Increasing Employee Engagement in Organizational Citizenship Behaviors Within Continuous Improvement Programs in Manufacturing: The HR Link

Abstract

The nature of Human Relationships (HR) within supply chains has received superficial attention in the drive for continuous improvement (CI). Persistent pressures impacting upon global engineering companies has limited the potential to address the HR element. Simply transferring mature western concepts and analytical tools does not capture the dynamics of the global production workforce. This paper proposes a new theoretical perspective, encompassing an evaluative tool, thus moving beyond formulaic implementations of initiatives that erroneously assume maturity of production practices and outcomes. The study helps advance organizations by adding contextualization to the human-centric perspectives of Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) and discretionary effort (DE). Case-based data from engineering production workers in Thailand was factor analyzed to test the research hypotheses. This research reports on an alternative operationalization of these core ideas, whilst significantly extending empirical-base through validating the propositions. Further, it contributes and responds to extant literature identifying HR as the missing link in enacting CI programs in practice. The paper addresses this gap and data collected provides support for theorizing that the HR concepts proposed positively impact organizational CI interventions. Findings have important implications for such interventions encompassing practical and theoretical relevance for global engineering managers with local engineering production workforce.

Exploring Drivers of Staff Engagement in Healthcare Organizations Using Tree-Based Machine Learning Algorithms

“…In line with this aim, we contribute empirical evidence to the engineering management research field. As highlighted in an earlier study [20], the engineering management field needs more empirical studies in this area. Recent studies also showed the importance of empirical studies in understanding the relationship between specific organizational factors (e.g., communication [70] and leadership [11]), and technologies (e.g., AI and digitization) [14], [71] and employees' psychological behavior and engagement.…”

“…Recent studies also proved that the efforts so far have not taken human behavior and cognition into account in a systematic manner in pandemic preparation [13] and general engineering management [19]. Furthermore, it is noted that limited empirical studies are available on staff engagement [20] and resilience [10], [21] in engineering management research, despite its importance in the operations and supply chain management context. Therefore, an empirical study is essential to understand the human aspect and staff engagement in healthcare organizations.…”

The significance of employee behaviours and soft management practices to avoid digital waste during a digital transformation

“…According to Santhanam and Srinivas (2019), TQM and human resource management should be arranged with a focus on engagement, emotional protection and psychological safety of shop-floor workers to achieve international standards on quality management. Morton et al (2019) discuss the importance of employee engagement in organizational behaviour within the continuous improvement of manufacturing processes. Factors that influence the individuals’ decisions to engage with additional tasks include culture, nature of work and work-life balance.…”

“…Such processes are highly dependent on employees’ commitment and engagement in problem-solving and learning (Liker, 2004; Slack et al , 2010; Womack et al , 1990). Poor leadership, resistance to change and a lack of motivation can lead to the failure of lean implementation (Ahuja et al , 2019; Morton et al , 2019; Toledo et al , 2019; Zainuddin et al , 2019). Industry 4.0 is also pushing the digital transformation of lean organizations, where employees remain critical for business success (Benešová and Jiří Tupa, 2017; Rauch et al , 2020; Richert et al , 2016; Stöhr et al , 2018).…”

Capture coproduction behavior in networking alumni communities: Progress from platform belongingness, knowledge sharing, and citizenship behavior

“…Digital platform belongingness may induce knowledge socialization (Dong et al, 2016) and a shared base of idea discussion and promotion (Lee et al, 2020). Individuals perceive their identity development as being influenced by shared value, meaning that pride may motivate knowledge sharing, social exchange and continuous improvement of their former institute network (Osorno and Medrano, 2020;Schweitzer et al, 2019;Morton et al, 2019). Thus, we hypothesize that:…”