The Lack of Department Managers, Research Proposal Example

The Setting and Problem(s)

From an observation of departmental management in our organization, my teammates and I discovered that the lack of enough suitable departmental managers poses a key obstacle to success (Dijkzeul, 1997). Effective management of all departments is vital for our organization to achieve its goals and grow. To date, it has failed to meet its predicted targets. Noting that our company has exhibited remarkably growth and development, we committed ourselves to research in order to assay a diagnosis of the problem.

We performed a cross-departmental analysis, examining each department in turn. Our research discovered that in fact, some of the departments exhibited pronounced success, far more so than did others (Igbal, 2011). We conducted further research, comparing them again in order to ascertain why some departments were so clearly outperforming others. What we found was that the under-performing departments, the departments exhibiting the slowest growth, lacked their own departmental manager. These under-performing departments were instead supervised by acting managers who did not serve as departmental managers, either in title or in fact. Not only were these managers not formally empowered to serve as departmental managers, they were also unable to do so in an informal capacity, i.e. as de facto departmental managers. We presented our findings in a series of meetings, using them to inform a solution to rectify the company’s difficulties.

The Central Problem: Lack of Departmental Managers

The most important discovery we made was that not only were some departments suffering from a lack of departmental management, but even some of our most prominent and significant ones were. The case in point was our sales department, which is vital for our success: after all, the sales department markets our products. And yet, what we discovered was that the sales department was one of the departments which lacked its own departmental manager or supervisor. And, as with the other departments that lacked a departmental manager, the sales department was underperforming, a pattern that undoubtedly explains a great deal of our company’s current troubles.

The lack of effective departmental management, and our proposal to rectify it, is also of vital importance for any further expansion our company might engage in, such as international expansion, hiring of additional staff in extant locations, and the introduction of new services. It is essential for all of our departments to be effectively managed if the company is to grow successfully in any or all of these ways. In this vein, a key concern is further staff training, whether to improve existing services or implement new ones: if this is to be successful, management must be in a position to effectively supervise it, providing crucial organizational support and oversight. As a service-sector organization, our company’s greatest concern is our human capital. Unlike a manufacturer, we do not deal in tangible goods, which frees us from some of the environmental and logistical challenges faced by these organizations. However, this only highlights the central importance of our employees as human capital, and the need to ensure that all departments are productively managed.

Moreover, international expansion poses a host of legal- and policy-related issues, specific to the host country or countries in question. This too highlights the importance of departmental managers to ensure compliance with the regulatory regime of any given host country: their oversight will be essential to ensuring that our company observes all laws and policies. Without departmental managers for all departments, it will be considerably more difficult to ensure such compliance and accountability.

Ramifications

At this time we estimate that the shortage of departmental managers is affecting the vast majority of our company’s staff: either directly or indirectly, over 90 percent of our employees are affected by the lack of effective departmental management (Varajao & Eduardo, 2010). This is a particularly important problem for the marketing and sales department, through which the company obtains revenues. It is therefore essential that we address this crucial issue with all diligence and alacrity.

In addressing this problem, our key consideration is the question: how serious is the lack of departmental managers? In particular, we need to know what problems it poses to the company’s success: who is it affecting, and in what ways? What systemic problems are caused by the lack of departmental managers, and how does the presence of departmental managers rectify them? Moreover, we need to examine leadership styles: what are the qualities of successful management, and how are they best exemplified in departmental managers? Leadership styles have been shown to exert significant effects on organizational culture, as well as on employee job satisfaction and morale. The role of departmental managers in shaping organizational culture, and contributing to employee satisfaction, has begun to draw interest in the literature. The department has begun to emerge as an area of significant interest in examining employees’ satisfaction and commitment, suggesting that the role of department managers is an important one.

Our research attests to the importance of effective management for organizational success and competitiveness. If an organization is to meet the needs of its customers, it must be focused on these needs, understand them, and be able to deliver. However, in our company the lack of departmental managers is undermining our ability to do this, resulting in a marked decrease in revenues. Our poor sales performance translates to financial instability, which poses serious threats to our ability to deliver our services to our customers. Lower revenues also pose serious problems for our ability to compensate and even retain workers: lower salaries, slow salary increments, and laying off employees to reduce payroll are serious concerns.

In order to forestall and preclude these problems, our team needs to focus on the central problem of management (Varajo & Eduardo, 2010). Our research has highlighted the degree to which the successful organization depends on employee satisfaction and identification with the organization (Slack, Orife, & Anderson, 2010). A key part of this occurs at the departmental level: to a considerable degree, employee commitment to the organization, and satisfaction with it, depend on the department (Hauge et al., 2011; Mauno, Kiuru, & Kinnunen, 2011; Slack et al., 2010; Zigan, Macfarlane, & Desombre, 2010). Employees respond to sound leadership practices of fairness and justice, and it is essential that they experience these not only with upper management, but also in their departments (Hauge et al., 2011; Mauno et al., 2011; Slack et al., 2010).

It therefore follows that we need to address the problem by recruiting managers for those of our departments that do not have them. Recruitment may entail promoting current employees, or hiring experienced professionals from outside the company. Doing this will enable all of our departments to function effectively and productively. The staff will have the proper supervision, guidance, and support that they need to secure each department’s contribution toward our organizational goals. This effective leadership is necessary if we are to achieve success (Zhang, Wang, & Shi, 2012).

The Character of the Research Here Proposed

The aim of this research is to identify the importance of having departmental managers. We will investigate the effects of the absence or presence of departmental managers in order to ascertain the crucial functions that departmental managers play in supporting organizational functionality and organizational culture. We will also investigate the importance of leadership styles, in order to identify the types and styles of leadership that are most effective for an organization. Though leadership style concerns upper management as well as departmental managers, our key concern with respect to this research goal will be to analyze how these leadership styles can be best applied to departments. Finally, we will also investigate the relative importance of departmental managers vis-à-vis upper management. We will analyze the impact of departmental managers on organizational culture, compared and contrasted with the impact of upper management on organizational culture. Here, our key concern will be to discover whether or not departmental managers can exert an even greater effect on employee satisfaction and performance than upper management.

Despite a growing interest in the departmental level of analysis, much of the literature focuses on the individual level within the context of the organization as a whole. There is a great need to better understand the impact of department managers on employee satisfaction, especially vis-à-vis upper management. There is good evidence that departments exert a significant impact on how employees perceive the organization, which translates to effects on their level of organizational commitment and job satisfaction (Slack et al., 2010). Departmental managers may even be more influential than upper management in establishing an effective organizational culture that promotes high performance and productivity (Zigan et al., 2010).

Our findings will inform our company’s policy decisions. Having identified the problem and investigated it, we will conduct an investigation of the causes of the problem and the effects that it has on all concerned. From this, we will be able to calculate the financial requirements of the solution, specifically how much we will have to spend in terms of compensation for our new managers. Of vital importance, we will also know the degree to which the effects of the plan will benefit the employees and the organization as a whole (Igbal, 2011). Utilizing all of the data from our research, we will be able to formulate an effective solution to rectify the problems that beset the company due to the lack of departmental managers.

Review of the Literature

In the study of employee satisfaction, commitment, and productivity, the relevance of the departmental level has begun to gain recognition in the literature. As this research will make clear, a lack of departmental managers poses significant threats to organizational success, including reduced employee productivity and reduced employee satisfaction with their work. The role of the departmental manager is an important one: departmental managers provide a great deal of efficiency and control in the course of any company’s day-to-day dealings, procedures, and management. A lack of departmental managers in departments such as sales and marketing, finance, human resources, and others is therefore a great concern: the risks include stress, non-compliance, and ultimately failure.

While it is true that some companies are small enough not to need departmental managers, for larger companies, such as Wal-Mart, Ford, and other corporate titans, they are beyond doubt a necessity. From the literature, it is clear that departmental managers play a seminal role in achieving organizational effectiveness, and are of crucial importance to successful strategic planning (Raes, Heijltjes, Glunk, & Roe, 2011). As important members of the management team, departmental managers make important contributions, which are a necessity for achieving organizational goals.

Concerning the Main Functions of Management

What are the main functions of management? In an article titled “Main Functions of Management”, Wijesinghe listed planning, organizing, leading, and controlling as the most important functions for management to perform. All four of these functions work together to keep a company operating efficiently, with a minimum of internal friction and a maximum of competitive success. For example, during the planning process, the role of managers is to clarify and communicate: they must “make objectives clear and specific, make activities meaningful, [and] reduce the risk of uncertainty” (p. 2). Wijesinghe lists many other aspects of this, but these three are particularly important: managers set the agenda with objectives, which they must explain, communicating them to all parties in the company. Managers must also make work meaningful: employees must understand how the work they are doing matters if they are to perform it well. And by reducing uncertainty, managers guard against losses of productivity caused by confusion.

In the organizing process, managers play an important role in specialization (Wijesinghe, 2010, p. 2). Specialization is important for defining who does what, and how: employees must know what their tasks are and are not, and to whom they answer. Authority is an important part of organization, and departmental managers are case in point: every department must have its own managers, in order to ensure oversight and productivity. This is part and parcel of leadership, Wijesinghe’s third main functionality for the role of managers: leadership entails guidance (p. 3). Managers should lead by promoting knowledge and motivation for the work, helping employees to understand what they need to know in order to do their jobs properly, and also to be motivated to do them well. Without managers who can lead, a company will be adrift, lacking the vision and drive so vital for success. Finally, the process of controlling is the last key function Wjesinghe (2010) addressed: controlling ensures compliance (p. 3). Controlling is follow-up: it entails “examining performance, comparing actual against planned actions, and taking corrective actions as necessary” (p. 3). Departmental managers play a key role in performing all four of these basic functions, as the literature presented below will demonstrate. Conversely, a lack of departmental managers poses significant problems, including the risk of failure.

Concerning Management at the Departmental Level 

One relevant dimension for examining employee satisfaction is employees’ perceptions of the value of their work. Yu and Cable (2011) examined this relationship at the departmental level: they examined how the members of various departments perceived their departments’ contributions in terms of collective contribution identity (CCI), and the reputation of these contributions in the other departments, or collective contribution reputation (CCR) (pp. 105-106). A key variable here was the frequency of interaction: as the authors explained, members of any given department should be expected to give greater credence to their department’s reputation with regard to the departments with which it interacted the most (p. 109). What they found was that indeed, the CCI of the department had an effect on employee satisfaction, and so did CCR for those departments with which any given department interacted the most (p. 114). Though they did not examine the role of the department managers, this study is still of interest to the proposed research, precisely because it demonstrates a relation between the collective identity of a department and employee satisfaction. Moreover, the observed impact on employee satisfaction due to the reputation of the department with those departments that it interacts with the most is also of interest, because it demonstrates that departments can affect each others’ satisfaction. It is clearly very important for all departments to be productive, and to be supportive of each others’ contributions: departments should interact with each other in ways that are conducive to employee productivity and a supportive organizational and departmental culture, in order to ensure that all members’ contributions are recognized and valued.

Hauge et al. (2011) analyzed such environmental conditions as leadership practices and role stressors at the departmental level, in order to ascertain whether these could predict the incidence of bullying (p. 306). Their rationale for focusing on the departmental level was that departments consist of work-groups, characterized by complex social environments in which bullying behavior can occur (p. 309). They found that in fact, both role conflict and fair and supportive leadership practices were strong predictors of the incidence of bullying at the departmental level (pp. 315-316). Whereas fair and supportive leadership kept the level of bullying low, role conflict pushed it higher (p. 315). What this study demonstrates is that leadership style has a powerful impact on role stressors: effective leadership can alleviate or preclude role stressors, thereby creating a more supportive, positive, and productive workplace (pp. 307-308).

This is of interest to the proposed study, because it lends support to the idea that the presence of department managers can exert a powerful effect on employee satisfaction. It also demonstrates that in some ways, the department is more important than the organization as whole: to be sure, the department is a part of the organization, but it is the part that forms the context for so much of the individual employee’s working experience. From this study, it is quite evident that it is not enough for an organization to be committed to an organizational culture that is supportive of employee wellbeing and productivity at the organizational level alone: it is also essential to consider the departmental level as a unit of analysis, as the theater for its own departmental culture. Even within one organization, different departments may vary in their particular departmental cultures, with consequences for their productivity, and therefore for that of the organization as a whole.

Further evidence that the department is a productive unit for inquiry into employee satisfaction comes from Mauno, Kiuru, and Kinnunen (2011), who studied the impact of work-family culture on employee attitudes at the individual and departmental levels (pp. 147-148). Work-family culture is a construct that describes “’the shared assumptions, beliefs, and values regarding the extent to which an organization supports and values the integration of employees’ work and family lives’” (Thompson, Beauvais, & Lyness, 1999, qtd. in Mauno et al., 2011, p. 147). Mauno et al. focused on the departmental level precisely because it is at this level that employees engage in the greatest amount of social interaction with coworkers (p. 148). As the authors explained, because managers play a key role in creating and shaping organizational culture, their leadership styles are therefore of considerable interest in evaluating the construct of work-family culture: managers that are supportive of, and sensitive to, their employees’ work-family needs are likely to exert a profound impact on employee satisfaction (p. 150).

What Mauno et al. (2011) found was that at the departmental level, employees shared similar perceptions of the kind of work-family culture they experienced, and similar corresponding attitudes about their work (p. 158). The authors reported that “the largest department-level effect was found for turnover intentions, job satisfaction, and managerial support” (p. 158). This is of considerable importance to the present inquiry: the level and kind of managerial support that employees encounter at the departmental level has profound effects for their willingness to stay with the company, and their satisfaction with their jobs (p. 158). By any measure, it is clearly essential to have good departmental managers, who will be able to lead the way in establishing a departmental culture within the organization that will provide employees with the support that they need.

If departmental managers can exert a profound impact on organizational culture, sufficient to increase employee satisfaction and productivity, then a key question is whether their impact can exceed that of upper management. The findings of Zigan, Macfarlane, and Desombre (2010) are of great interest here: these authors analyzed knowledge management activities in a university hospital, in order to ascertain the importance of such contextual factors as the structure and composition of the organizational culture (pp. 118-119). Knowledge management is or great importance for hospitals, as for many other kinds of organizations, because it facilitates the efficient acquisition, organization, and use of information (p. 119). Managers at the department level are particularly of interest, precisely because they are in a position to play an important role in leading and encouraging employees in the acquisition, creation, and sharing of knowledge (p. 121).

What Zigan et al. (2010) found was that the top managers did not have a unifying, comprehensive strategy for managing knowledge: despite the fact that the director recognized the benefits, he did not believe that his organization’s culture was ready for such a system (p. 122). However, the hospital’s staff evinced active participation in knowledge management systems, which they had developed at the level of the departments, particularly the quality management (QM) department (p. 122). The QM department and the finance and informatics team were all quite active in gathering and storing information on the internal processes of the hospital’s various units (p. 122). Different departments also had intranet and internet, with access to a variety of databases (p. 122). These findings demonstrate that departments can develop efficiencies and capacities quite independently, even to the point of exceeding the expectations of upper management.

In many ways, the findings of Zigan et al. (2010) are the most important for the current inquiry. What they unequivocally demonstrate is that departmental cultures that are well-managed can exceed the capacities and knowledge of the organization at the upper management level. Put simply, what Zigan et al. described was an organization with effective, high-performance departmental cultures, in the context of an organizational culture that did not provide active support and guidance in the development of these key departmental capacities. It is very clear that the departments had already exceeded the expectations of the upper management team, completely unbeknownst to them. These findings demonstrate that in some very important ways, departments can have a bigger impact on employees and their engagement with their work than the organization as a whole.

Mission and vision statements have been proposed as key influences on organizational success (Slack, Orife, & Anderson, 2010, p. 421). Slack et al. evaluated the relationship between “employee perceptions of organizational commitment to vision and employee organization satisfaction” (p. 421). Of interest to this research, Slack et al. singled out the role of department managers, hypothesizing that employee perceptions of department managers’ commitment to organizational vision would exhibit a positive relationship with the employees’ own satisfaction with the organization (p. 425). Intuitively, this makes sense: given that department managers play a key role in establishing and leading organizational culture, as seen, if employees perceive commitment in their department managers, then they should express more satisfaction with the organization (p. 425).

This hypothesis was supported by their findings: employees expressed positive perceptions of department managers’ commitment to the vision, and greater satisfaction because of it (Slack et al., 2010, p. 427). As the authors explained, managers who lead by example can reinforce the organization’s vision in the organizational culture, and this is especially true of departmental managers (p. 429). Departmental managers are a vital link in the networks that compose an organization’s structure, key actors in shaping organizational culture. Departmental managers that are committed to the organizational vision are positive examples for employees: they increase employee productivity and identification with the organization.

Also worthy of note were the elements of the corporate vision that exhibited the strongest relation with employees’ satisfaction: firstly, the organization’s commitment “to its philosophy of caring, sharing, trust, and respect”, and secondly, its competitiveness with other organizations (Slack et al., 2010, pp. 429-431). This demonstrates that employees pay attention to organizational culture: they observe what their organizations say, and what they actually do. When organizations match their rhetoric with actions, employees take note. Employees are also concerned with the organization’s effectiveness in the business arena: they are concerned with its competitiveness. This also makes a great deal of sense: employees are satisfied when they perceive that their organization is likely to continue to succeed. What this suggests is that a supportive, high-performance organizational culture can initiate a virtuous cycle of employee satisfaction and productivity: as employees see that the organization has a supportive organizational culture, they will be more satisfied with their jobs and more productive. This in turn will translate to increased productivity for the organization. The employees will see that the organization is successful, which will in turn tend to reinforce their satisfaction with the organization. Conversely, this also attests to the importance of ending a vicious cycle of unproductive performance and poor employee satisfaction: it is essential for any organization in such a situation to extricate itself from that situation as efficaciously and quickly as possible, in order to save itself from further harm.

On Effective Leadership in Management

Any number of studies have explored the relationship between leadership style and employee satisfaction with the organization. Yang, Wu, Chang, and Chien (2011) explained that job satisfaction is a key element in establishing an employee’s organizational loyalty, and it can also affect organizational commitment (p. 266). However, employee commitment to an organization is not of a single type: types of commitment to an organization which are connected with job satisfaction include both organizational identification and organizational internalization (p. 266). Transformational leadership can tie all of these together in important ways: transformational leadership departs from traditional leadership theory with its emphasis on “future vision and mission, not planning” (p. 267). Transformational leadership’s focus on mission is also not particularly concerned with allotting responsibilities, arguably a key drawback (p. 267). What Yang et al. found was a relationship between subordinates’ perceptions of transformational leadership qualities in their supervisors, and the degree to which the subordinates identified with their superiors (p. 271). Similarly, job satisfaction was found to be positively related to identification with the organization (p. 271). Transformational leadership at the top, then, can promote identification with superiors and with the organization.

Ismail, Zainuddin, and Ibrahim (2010) analyzed the effect of participative leadership and consultative leadership on employees’ job satisfaction (pp. 11-12). Participative leadership styles encourage subordinates’ involvement in making decisions, while consultative leadership styles entail requesting subordinates’ ideas and opinions (p. 12). They found that indeed, these styles of leadership were significantly correlated with employees’ commitment to the organization (pp. 18-20). More specifically, what Ismail et al. found was that relationship-oriented leadership behavior, as exemplified by the participative and consultative leadership styles, influenced commitment to the organization: the employees responded positively to management styles of leadership that promoted relationships (p. 19). What this suggests is that managers who are approachable, managers who include their subordinates in decision-making and goal-setting, will reap significant rewards in higher employee job satisfaction (p. 19).

Another significant influence is congruence between the personality types of leaders and followers (Zhang, Wang, & Shi, 2012, p. 111). Zhang et al. evaluated the impact of proactive personality congruence on leader-member exchange (LMX), in order to ascertain the relationship with “follower job satisfaction, affective commitment, and job performance” (p. 111). Proactivity has long been recognized as important in employees: proactive employees make significant contributions to workplace productivity by taking initiative (pp. 111-112). However, proactivity in leaders is very important too, for many of the same reasons and more besides: leaders control key resources in the workplace, after all (p. 112). Conceivably, congruity between proactive personality types could improve the quality of exchanges between managers and subordinates (p. 112).

What Zhang et al. (2012) found was that indeed, congruence between followers and leaders in terms of proactive personality improved LMX quality, which was in turn linked to employees’ job satisfaction (pp. 120-122). The alignment was the key: leaders and followers who are both high in proactivity experience much more improved communications than situations wherein there is a lack of alignment (p. 120). This highlights the importance of having not only proactive employees, but also proactive managers: proactive employees are important, but an organization will far much, much better if it also has proactive managers.

Conclusion

This research demonstrates that department managers are very important for the success and well-being of any organization. Not only are departmental managers essential for supporting organizational culture and function, in some ways they may be even more important to ensuring the productivity, morale, and job satisfaction of employees. As seen, high-performance departments can make a very real difference to the overall functionality of the organization, even in organizations that do not have explicit policies in place to support such functionalities at the department level. Departments within a given organization can also vary dramatically in the levels of bullying and other counter-productive behaviors they exhibit, with consequences for departmental, and therefore for organizational, productivity. Moreover, employees often see their contributions in terms not only specific to them as individuals, but also in terms of the collective identity of the department and its reputation with its departmental neighbors. Having good departmental managers to promote departmental functionality and high employee satisfaction is therefore of vital importance.

The research also highlights those good qualities that are necessary for a leader. A leader must be fair and supportive of their employees’ needs. A leader who exercises transformational leadership can increase the degree to which the employee identifies with that leader and with the organization. Moreover, leaders, including departmental managers, can increase employees’ job satisfaction and identification with the organization by modeling it: by demonstrating its commitment to ideals and its organizational values and mission. By so doing, departmental managers can play a vital role in promoting employee productivity, and therefore organizational success.

Hypotheses

The main question in this study is the presence or absence of department managers; thus, the null hypothesis is: H(0): Employee satisfaction is the same regardless of the presence of departmental managers. The alternative hypothesis is: (H1): Employee satisfaction is higher with the presence of departmental managers. Moreover, the impact of departmental managers’ leadership style will be considered, thus the second hypothesis is: (H2): Employee satisfaction is positively related to employees’ perceptions of departmental managers’ leadership as fair and supportive. Finally, the relative impact of departmental managers vis-à-vis upper management will be considered: (H3): The leadership style of departmental managers is a stronger predictor of employee satisfaction than the leadership style of upper management.

Methods: A questionnaire will be distributed to all participants, containing items ranked on a 5-point Likert-type scale, with questions scored as follows: (1) strongly agree, (2) agree, (3) neither agree nor disagree, (4) disagree, (5) strongly disagree. The questions asked are as follows:

• It is essential to have departmental managers
• Departmental managers are competent in human relations
• Upper management is competent in human relations
• Departmental managers communicate organizational goals by example
• Upper management communicates organizational goals by example
• Departmental managers are fair, and supportive of employee needs
• Upper management is fair, and supportive of employee needs
• Departmental managers help employees reach their career goals
• Upper management helps employees reach their career goals

Limitations and Delimitations: In evaluating employee satisfaction, an important delimitation of this study is that it will exclude participation of departmental managers and upper management. This is done in order to focus on subordinates’ perceptions of departmental managers and upper management. A key limitation is that this is a cross-sectional study: in order to better establish causality, longitudinal research designs would be efficacious. Another limitation is that the qualitative nature of this study is necessarily reliant on a high degree of subjectivity: participants’ answers will be shaped by their own experiences and dispositions.

Significance of the Study: The significance of this study is two-fold. Firstly, it will provide an important contribution to fill a gap in the current literature with regards to the presence or absence of departmental managers, and the effect of this on employee satisfaction. Although much has been discovered about the impact of departmental managers, there is still a great deal that is not known and has not been elucidated, particularly with regard to the presence vs. the absence of departmental managers. Secondly, this study will contribute to the extant literature by analyzing both departmental managers’ leadership styles and upper management’s leadership styles, and comparing the two. This will further elucidate the relative importance of departmental managers vis-à-vis upper management for organizational culture and employee satisfaction. Again, the literature has identified some ways in which departmental managers can exceed the impact of the upper management team: however, this research will prioritize the comparison between the contributions of departmental managers and the upper management team.

References

Dijkzeul, D. (1997). The Management of Multilateral Organizations. New York, NY: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1997.

Hauge, L. J., et al. (2011). Leadership and role stressors as departmental level predictors of workplace bullying. International Journal of Stress Management, 18(4), pp. 305-323. DOI: 10.1037/a0025396

Igbal, T. (2011). The Impact of Leadership Styles on Organizational Effectiveness: Analytical Study of Selected Organizations in IT Sector in Karachi. New York, NY: GRIN Verlag.

Ismail, A., Zainuddin, N. F. A., & Ibrahim, Z. (2010). Linking participative and consultative leadership styles to organizational commitment as an antecedent of job satisfaction. UNITAR e-Journal, 6(1), pp. 11-26. Retrieved from http://www.search.ebscohost.com/

Mauno, S., Kiuru, N., & Kinnunen, U. (2011). Relationships between work-family culture and work attitudes at both the individual and the developmental level. Work & Stress, 15(2), pp. 147-166. DOI: 10.1080/02678373.2011.594291

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Slack, F. J., Orife, J. N., & Anderson, F. P. (2010). Effects of commitment to corporate vision on employee satisfaction with their organization: An empirical study in the United States. International Journal of Management, 27(3), pp. 421-436. Retrieved from http://www.search.ebscohost.com/

Wijesinghe, A. (2010). Main functions of management. Ezine Articles, Retrieved from http://ezinearticles.com/?Main-Functions-of-Management&id=4379082

Yang, F.-H., Wu, M., Chang, C.-C., & Chien, Y. (2011). Elucidating the relationships among transformational leadership, job satisfaction, commitment foci and commitment bases in the public sector. Public Personnel Management, 40(3), pp. 265-278. Retrieved from http://www.search.ebscohost.com/

Yu, K. Y. T., & Cable, D. M. (2011). Exploring the identity and reputation of departmental groups: Whose opinions matter most to their members? Human Resource Management Journal, 21(3), pp. 105-121. DOI: 10.1111/j.1748-8583.2010.00148.x

Zhang, Z., Wang, M., & Shi, J. (2012). Leader-follower congruence in proactive personality and work outcomes: The mediating role of leader-member exchange. Academy of Management Journal, 55(1), pp. 111-130. DOI: 10.5465/amj.2009.0865

Zigan, K., Macfarlane, F., & Desombre, T. (2010). Knowledge management in secondary care: A case study. Knowledge and Process Management, 17(3), pp. 118-127. DOI: 10.1002/kpm.347