and firm and individual performance (i.e. profitability, affective commitment and employees' willingness to change) in small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) that need to adapt to changing environments.Design/methodology/approachSurvey data was collected from SMEs (28 firms, 235 employees) in the accounting industry along with objective performance register data (profit and return on assets). The predicted model was tested with multilevel structural equations modeling (MSEM) using a maximum likelihood estimator.FindingsThe CEO leadership behavior of initiating structure was positively related to firms' profitability, while the CEO leadership behavior of consideration was positively related to employees' willingness to change and affective commitment.Practical implicationsSmall accounting firms typically offer standard services that are now being replaced by digital solutions. These firms have an incentive to offer new services, such as business advisory services. Therefore, leaders should embrace the duality of consideration and initiating structure to gain employees' willingness to change and optimize overall firm performance.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to leadership literature by examining a novel context (CEO consideration and initiation of structure in SMEs in uncertain environments) using a combination of firm performance measures (e.g. objective outcomes at the firm level and employees' willingness to change as a new measure at the individual level). In addition, it reports a comprehensive test of the full model using MSEM, the findings of which demonstrate the importance of dual leadership behaviors for CEOs.

(2018) Intellectual stimulation and team creative climate in a professional service firm. Evidence-based HRM: a Global Forum for Empirical Scholarship, 6 (1). pp. 39-53. ISSN 2049-3983 Final accepted version (with author's formatting)This version is available at: http://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/23566/ Copyright:Middlesex University Research Repository makes the University's research available electronically.Copyright and moral rights to this work are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners unless otherwise stated. The work is supplied on the understanding that any use for commercial gain is strictly forbidden. A copy may be downloaded for personal, non-commercial, research or study without prior permission and without charge.Works, including theses and research projects, may not be reproduced in any format or medium, or extensive quotations taken from them, or their content changed in any way, without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder(s). They may not be sold or exploited commercially in any format or medium without the prior written permission of the copyright holder(s).Full bibliographic details must be given when referring to, or quoting from full items including the author's name, the title of the work, publication details where relevant (place, publisher, date), pagination, and for theses or dissertations the awarding institution, the degree type awarded, and the date of the award.If you believe that any material held in the repository infringes copyright law, please contact the Repository Team at Middlesex University via the following email address:eprints@mdx.ac.ukThe item will be removed from the repository while any claim is being investigated.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore how corporate values are interpreted by local and international employees in a multilingual organisation that has opted for the local language, not English, as its corporate language. Design/methodology/approach This is a research paper exploring how the recontextualisation and resemiotisation of value terms impact on how corporate values are interpreted, employing triangulation of questionnaire and interview results. Findings When values are recontextualised in employee discourse, proficiency in the corporate language and cultural background was found to have an impact on their interpretation. Internationals were found to have a broader and not exclusively professional interpretation compared to the locals. Internationals with a low level of proficiency in the local language were more sceptical than the locals as to whether there was a shared understanding of the values. Research limitations/implications The questionnaire yielded fewer respondents than the authors expected, which should be taken into account when interpreting the results. Practical implications The paper suggests best practices for communicating corporate values to a multilingual workforce. Social implications This paper contributes to the understanding of linguistic challenges in the multilingual work contexts. Originality/value To the authors’ knowledge, there is little prior in-depth research on how language impacts on employees’ interpretation of corporate values. As values are cohesive devices in organisations, the language used to convey them is worth addressing as the present paper aims to demonstrate.